Comment 1525 for bug 1

On Sat, Nov 5, 2011 at 06:41, Manjul Apratim <email address hidden> wrote:
> I think instead of channeling their energy into identifying bugs IN
> unity and fixing them, some regard Unity as a bug itself

I know several people who do not understand why Canonical is putting
attention to creating a new desktop environment although there are
already several around. They think it must be more efficient to
contribute to other desktop environments to make them better. Looking
at Gnome 3 or KDE, I personally do see reasons doing a separate thing.
On the other hand, XFCE or LXDE seem to develop into good directions.
- Anyway don't want to start a desktop environment war. Choice is a
good thing and of course contributing to other environments means to
have less influence on the future directions.

> Ubuntu always
> strives to bring the "latest and the greatest" in innovation, and
> therefore it is understandable that some non-critical bugs for release
> always end up remaining in the inter-LTS releases.

Before diving more into the Ubuntu community I was not aware of those
"quality" differences. I started using Ubuntu on my workplace with
9.04 and it was fully usable and stable, also the 9.10. - 10.10 and
11.04 had IMHO the biggest stability problems since I use Ubuntu. Too
few experience yet for 11.10 but from current impression not yet
reaching the reliability from 9.04 and 9.10. And of course this does
not help to fix Bug 1.

> Closed projects like
> Windows tend to test their new platforms extensively - for three to five
> years and possibly more

And basically, when 2003 and XP finally reached a stable state of the
art, Microsoft pushed (and now forces) the upgrade... - During the
last 2 months I experienced at customers 3 Windows 2008r2 production
servers with major stability problems.

> Aside from that, I have been harshly made to believe that innovation by
> itself is not enough, because Ubuntu already IS a superior software
> product

I would never turn back to Windows, but: Ubuntu (or other Linux
distros) cannot be considered as being superior in any circumstance.
Just to give an example: When I go to customers and connect my
notebook to a beamer, it happened already several times that I had
problems (reaching from X hangup when activating the beamer to screen
resolution messed up). Related to that there are issues using my
Ubuntu on a laptop with a docking station (and I only use Dell laptops
with official Linux support). Windows 7 is doing a superior job here
for example. A bad image for Ubuntu when I do get problems while many
people are all looking at my desktop. For example, fixing such issues
would have been more important than introducing a new desktop
environment (as my experience with Unity regarding this is not any
better).

> and has been for quite some time - the monopoly that MS holds
> with computer manufacturers is the other daunting impediment; visit any
> big vendor's website and you shall find "Windows life without walls. XXX
> recommends Windows 7." Such a thing already serves as a mind-programming
> instruments for the average user who is not shown any other "vistas"
> (ironic much?) out there.

I agree with you, that MS is doing a lot of things to keep their
monopoly. But: Word of mouth weighs more in the long run than most of
the advertisments. So in the long run, offering the better OS that
people are constantly satisfied with, is a good strategy.

> Dell had
> a lot of Ubuntu offerings before, and they dropped all of them now - not
> a signal of confidence in the free software community.

Most hardware manufacturers have their most customers on the Windows
side. I remember when Dell even came out with the message that Ubuntu
is the better OS. Yes, they stopped that and I am pretty sure that MS
told them to stop or MS will ask more money for the Windows licenses
from them. - They could go even further and try to force companies to
drop Linux by offering cheaper licenses to those manufacturers who do
only support Windows. - I am very happy that Dell has a lot of Ubuntu
certified models (still should be more) and I know that you can get
models with Ubuntu preinstalled even if that is not published on their
site. A reason why I do recommend Dell to everybody who is asking me
for a hardware recommendation.

> Thankfully there
> are others like System76 which are helping to further confidence in
> Ubuntu.

Unfortunately Sytem76 is not shipping to Austria. :-(

> I see the way Apple made its niche in an MS dominated market - the
> closed eco-system model that was a brilliant idea except that it began
> to be used as a lock-down device.

Today I talked to the only person I know who switched from Ubuntu to
Apple. Reason: He just likes the Apple design a lot. For me design is
secondary. My primary priority is a fast, reliable OS that can be
adjusted to my needs.

> If Canonical were to manufacture and
> sell laptops pre-installed with Ubuntu, which would obviously function
> without any unexpected hardware-related bugs, and which were sexy and
> desirable like the Macs were

I think, this can be an option: To have own certified hardware. I
personally appreciate the choice, to use Ubuntu on different hardware
very much. I am a power user and hence need a laptop with a good
quality keyboard etc. Other occassional users (using mostly the mouse
to read news online) could be already very satisfied with a cheaper
hardware - so with your own hardware design (and quality) you could
never fit everybodies needs. But it is one of the big pros for using
Linux that it can be adjusted for many different use cases - including
to run on many different hardware platforms (from servers and desktops
over laptops to routers).

On Sat, Nov 5, 2011 at 13:07, Dan Kegel <email address hidden> wrote:
> " A competent Windows admin can complete the tasks in about five minutes
> flat, across thousands of workstations: [...]

Most of the operations you mention are probably easy to do for a
competent Windows admin - but I doubt they are for the _average_
Windows admin. My experience is that Linux admins in general have a
better know-how level (even on Windows) than most of the Windows
admins out there (YMMV). Further most of the operations you mentioned
are actions to lock down the user. So far I never faced a locked-down
Windows PC that I couldn't trick in one or the other way. Those admins
who try hard to lock down the user as much as they can, I always
recommend to just let go from that idea. I saw people completely being
locked down and anyway finding a way to watch movies during working
hours. ;-)

> I know you know how to do it. The problem is that the 'solutions'
> are all spread across many inconsistent tools that almost always need
> scripting to use in a large environment. It takes a huge amount of
> knowledge to bring all of that together into a consistent whole."

And there are other issues that seem to be even impossible to solve. I
would like to see resolved owner and group names for example for
folders mounted remotely from other networks...

On Sat, Nov 5, 2011 at 16:22, Tom <email address hidden> wrote:
> I do quite like Unity and think that it's good to have as the default.

I do appreciate the idea to do something new - even the idea to have
one OS that fits all use cases from laptops over netbooks to tablets
and phones. But the cost shouldn't be a big decrease in efficiency on
one of those architectures. Of course that is a big challenge.

If Canonical would have held back Unity because not finished enough
then the question would have been: Switch to Gnome 3 or what? -
Switching to something completely different while knowing there will
again be big change sooner or later? - No.

BTW: Probably we shouldn't discuss this here, but on the other hand, I
do not really know where I should put my considerations about strategy
or where the strategy of Canonical or - more important - the strategy
of the whole Ubuntu community - is discussed. I am not an official
(LoCo-)Team member. Any hints?

Best regards, Martin.
--
Martin Wildam

http://www.google.com/profiles/mwildam