Re: Has Ubuntu lost it's Ubuntu?
Originally Posted by
ki4jgt
Although Linux is defaultly network-based by nature (so it could never lose it's humanistic character completely), these were the images and movies originally distributed with the distro.
Yeah; and do you possibly remember what everyone said? "Poo-brown". "I hate the brown". "Ubuntu should look more professional and less brown".
I'm not downing/hating Ubuntu but it appears to be heading away from it's simplistic, humanitarian beginnings and moving towards corporate goals like every other OS before it.
Canonical is a company, Ubuntu is not a community distro, this has always been the case.
and the desktop was so configurable to the user. Everything that was distributed with it, inspired community and sharing, creating, and shown out sparks of inspiration went into the wallpapers and images. Ubuntu had goals that it said it wouldn't violate and it has (trying to maintain a single CD image in size).
Sometimes you have to grow and mature, and usually that means moving away from a tweaker's paradise and more toward an end-user product. Think about it: The first personal computers were very much build-it-yourself and program-it-yourself. Very rudimentary ways of interacting with them. Eventually you lost some of the freedom of tweaking and making outrageous hacks, because it was necessary to make computing easier for a wider audience.
When people still accidentally drag their Windows taskbar to the side and don't know how to get it back to the bottom, you know that the ability to customise the location of the taskbar does not pay off. The 0.5% of users who do it may love the feature, but it will totally frustrate the 10% of users who accidentally move it and don't know how to move it back.
Tying Ubuntu's size to a particular storage technology was short-sighted. Much like how, in the UK, a CD single can't contain more music than a vinyl single otherwise it gets classed as a "budget album".
Sure, the code's free and open but the average user is stuck with the desktop if they don't understand that code.
There are other desktops; some are modern desktops with few customisation features, but many are still a tweaker's paradise. Find one that suits you. Don't blame Ubuntu - the Unity desktop was not the first Linux desktop to lose features in its maturity.
Are we still allowed to say we have Ubuntu, even though we're slowly moving away from a community driven OS and towards a private, locked down, desktop?
Ubuntu was never a community-driven operating system. Never. A lot of people seemed to believe that it was, and then got indignant when "OMG Ubuntu is selling software now!", but Ubuntu has always been directed by Canonical and community-contributed features were only ever included when they suited the commercial aims of Canonical. Not that it's a bad thing: Other distros, even as late as 2006, were still shipping two web browsers, three desktops and five text editors on their default install. And an icon editor, if you were really lucky.
I try to treat the cause, not the symptom. I avoid the terminal in instructions, unless it's easier or necessary. My instructions will work within the Ubuntu system, instead of breaking or subverting it. Those are the three guarantees to the helpee.
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