Ubuntu 10.10 Alpha: Slouching Toward Ubuntu GNOME

I thought I was pessimistic... Seems ole Bruce does not have many nice thing to say about either ubuntu or debian. Maybe next week he will pick on suse or perhaps centos ?

In other gnu/linux news...

I don't think any of Byfield's comments were colored by prejudice or dislike...I think he simply called it as he sees it. Byfield has an approach that I think we in the Linux Community should all have...an eye for the overall picture, not colored by one's particular preference for a particular distro.

"The installer also offers an option to install proprietary software -- mostly music codecs -- "if it is needed for a better experience...."

Now this is a good thing. We've used Mint for our HeliOS Project installs for the past 2 years primarily because Mint includes all the "forbidden" things that makes the OS experience complete. When you do 300-400 OS installs a year, taking the time to manually add flash, java, et al to a computer after the main install is a time sink. IF they include all of these things, we might take a look at using it. If it is only music codecs, then no...Mint is our distro.

I've often been critical of Ubuntu for not listening to their users...seems that maybe now they've adopted the practice.

The "New Gnome" however will be a tempest in a teapot I think. Byfield got it right...those that don't want those features will ignore them.

h

First, let me start by saying that Bruce Byfield is one of my favorite tech writers precisely because he calls things the way he sees them. He isn't afraid to state an unpopular opinion. Daring to say anything less than brilliant about Ubuntu incurs the wrath of the fanbois. Trust me, I know this from experience.

I also think Ken/Helios's comments were 100% on the mark. When I complain about Ubuntu ignoring their user community it is usually in a serious way, like not fixing bugs within a release cycle as a matter of policy. It's one thing if best efforts fail. It is another thing entirely for a company with 300 or so developers on staff to just not fix things.

Regarding "New Gnome", well... there are people who still haven't gotten over KDE 4 yet and are still moaning about it. (Full disclosure: I like the current iterations of KDE, though it is still not my desktop of choice.) There are people who hate change and will always grouse about it. That's human nature. So it may be a tempest in a teapot or it may be more. Only time will tell.