Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

Post Unity 8 Ubuntu Shock? Relax, Linux Has Been Here Before

posted by on Saturday May 06 2017, @01:22AM   Printer-friendly
from the the-year-of-linux-on-the-desktop dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

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.

Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Post Unity 8 Ubuntu Shock? Relax, Linux Has Been Here Before | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 32 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Saturday May 06 2017, @02:18AM (1 child)

    by NotSanguine (285) <{NotSanguine} {at} {SoylentNews.Org}> on Saturday May 06 2017, @02:18AM (#505279) Homepage Journal

    I was never so enamored with Ubuntu. I think the big reason they got so popular was that they had a pretty good install environment which didn't require a lot of tweaking to get up and running.

    These days, of course, clean installs are the rule, rather than the exception for Linux distros.

    As someone who did his first Linux install in 1993 (Yggdrasil Linux [wikipedia.org]), I was really happy when I learned I could use loadable kernel modules. Beyond that it was all gravy.

    And once I saw Unity, my assessment of Ubuntu was confirmed.

    Let's all wish Canonical the best of luck, and go on using better distros.

    --
    No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Interesting=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  
    Total Score:   3  

  • (Score: 1) by a-zA-Z0-9$_.+!*'(),- on Saturday May 06 2017, @04:27AM

    by a-zA-Z0-9$_.+!*'(),- (3868) on Saturday May 06 2017, @04:27AM (#505314)

    ubuntu became popular, I think, because Debian was such a mess: slow & inconsistent release cycles. Ubuntu offered regularity, in 2004, several years after say OpenBSD did so in 1995. And UBU was "user friendly" meaning, it just mostly worked. I think it became a rallying point for those just tired of the distro wars, as well as those who wanted a semi-solid alternative to Win/Mac dominance.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_version_history [wikipedia.org] vs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ubuntu_releases [wikipedia.org]

    That said, I think Canonical's delusions of grandeur have been abundantly demonstrated.

    --
    https://newrepublic.com/article/114112/anonymouth-linguistic-tool-might-have-helped-jk-rowling