Dear Ubuntu by Jesse Smith

[neu5eeCh]

Just don't touch my XFCE, my processing power and my hard disk, and the hell with the rest.

+1

(And keep your smudgy fingers away from my computer screen.)

[Nyromith]

That piece was one big whine.

Want a community with no empathy or emotions? Go outside and find a gang.

[malspa]

Want a community with no empathy or emotions? Go outside and find a gang.

Yeah, okay. Hey, that's how it hit me. Want a distro that goes only in the direction you want it to go in? Go create your own.

[BrokenKingpin]

Great read, and agree with most of the points made.

I do find it hard to blame Ubuntu for the direction they are going with Unity, as much as I dislike it. With Gnome going in a direction they did not like, they were forced to do their own thing (for better or worse).

There is a lot of flux in Linux desktop right now, and it will be very interesting to see where things are in a year or two.

[exploder]

I liked Jesse Smith's open letter. Helios also makes similar points.

http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/2011/0...jor-asset.html

Ubuntu is geared entirely toward grabbing media attention. If Ubuntu changes an icon it is plastered over every news site on the planet, it's ridiculous. Ubuntu is released with far too many bugs and regressions and the last few releases take features away that the community clearly wants. Don't take my word for it, look for yourself! People are writing scripts and How To's for putting features back. Look at the list of known issues with any given release, does it look like everyone's hardware is working like it did in the release before it?

Ubuntu has been referred to as half baked and that's a pretty accurate description these days. People are beginning to move away from Ubuntu, distributions are starting to go with a Debian base rather than Ubuntu and it's all because no one listens to the community. Sure some fan boys will never stop singing the praises of Ubuntu but many have stopped singing. Many of us old timers have seen distributions fall from grace and fade away, this is the beginning of that happening to Ubuntu.

Ubuntu needs to stop trying to grab the attention of the media and focus on quality and listen to it's community. Ubuntu is beginning to lose favor with the media and the trend will continue if things do not change in the very near future.

[forrestcupp]

If you're not happy, why not just use one of the multitude of other distros out there? This is about as ridiculous as having a personal vendetta against McDonalds when you could just go the the Burger King next door.

In cases where someone's view is not going to make any difference, it seems like they would have a lot more peace of mind if they would just keep their mouths shut and move on to something that will make them happy.

[Docaltmed]

Dear Jesse,

What I don't understand is why the I-can't-stand-Unity crowd frequently makes the assumption that they are speaking for "the Ubuntu community."

They aren't, nor do you. I particularly loved this:

What I would like to see is more dialogue between us -- you, me and our friends. When you say you're willing to be supportive and involved long-term, I'd like to see you actively offer that promised support. And, most of all, I'm asking you to engage us, your friends, and find out what we want sometimes.

There are already many means of communications with Canonical. Really, if you want to suggest a good idea, there is no lack of avenues through which that can be done.

And even if people listen to you, which I agree is a good thing, it doesn't mean that they will do what you say -- that's a good thing, too.

You keep referring to the fast pace of change of Ubuntu, and how all of the innovation and accompanying hiccups is disconcerting to you. As far as I can tell, that's the way Ubuntu has been since its inception -- how could it be otherwise with a 6-month release cycle? Perhaps the most useful thing for you to do would be to peg yourself on an LTS. That way you can move at a more gradual pace, and not suffer from the frequent breakage that accompanies the 6-month releases.

I know that I have a server that's happily puttering away on 9.04. All tucked away in its own little universe, I have little need for it to upgrade, though I probably will just for giggles. The rest of us at my office are running 11.04, which is a pretty fun place to be, from my point of view.

So, thanks for the comments, and good luck. Just remember, when you are speaking for Ubuntu's "friends," you aren't speaking for most of us.

I'll see you at the next LTS!

Regards,

DocAltMed

[snowpine]

I love Unity and what a lot of people don't realize is that rolling it out "half-baked" in 11.04 (actually Unity first appeared in Netbook 10.10) is a great strategy to find and squash all the bugs in time for the 12.04 LTS release.

10.04 with "classic" Gnome will be fully supported through April 2013 (not to mention distros like Red Hat that will support it much longer) not to mention Xfce, KDE, LXDE, Openbox, Ratpoison, etc. So don't panic if you don't like Unity! You don't need to go back to Windows XP!! (like I've actually seen a few people on the forums threaten dramatically!)

[mikewhatever]

Want a community with no empathy or emotions? Go outside and find a gang.

Regardless, it was still a whine.

[keithpeter]

Hello All

Just don't touch my XFCE, my processing power and my hard disk, and the hell with the rest.

I'd like to add that Xubuntu is the only distribution that just works works out of the box with no configuration on all the computers I have. Wifi, suspend, video, sound, the works.

So as long as we can choose the desktop environment to use on top of the base install, I shall be happy.