After announcing his company was abandoning Unity for GNOME, Shuttleworth posted a thank-you note to the Unity community Friday on Google Plus, but added on Saturday:
"I used to think that it was a privilege to serve people who also loved the idea of service, but now I think many members of the free software community are just deeply anti-social types who love to hate on whatever is mainstream. When Windows was mainstream they hated on it. Rationally, Windows does many things well and deserves respect for those. And when Canonical went mainstream, it became the focus of irrational hatred too. The very same muppets would write about how terrible it was that IOS/Android had no competition and then how terrible it was that Canonical was investing in (free software!) compositing and convergence. Fuck that shit."
"The whole Mir hate-fest boggled my mind - it's free software that does something invisible really well. It became a political topic as irrational as climate change or gun control, where being on one side or the other was a sign of tribal allegiance. We have a problem in the community when people choose to hate free software instead of loving that someone cares enough to take their life's work and make it freely available."
Shuttleworth says that "I came to be disgusted with the hate" on Canonical's display server Mir, saying it "changed my opinion of the free software community."
Full story here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 11 2017, @03:47AM (5 children)
Ok so I realize I'm in the minority here. But with Ubuntu dropping support for Unity I'm left wondering where to go from here.
I like my Ubuntu desktop. I enjoy Unity, Gnome in it's various flavors does not give me the seamless experience and ease of use I got from Unity.
I don't want to move on from what I have, but eventually I will have to and I'm not seeing any other DE that looks as good, works as well or has the power that Unity gives me to find just exactly what I'm looking for.
Any suggestions?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 11 2017, @03:58AM
Any suggestions?
Windows 10? /rimshot
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 11 2017, @04:26AM
Gentoo?
I felt the same way when I had to move away from KDE 3.5.
(Score: 2) by fnj on Tuesday April 11 2017, @05:46AM
Oh for god's sake. Just run KDE. It's way, way ahead of Unity in every way. I finally gave up on bug-ridden MATE and switched to KDE. Granted it's sad to see a choice shrivel up and disappear. Thankfully nothing critical is lost in this case. This is what I don't understand: why doesn't some group just take over Unity, anyway? It's not like Shuttleworth has the power to take the code back out of GPL.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday April 11 2017, @10:27AM
Try Lubuntu, with an LXDE desktop.
Runs without a hitch on a Pentium dual-core T4500, 2GB RAM laptop.
I can even use the laptop to sorta reasonable develop in Java and PHP using Eclipse (a thing that gobbles memory even if you only look at it).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday April 11 2017, @02:04PM
I like my Ubuntu desktop. I enjoy Unity
What do you do with that stuff?
Not even being sarcastic. Genuinely interested.
If it helps your perspective the way the "other side" lives is I have some lightweight ways to start then switch between urxvt-unicode, emacs, and chrome browser. My phone has had better music/podcast/audiobook playing since the last decade so I don't use my desktop for that although there are web alternatives (like watch youtube on browser or I guess there's some way to use audible on a browser although I've not researched) I know "desktop" is extremely complicated and huge application like gigs and gigs of code, but I don't "do" desktop and don't know what I'm missing.