Is Ubuntu slowly degenerating?

[lammert-nijhof]

I have been using Ubuntu as my main OS since 10.04 and have been installing it on my PC since 8.04. I have been using Ubuntu, since that time. I have seen a slow improvement of the distro since that time, till 16.04. I do not think 16.04 is an improvement over 14.04, I have the feeling, it is getting less reliable. Just think about the issues with the Ubuntu software center. I have to use good old Synaptic or 'apt' again to get software installed. Think about Steam, it does not install in 16.04. For the first time I had a problem installing the Oracle Virtualbox deb on a fresh install of Ubuntu on my repaired and resurrected laptop. Also the wrong Wifi Broadcom driver had been installed. A lot of times when I wanted to install new apps, the dependencies were incomplete and the installation failed. The minimal quality I expect from an app store is, that it contains software, that can be installed. If not, at least it should have two sections one for humans and one for nerds Sometimes I'm just not in the mood for googling trying to find the solutions.

I also see Ubuntu is falling behind Mint and Debian in popularity, a part of the problem might be a decrease of quality not so much of the OS itself, but of its surrounding and lack of modest new features. Do not talk about Unity 8, it is far behind the original schedule and I doubt its success. Just remember Microsoft's attempt to develop one UI for small and large screen sizes, called Windows 8. From what I have seen of it in 17.04, it does not seem like a significant improvement for desktops. It is anyhow much slower in loading.

[wildmanne39]

Thread moved to Recurring Discussions.

[Bucky Ball]

For the first time I had a problem installing the Oracle Virtualbox deb on a fresh install of Ubuntu on my repaired and resurrected laptop.

Not sure why you were using the .deb file. I just ten minutes ago installed it from the repositories in less than two minutes. Working fine. 16.04 LTS.

Sorry to hear you're having such a shocking time of it.

[QIII]

I also see Ubuntu is falling behind Mint and Debian in popularity

By what measure and what is your source?

[DuckHook]

I have now installed it into over two dozen machines counting my own and those of friends and family. Have not run into a single one of the problems you complain about. Reliability: not a single problem. Software Centre: I exclusively use apt, but no complaints or support requests from friends or family. Steam: installed fine. Required workarounds for some games, but they would have been necessary irrespective of distro. VBox: added PPA and installed with no issues, as usual. Broadcom wifi: I've always had to install legacy drivers in every version—so no difference there.

There are obviously issues that people run into. The forum posts are evidence of that. But every version runs into issues. That's the nature of a beast as complex as a modern distro. Arch, Fedora, openSuse forums all show similar questions to ours. For that matter, so do Debian and Mint. In fact, we get a fair number of Mint refugees seeking solutions here and claiming that Mint community support lags—but I digress.

I'm always perplexed by posts like these. I can never make out the poster's point. Ubuntu is one of the few distros that have so many official flavours supporting so many different DEs. It's now over half-a-dozen. Don't like Unity? Use Gnome. Or XFCE. Or LXDE. Or KDE. Or Mate. Or, most recently, Budgie. Or install the mini-iso and pull in TWM if you're hung up on absolute minimalism. Why on earth are people still complaining about Unity???

[lammert-nijhof]

I have installed Ubuntu also on my machines and machines from friends and family since say 2010. Not counting dual boots since say 2008. For myself I always use the latest LTS version and the latest development version. I never had the type of problems I now have with 16.04, I think we are back to the time before 2012. I'm only having fun solving problems during certain periods, during other months I want everything to work more or less out of the box. You sound a little bit like the man that said all swans are white and shows 100 white swans to me, but I only have to show you one swan that is black to proof you're wrong. You're react like the typical Ubuntu fanboy, I never mentioned anything about flavors, but you brought that up as a kind of advertisement.

I did post it, because I really have the feeling Canonical has other priorities as its Unity desktop and I'm afraid it slowly starts to show and that would be a pity. If I find the time, I will make a clean install. The current system has been upgraded from 12.04 to 14.04 to 16.04 and a lot of programs have been tried during that time.

But first I have to install Lubuntu on an old P-III laptop for the children of my brother in law and Ubuntu 16.04 for a friend. For her and her children I will add a Wifi card and an AGP video card (256MB) to their multi-threaded P-IV 3.2 GHz and install some games. I will try Steam again, but there are some nice relative modern games in the Ubuntu library too and they did install without problems. That is what I expect from an official App store. I live in the third world and not in the USA or Europe, so old PCs are still used here.

[QIII]

Actually, he sounds like someone who just said swans come in every color of the rainbow. You may not have brought up the other flavors, but it did sound a bit like you were saying all flavors are white.

[ventrical]

I also see Ubuntu is falling behind Mint and Debian in popularity, a part of the problem might be a decrease of quality not so much of the OS itself, but of its surrounding and lack of modest new features. Do not talk about Unity 8, it is far behind the original schedule and I doubt its success. Just remember Microsoft's attempt to develop one UI for small and large screen sizes, called Windows 8. From what I have seen of it in 17.04, it does not seem like a significant improvement for desktops. It is anyhow much slower in loading.

Well, you brought up Unity8 and I'm gonna talk about it The current state of unity8 is a technical preview in the 17.04 current development cycle - that's why there is so much breakage. It is a given that there will be breakage. Just go to this link: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Unity8Deskto...ct=Unity8inLXC and read 'Limitations' header. It's not like Canonical is trying to pass off Unity8 as a finished project at the moment.

16.04 release is a little more streamlined but I just installed a 16.04.2 MATE distro from a daily on an old throw-a-way HP lappy and it is working very well indeed.

Regards..

[mc4man]

I wouldn't call it degenerating, maybe it's winding down?

To me the question is, does Ubuntu need to produce revenue above costs at some point to remain alive?
It would seem that the move to unity8 & snaps would lower resources (costs) needed to develop & maintain by a fair amount.
But if it needs to produce revenue above costs then how?

App store purchases, in-app purchases, advertising & subscriptions seem to be the way for Apple, Google/Android, & Microsoft/Windows, not sure if Ubuntu is willing to go that route or how it would be received.

[DuckHook]

…You sound a little bit like the man that said all swans are white, but I only have to show you one swan that is black to proof you're wrong.

A false analogy if there ever was one, and one self-servingly engineered to ignore the central point of my reply. The faulty reasoning here is yours. You tried to generalize your anecdotal account into a universal claim. Since it was you who opened the door to anecdote, it was wholly appropriate for me to cite over two dozen opposing cases with no issues. The statistical weight of evidence is on my side, not yours. And just in case this is not clear enough for you, the operative principle here is not that of falsification, but statistical. One black swan demonstrates nothing whereas a dozen white swans has actual statistical weight.

You're react like the typical Ubuntu fanboy…

Careful now. Resorting to the "fanboy" charge is the usual refuge of those who have exhausted their meagre store of arguments and must fall back to the diversionary tactic of hurling ad hominems.

I never mentioned anything about flavors…

Of course not! Admitting the existence of alternatives from the outset would have destroyed the very foundation of your gripe.

…but you brought that up as a kind of advertisement.

I brought it up to fill in a gaping hole in your complaint that you conveniently pretended wasn't there. The existence of official alternatives makes your complaint a pointless one. It is only by ignoring those alternatives that you can rag on about Unity. The point in bringing up alternatives was to lay bare the emptiness of your gripe.

…I really have the feeling Canonical has other priorities as its Unity desktop and I'm afraid it slowly starts to show and that would be a pity.

This is the first statement you've made that isn't just plaintive.

To address it properly, a little bit of context is needed.

• Microsoft supports just a few DEs—the various Windows versions that are still active. Moreover, they have a pittance of a repository and offload almost the entirety of their app ecosystem to third parties. Ditto for Apple. MS employs 120,849 people. Apple employs 66,000.
• Canonical supports seven DEs with two current non-LTS versions at any one time and another three LTS. They look after a repository numbering over 20,000 apps at last count (never mind what's in the PPAs – which they also administer). Moreover, they are the ONLY major distro to have a serious entrant in the portable market, which everyone knows is the growing part of society's IT ecosystem, but which all the other distros have simply elected to take a pass on. They do all of the above with 700 employees.

It's easy to complain. Gripers are a-dime-a-dozen and we hear them on these forums all the time. It's far harder to make a real contribution. That's what these people whom you so casually dismiss as "fanboys" do. They roll up their sleeves and code, or translate, or document, or—in the case of those on this forum—provide help to those in need. It is not unreasonable for these "fanboys" to expect some appreciation, some courtesy and at least to be treated with a modicum of respect.

I live in the third world and not in the USA or Europe, so old PCs are still used here.

No one here is blind to the needs of the third world, or only interested in the brightest and shiniest of new hardware. Ubuntu itself is free both as in beer and as in speech. Anyone can lay their hands on it, install it on as much hardware as they want, even fork it and change it to their heart's content if they so desire. As for compatibility with old HW, I have a link in my sig specifically dealing with the care and upkeep of old hardware. I daresay that I've never seen anything remotely like such a link in any blog or sig of a Windows or Apple "fanboy". If you want to wildly fling about implications of disrespect for old hardware or the needs of the third world, perhaps you should be pointing your loose canon at totally different targets.