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The Ubuntu GNOME distros blog post tells you everything you need to know:
There will no longer be a separate GNOME flavor of Ubuntu. The development teams from both Ubuntu GNOME and Ubuntu Desktop will be merging resources and focusing on a single combined release... We are currently liaising with the Canonical teams on how this will work out.
Old hands in this field may recall a similar refocusing happened to Red Hat back in 2003. Red Hat dropped its desktop, then called Red Hat Linux, and started up Red Hat Enterprise Linux, in the process becoming the boring enterprise-focused company it is today. But it created the community based Fedora to serve as what Red Hat Linux had once been so not all was lost.
While this is the likely script for Canonical over the next few years, it is equally possible that it may not actually go this way. Canonical may stick with its desktop and still make it a major focus of its development because while the money is in enterprise, what made Ubuntu very nearly a household name is not enterprise, but community.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by its_gonna_be_yuge! on Saturday May 06 2017, @02:00AM (21 children)
Sudo this, sudo that. Gets kind of boring. The Ubuntu "community" seems to want to snottily dissuade you from running as root, which is the squeaky-cleany PC thing to do, but fuck it - I just want to get my work done and I damn well run as root and am not ashamed of it.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06 2017, @02:10AM (1 child)
You're the kind of guy who has so many INIT icons loading at startup they draw over each other and it's all fun and games until one of your Desk Accessories causes a Bus Error.
(Score: 4, Touché) by its_gonna_be_yuge! on Saturday May 06 2017, @02:43AM
Eh? Init icons? Desk Accessories? Dude, you are talking Windows nonsense here.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday May 06 2017, @02:54AM
It's all fun and games until your 5 year old types rm -rf the minute you look away for a second.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Marand on Saturday May 06 2017, @03:10AM (8 children)
So just do sudo su, type in your password, and get on with it instead of bitching about it? Or set a root password and re-enable it if you're just philosophically opposed to typing "sudo" occasionally.
It's not like Ubuntu prevents you from going back to the original behaviour if you want it, it just picks a default for you at install. During install, Debian asks which way you want it to work, but Ubuntu wants to be its idiot-proof cousin, so it picks the more idiot-proof option as a default.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by its_gonna_be_yuge! on Saturday May 06 2017, @03:18AM (5 children)
So just do sudo su, type in your password, and get on with it instead of bitching about it?
Sure, could do that. Or I could just use a distro that doesn't insist on being a nanny state. Which is what I do. So sudo that ;-)
(Score: 2) by Marand on Saturday May 06 2017, @04:53AM (3 children)
Yeah, so do I -- Debian user since 2000, never Ubuntu beyond testing it or recovery via live CDs -- which is why I see no point complaining about the defaults. Not every distro has to do what I like, and I see no reason to bitch about the ones that don't, especially over something that trivial to work around or change. :P
More on-topic, I think distros should be more willing to consider KDE as default environment, but as long as it's configurable (preferably during install so you don't have to uninstall another DE first) it's not a big deal either. Ubuntu would have been better off going with KDE than GNOME as a Unity replacement, and even could have provided a customised default that would give a similar feel to Unity. There's already an icon-only taskbar that was based on Unity behaviour, along with a full-screen style application launcher that can replace the normal menu one KDE uses. Stick both on a vertical panel, put the systray and global menu (which returned in Plasma 5.9) on a panel at the top, and you're most of the way there. You can still configure arbitrary button placement on the title bar, so recreating Unity's macOS-esque button placement is trivial to recreate.
Add some theming and some other tweaks and you'd be close enough that you could probably convince people it's Unity 8. So why make GNOME the default?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Saturday May 06 2017, @05:15AM (2 children)
Ubuntu would have been better off going with KDE than GNOME as a Unity replacement, and even could have provided a customised default that would give a similar feel to Unity.
Yep, I said the same thing when news first broke that they were dumping Unity and going back to Gnome (but version 3 this time). KDE is easily customizable, and they could have worked on a Unity-like skin (or even a Unity-like version of Plasma if they wanted complete power to implement their UI vision). Gnome3 isn't customizable at all, practically, without messing with a bunch of frequently-breaking extensions. Surely Canonical's UI engineers would have preferred this as it's a much more interesting project than just slapping Gnome3 in there and bowing before the UI vision of the Gnome team.
So why make GNOME the default?
For the same reason that all the other distros (except Mint maybe) ignore KDE and use Gnome3. What's that reason? Honestly, I don't know, just like I have no idea why lots of people love TV shows like The Kardashians and Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty. But they all seem to love Gnome3, and tons of Linux users (the vast majority AFAICT) seem to love it too. Most Linux users don't want something that lets them configure their system the way they want; instead, they want something that's mostly non-configurable, and forces them into doing things one way only. Apple's stuff is like this too, so I'm curious why Linux users don't just get Macs; maybe it's the cost.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Marand on Saturday May 06 2017, @06:16AM
Better still, a lot of the work has already been done for them. Not long after posting my comment, I found out that there's already a Unity look-and-feel theme for Plasma 5 [omgubuntu.co.uk] that covers a lot of the remaining ground I mentioned in the above comment, at least with regard to the theming.
Ugh, don't remind me. GNOME devs don't seem to give a damn about what they break unless it's not something they use. It's not just about gnome-shell extensions, either; gtk3 managed a regression from gtk2 that made it pretty damn busted for tablet users (in the "wacom", not "android", sense) and nobody gave a fuck for months. At least it didn't get closed NOTABUG WONTFIX like normal, I guess...
While not originally created as such, it's long been the case that "gtk" really means "GNOME toolkit" simply due to the amount of developer overlap, so it evolves to the needs of GNOME, not gtk users. Probably why art programs are using Qt more and gtk less now, with the big exceptions (Inkscape and Gimp) stil being on Gtk2. The only Gtk3 app of the kind I can think of is MyPaint, which had a really painful transition to Gtk3 because of shit like above.
I always got the impression it was mostly inertia, at least with established distros. The only reason GNOME was created was to be an ideological fuck-you to Qt's original licensing. Someone is making something but we don't like the license! We better make a shittier GPL version ASAP! That was enough to get it into distros as default for a while, and by the time the Qt licensing improved, inertia had set in.
But for something like Ubuntu phasing out Unity, it just makes no damn sense. The licensing is no longer an issue and GNOME is anathema to the sort of customisation that would be beneficial in the transition.
Furthermore, KDE does an excellent job of doing cross-toolkit integration; the devs have long pushed for a more seamless experience there, and have generally been the ones doing the work to create equivalent look-and-feel across multiple toolkits, while GNOME devs were content to let non-GNOME apps look like second-class citizens. It's the sort of polish that would be good for the default Ubuntu.
Oh, and I should have mentioned kwin before. It's not directly related to compiz (which Unity still uses long after the project basically died), but a lot of compiz ideas live on in kwin's compositing effects design. You can configure how much (or little) bling you want by enabling effect plugins, many of which were blatantly copied from compiz. It even has that dumb 3d cube that is mostly pointless but sometimes fun to show to people. :)
That might actually be related. There's been a long-running trend of an increasing number of developers owning (and using) Apple systems, to the point that many don't even run Linux directly on the hardware, preferring to use Linux via VM. For example, Miguel de Icaza, GNOME's creator* abandoned Linux for OS X years ago, and he's not the only one. This most likely leads to two separate things happening:
It doesn't help that GNOME's been on this "fuck you, we know better" trajectory since GNOME 2 was released ages ago. I know it's remembered fondly by people, but GNOME 2 was a huge step backward for user flexibility when it came out, much like how GNOME 3 was one from GNOME 2. It's only remembered well now because of all the work people did to work around its brain damage and loss of features by adding extensions. GNOME 3's decisions are another iteration of this cycle, bolstered by Apple's surging popularity.
* Also the creator of the Mono project, and now a Microsoft employee due to the sale of his company, Xamarin, to Microsoft.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @12:11AM
i don't like the fact that they made gnome 3 less configurable than gnome 2 either but i think they had the right idea with how they handled workspaces. at least it works pretty well for my workflow. they still do stuff that gets on my nerves and seem to fiddle with stuff that is easy and was fine instead of making harder, needed improvements and they make some decisions for me that i don't appreciate but it doesn't bother me enough to use something else. For me, overall it works and it stays out of the way. i've tried all the major DEs in the past and for computers that can handle the extra weight i use gnome 3. for wimpier computers i use mate or xfce. gnome 3 looks nice enough and i can have a bunch of shit going at once and easily flip between stuff. It doesn't usually cause major issues due to bugs either. it's usually little stuff. i'm pretty sure i'm not a lot like a mac user either since i fiddle with everything else, just not so much the desktop anymore. that's ok because i'm supposed to be developing not jacking with DE themes and shit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06 2017, @06:16AM
Not even all that funny.
https://xkcd.com/149/ [xkcd.com]
But there it is.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Empyrean on Saturday May 06 2017, @05:48PM (1 child)
"sudo -i" also works well.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday May 06 2017, @10:15PM
friendly reminder that sudo is a swear word that your PC understands:
$ ls -a /root
ls: cannot open directory /root: Permission denied
$ sudo !!
sudo ls -a /root
. .bash_history
.. .bashrc
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday May 06 2017, @03:53AM (7 children)
You should be able to set up autologin as root easily enough if you really want to. For terminal it's trivial. For the entire GUI, probably just requires a few configuration file tweaks for the login manager; at least that was true a couple years ago when I recall someone asked the question, and in my experience there's almost always a workaround for this for people who really need it.
If it's that hard for you to figure out how to do that, you may want to reconsider whether you actually know how the system works well enough to run from root safely.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday May 06 2017, @04:00AM (1 child)
BTW - I don't use Ubuntu either for a number of reasons. But if this is your only complaint, it's a pretty odd reason to refuse to use a distro.
(Score: 2) by its_gonna_be_yuge! on Saturday May 06 2017, @04:13AM
BTW - I don't use Ubuntu either for a number of reasons. But if this is your only complaint, it's a pretty odd reason to refuse to use a distro.
You're right. I'm using gentoo because I like it a lot more for other reasons. The sudo thing is just an annoyance. Which distro are you using?
(Score: 1, Troll) by its_gonna_be_yuge! on Saturday May 06 2017, @04:09AM (4 children)
If it's that hard for you to figure out how to do that, you may want to reconsider whether you actually know how the system works
Thanks, but I think you missed the point. It's not *hard* to use sudo. It's just unnecessary and being told to do it by a distribution is annoying.
I've been doing unix sysadmin since 1995, and on my own systems (now in my own company) I run as root. I take enough backups so that if anything does get screwed up I can recover. And those things would have gotten screwed up anyways if I had used sudo. So really, you are giving a solution to a non-problem. Sudo has turned into a religion for a lot of Ubuntu people. I won't go as far as to call them "Ubunturds", but they are annoying in their zeal.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday May 06 2017, @04:21AM (3 children)
With all respect, I think you completely missed *my* point. I wasn't talking about using sudo. I was talking about tweaking a few config files so you could run as root and not have to use sudo at all. I was not aware of your experience level, but I think there are plenty of folks who couldn't figure out how to tweak config files to get around Ubuntu's restrictions... I don't think most of them should be running as root because they likely don't have enough CLI experience to understand how easy it is to screw things up.
(Score: 2) by its_gonna_be_yuge! on Saturday May 06 2017, @04:44AM (2 children)
With all respect, I think you completely missed *my* point. ..... I don't think most of them should be running as root because they likely don't have enough CLI experience
OK, I'll take that as an honest well-meaning response. You have a point, not everyone has experience. Where we differ is in that:
a) I don't think a distro should take the role of deciding who has experience enough or what the risk level should be by default. I don't know any other distro that tries to nanny users. Maybe there are others (out of the hundreds that are out there) but I haven't heard of them.
b) To some extent I think people _should_ screw up, so that they can learn.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06 2017, @05:44PM
This is a sensible default for your average user. It is bloody trivial for an experienced user to enable the root account, Ubuntu doesn't do anything to prevent it.
As to your second point, people can learn by screwing up, but saying Ubuntu shouldn't use the safer default is like saying cars shouldn't have seatbelts.
If you have other reasons for not liking or using Ubuntu, that's ok, but this is a stupidly trivial thing to complain about. Like saying you won't buy a car because they don't have your favourite station as a preset on the radio.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @12:21AM
don't be a dumb ass. that is the whole point of ubuntu, or it used to be. "linux for human beings". you are obviously a super human or alien invader so ubuntu is not made for you. so why not let the new users use ubuntu if they want to without acting like they are using an idiot's OS. it's not like they are using windows or mac. It's still largely freedom respecting, so cut them and the distro some slack. not everyone wants to learn all about computers just to surf or play games or whatever the fuck. they shouldn't have to to not be victimized by the slave traders in seattle and cupertino or to not be ridiculed by super nerds. if ubuntu wants to serve those users (and i think they should do that better) then other linux users should be glad they do that as long as they aren't scumming things up.
(Score: 2) by migz on Saturday May 06 2017, @09:40AM
I'm glad that you are not ashamed to admit you run as root. I used to feel the same way, when I started playing with unix.
I previously worked in IT security and there I learned of my hubris.
Might I suggest that you have a play with OpenBSD. The experience of working with a truly security focused os is worthwhile (just like programmers should try functional programming). It is very well documented. I learned a lot, and I hope, that even if you don't change you mind about running as root, you might not be so quick to judge those who choose not to.