Ubuntu moves away from GNOME

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/67880

by e1ven • 16 years ago

25 22 16 years ago

networkworld.com

mseebach2• 16 years ago

And for those as confused as me, Unity is this: http://unity.ubuntu.com/

Maybe someone else can elaborate on what a GNOME Shell is?

dmn• 16 years ago

A new simplified GUI by GNOME

http://vimeo.com/13797705

barnaby• 16 years ago

I can see the resemblance. Thank you for that link.

catechu• 16 years ago

Unity looks nice, but its improvements over GNOME seem to be mainly cosmetic -- not compelling enough to pull me away from the simplicity of dwm (http://dwm.suckless.org/), at least not yet.

someone_here• 16 years ago

I don't think people who know what a window manager is are the target market for Unity.

jpr• 16 years ago

As a person who knows what a wm is and just tried out Unity, I can confirm this on my part.

mxavier• 16 years ago

Unity looks silly to me. This moreover confirms to me that Ubuntu is turning the distro into something that everyone's mom/dad can use. While that's fine for popularizing linux, that isn't the OS I signed up for years ago. Switching to Arch is going to be painful but I guess I'll be better off for it.

mey• 16 years ago

Do you say that in a capacity as a desktop power user or as a server admin?

mseebach2• 16 years ago

That doesn't have to be a conflict. Just as you can easily use KDE or XFCE with Ubuntu through the Kubuntu and Xubuntu distributions, I'm sure you can easily choose "classic" GNOME.

Adam503• 16 years ago

or... GNubuntu :-D

tvon• 16 years ago

> This moreover confirms to me that Ubuntu is turning the distro into something that everyone's mom/dad can use. While that's fine for popularizing linux, that isn't the OS I signed up for years ago.

Weather you were aware of it or not, that is exactly the distro you signed up for. Being end-user friendly has always been a primary goal of Ubuntu.

adambyrtek2• 16 years ago

Nobody will force you to use Unity. As a power user you should already know that even when Unity becomes the default on Ubuntu you will still be able to use any other window manager.

darklajid4• 16 years ago

The main problem I see with this [1] is mostly exactly what they, Canonical, try to want to reach desperately: To differ even at substantial costs.

See, I'm not one of these "Linux on the desktop" guys, but I do use it on a daily basis and have a rich social network that slipped into Linux-Land by various means. Be it talking about it, seeing cool things on my desktop or just being annoyed by the big players. Some of them, a majority even, runs Ubuntu now. It's just really easy to work with, the guys do (did?) quite an amazing job.

What I fear is that someone with that large of a market penetration wanders off and creates "yet another desktop". We're used to KDE and Gnome, I know lots of people that use fluxbox/openbox, there's the tiling wm niche, you can run Moblin/MeeGo and I'm sure I forget the best wm anyway and the comments are going to try to enlighten me.

Moving into a new direction is painful. It breaks with everything and everyone else. You should have a good reason and a compelling argument. Forking OpenOffice.org is a good example in my book. Unity is the fork that no one on the forking side wants to acknowledge. And for what? To "diversify the platform" (i.e. marketing crap)? Ubuntu UI patches (think notifications/libindicator for example) are already debated today and even create problems with upstream packages _now_. Going for a completely new shell/ui is just going to increase the burden here and will end up with this: "Please create a package for Gnome (on linux or bsd, for whatever distribution) and a special one for Ubuntu."

1: Disclaimer is the same for me as for the guy in the link: Gnome member and (occasional) contributor.

YooLi2• 16 years ago

"Ubuntu UI patches (think notifications/libindicator for example) are already debated today and even create problems with upstream packages _now_."

This is the problem, not 'we want to be different so badly'. Why do design decisions made by Canonical have to be debated? Don't they have the right to make any kind of desktop changes they want without having to get them 'approved' by Gnome?

darklajid4• 16 years ago

Hell, yes!

But you miss two things here. The less important one is just that the Gnome brand, as it is, sucks. Not because the experience is bad, it is just not well defined. I.e. you cannot say "this is not Gnome" or "this is Gnome". Which _is_ hard if you want consistency.

This point is alone the Gnome's guys fault though and needs to be handled there. If Gnome can come up with a definite set of rules what they consider fine, everyone else can either agree or use the source, make it "different" - but without calling it Gnome anymore. Think the Firefox brand.

The bigger problem is something else though: The samples I gave _break_ existing applications. They are not only UI bling or moving window buttons around, they are patches to functionality - and sometimes poorly done.

Now - again: They have all the right in the world to do that. But unfortunately our world isn't perfect and this lead to several problems in the past: The (downstream only) patch sucked, causing loss of functionality. Ubuntu users empirically complain not at all (those that are less tech savvy), or in Launchpad only (which would be great for bugs that are Ubuntu specific, but only if the patch itself is maintained well).

This leads to a good share of the huge Ubuntu user base to think that this application of yours is crap - while really just someone thought that an integrated menu of some sorts would be a nice idea and can easily be tacked on to every upstream Gnome package.

Combined these two issues shine: It's supposed to be Gnome and it breaks in subtle ways -> Bad Gnome? Do what you want, UI or otherwise, but take the blame and show some respect towards the free time of the upstream guys.. You know what Uncle Ben said about great power..

lukifer• 16 years ago

Without having tried Unity, it looks nice. I'd much rather use an OSX-inspired GUI than a WinXP-inspired GUI. :P

I do wish, though, there was more willingness in the OSS community to push the boundaries of UI, using completely new ideas such as 10/GUI: http://10gui.com/

vegai• 16 years ago

"I do wish, though, there was more willingness in the OSS community to push the boundaries of UI..."

We kinda did: http://www.suckless.org

Sometimes you have to move backwards to move forwards...

adambyrtek2• 16 years ago

The title of this article doesn't conform with the facts. According to Jono Bacon[1]:

"There is going to be some questions about this decision in relation to GNOME. I want to make something crystal clear: Ubuntu is a GNOME distribution, we ship the GNOME stack, we will continue to ship GNOME apps, and we optimize Ubuntu for GNOME. The only difference is that Unity is a different shell for GNOME, but we continue to support the latest GNOME Shell development work in the Ubuntu archives."

[1] http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/10/25/ubuntu-11-04-to-ship-uni...

darklajid4• 16 years ago

Let's be straight: Jono Bacon, while a nice guy, is employed by Canonical. That does give him the insider credibility, but he's also obviously "we're the nice guys" biased. He's the "Ubuntu Community Manager" (last I checked that was the title?) after all and his job is to promote the use of Ubuntu and to keep the community alive and favorable.

Let's bring Dave Neary[1] to the table for readers that might want to understand why the title of the article _might_ (you judge - but probably only time will tell) be perfectly valid. I'd suggest reading both links to understand the corporate message and statement of intention on the one side and a (note: Not _the_, obviously there's not a single Gnome hive mind) representative opinion for the disappointment about these latest decisions on the other side.

1: http://blogs.gnome.org/bolsh/2010/10/25/ubuntu-to-move-to-un...

Ubuntu moves away from GNOME

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