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

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.


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  • (Score: 2) by Marand on Saturday May 06 2017, @04:53AM (3 children)

    by Marand (1081) on Saturday May 06 2017, @04:53AM (#505330) Journal

    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?

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Saturday May 06 2017, @05:15AM (2 children)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Saturday May 06 2017, @05:15AM (#505337)

    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

      by Marand (1081) on Saturday May 06 2017, @06:16AM (#505342) Journal

      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)

      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.

      Gnome3 isn't customizable at all, practically, without messing with a bunch of frequently-breaking extensions.

      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.

      For the same reason that all the other distros (except Mint maybe) ignore KDE and use Gnome3. What's that reason?

      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. :)

      Apple's stuff is like this too, so I'm curious why Linux users don't just get Macs; maybe it's the cost.

      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:

      1. Some GNOME devs are likely in this Apple camp and influenced by its design
      2. The popularity of Apple with developers leads to people copying Apple's decisions (includng removal of choices) because obviously people like them, right?

      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

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @12:11AM (#505613)

      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.