Stop complaining

Story: Many Ubuntu Users Still Hate The Unity DesktopTotal Replies: 3
Author Content
Grishnakh

Aug 03, 2011
2:11 PM EDT
I think these Ubuntu users need to stop complaining, and start praising Unity because Canonical knows what is best for them.

If they don't agree, then they shouldn't be continuing to use Ubuntu.

It's not like there's a huge lack of distros to switch to.
herzeleid

Aug 03, 2011
2:14 PM EDT
I'm not all that impressed by unity either. But instead of searching for a new distro, I simply logged into a classic gnome session. Easy peasy.
helios

Aug 03, 2011
6:04 PM EDT
There's part of me that thinks Unity will get better and user input will be a major factor in the improvements. Then the other part of me reaches over and slaps a large dose of sense into the silly part.

Synchronicity happens. The fog lifts and then I understand.

Canonical is taking clear steps away from the desktop. It's obvious that the Wayland/Unity thing is being developed for the touchscreen device. I personally cannot hang on to anything Canonical/Ubuntu with only hope and faith as a rudder. I am moving HeliOS back fully to Mint. At this time, we still have our respin of 10.04 working well and there's no reason to dump it now. Once LTS is discontinued, we will move fully to Mint. I am working on a remaster of Mint with RemasterSys and with a couple of scripts I've written and code I've altered I have it almost working.

It just solidifies my belief that a corporate or corporate-like entity will never have its customers or users best interests at heart. Canonical is at the point where they have to start showing a profit. Unfortunately, Ubuntu users who have shown loyalty and helped Ubuntu grow to what it is today will be the ones to suffer most.

I think the best any of us can do is shake the Ubuntu dust from our clothing and resume our journey.

Grishnakh

Aug 03, 2011
7:24 PM EDT
helios wrote:It just solidifies my belief that a corporate or corporate-like entity will never have its customers or users best interests at heart.


Now this doesn't really make that much sense. In most normal corporations, the customers are absolutely king, because they're the ones who bring revenue to the corporation. Without them, the corporation would cease to exist very quickly. Now of course, not all corporations act this way, and there's plenty of good examples of very, very large corporations abusing their customers; Microsoft is a great example of this, as are the telecoms. Of course, what these corporations have in common is that they're very large and generally monopolies or oligopolies. They can piss off their customers with things like lock-in or other schemes to make them pay more for less, and there's little alternative for the customers. But a few monopolists are not representative of all corporations, including your local air-conditioning repair man (who probably works by himself or with a partner, but whose business is a corporation) or countless other small business people, or even large companies like Netflix, whose recent actions may or may not have a large effect on their earnings (after all, they're partially bound by the content providers, and their competitors theoretically would be bound the same way).

Quoting:Canonical is at the point where they have to start showing a profit.


And this is the problem right here. Unlike normal companies that have some kind of successful product or service, and are revenue-positive and would be loathe to do anything to piss off their existing customers for fear of losing that revenue, Canonical is NOT revenue-positive. So, they appear to be "betting the company", by largely abandoning their existing users, and chasing after some (possibly mythical) new users who supposedly have tablets and want a smartphone-like user interface, and supposedly are willing to pay for this.

Personally, I think they're insane. Tablets have had very limited market success, and worse, there's tons of competition: Apple of course has the iPad, MS has something I'm sure, and there's versions of Android made for tablets. These are all backed by big companies that either make and sell the hardware themselves, or have large partners doing so. Canonical to my knowledge hasn't partnered with anyone to sell tablets, and they certainly aren't going to make any themselves. So what market do they think there is here, which they have even a remote chance of being successful? I'm sorry, but there simply aren't any casual computer users seeking out a touchscreen-friendly Linux distro to install on their tablet PC.

I think Canonical is going to cease to exist within the next 2-5 years, as revenues continue to elude them and Shuttleworth runs out of cash. It's too bad, because they could have done something, but they blew their opportunity. They should have chased the corporate desktop market with an easy-to-use and (more importantly) easy-to-install Linux distro that's suited for general office use, with much lower initial and recurring costs than Windows. It would have been difficult and slow, but there's more and more businesses and governments switching to Linux for office desktop precisely because Windows is too expensive and requires way too much support, and because in a lot of office settings, there just aren't very many applications that need to be supported, only a web browser and an office suite, which LibreOffice/OpenOffice is already working nicely for. H&R Block, for instance, uses OpenOffice on all their PCs, and there's an H&R Block office on every street corner in the US because so many people use them for their taxes. Switching them to a Linux desktop wouldn't be that difficult.

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