Ubuntu should zig to Apple’s zag

I don't really understand what the author is trying to say. Granted, it's been a while since I used Ubuntu, but as a developer I mainly live in my editor and terminal.<p>Anything I ever wanted is just an apt-get away and is mostly installed in a sensible way.<p>Ubuntu simplifying desktop features and changing defaults to be easier for users like my mom sounds like a great thing to happen to Linux.<p>That stuff is mostly orthogonal to developers who, you know, know how to deviate from the standard configuration and tools.

Ubuntu used to be Debian that just worked. Now it's trying to be something more, but it seems to have lost the "just works" part. When I tried 11.10, I had problems with several of the desktop environments crashing or being very visibly broken. I had poor graphics performance. I had no suspend/resume. All of these things worked on the same computer a year ago.<p>I think Ubuntu may be trying to move too fast. Moving fast is great if you can pull it off, but it's not worth breaking the basic functions of the OS to get a more flashy UI. If Ubuntu does want to copy Apple, there's one major thing they need to learn: Apple releases features when they're <i>done</i>.

I think Ubuntu should zag where Apple zags. I think they're doing it right. They're in a unique position to take an Apple-like path.<p>I, for one, applaud what they're doing, as much as it terrifies all the half-power-users (I don't mean that as a slight, I do think it's a little silly to get upset about Ubuntu's default WM and claim to 'understand UNIX').

I really don't agree with this sentiment at all. There are infinite Linux distros out there to play with that are more inline with power users. Ubuntu is for a completely different crowd so what would be the point of just merging into that nexus? The world doesn't need another power-user Linux distro. It needs a Linux distro that isn't painful to use for the regular people.

building a UI for developers is impossible, because every developer wants something totally different. it's also pointless because every developer <i>will</i> customize their environment to make it work for them.<p>you can't please all the people all the time. at some point you have to make a decision that some use cases can't be supported, for the sake of progress. in those cases, i think dropping support for the people who need support the least is the only logical way to go.<p>personally, i use ubuntu (and unity too!) every day as my primary development machine (python programming and database admin), and when i come home i have it on my primary play machine too. it does what it needs to do if you are willing to adjust your workflow a little bit. and if you aren't willing to adjust your workflow at all, ever, then maybe preconfigured DEs are not for you.

eh, personally, I also hate unity. I am a linux SysAdmin, so if I want to go muck around in the internals or install and configure my own window manager, sure, I can. But that's not why I use ubuntu on the desktop. I use ubuntu on the desktop because it just works. If I want to tinker with Linux, I can do it on a server and get paid for it. With older versions of ubuntu? heck, getting drivers is usually easier than with windows. Most things? plug and go, no downloading a driver from a third party website or anything. You plug it in and it just works. (Some things require more work. Those things get taken back to Fry's. Again, desktops are low-value. I'm not going to spend too much time messing with them.)<p>The problem is that unity is, well, it's garbage. If I wanted a mac, I'd buy a mac. I liked the old gnome defaults; they were pretty good. Right now? I'm on ubuntu 11.10, and I'm considering another distro.<p>Unity is simply unusable; It's annoying for all the reasons that the mac interface is annoying, only the whole thing is done, well, worse. Just finding a program is a huge pain in the ass. So I'm running gnome-legacy, which is okay, but still pretty annoying compared to older ubuntu versions.<p>So yeah; I'm pretty irritated. Not irritated enough to buy a mac, mind you, but likely irritated enough to spend some time looking at other distros, if I'm going to have to spend effort on my X setup, I'm going with a distro that is supported for more than three years.

<i>...and let’s be honest, there’s an iPad market, not a tablet market.</i><p>Please, phrase, go away. You're not profound anymore.

If people want a different linux experience to Ubuntu's offering, they're in luck, there are hundreds: <a href="http://distrowatch.com/" rel="nofollow">http://distrowatch.com/</a><p>Ubuntu has specifically stated that they're aiming for the layperson, not the power user. If you cut your teeth on ubuntu and want more power in your linux box... try out another distro.

For me, Ubuntu has always been the "Linux for newbies" a little bit like Mandrake was in the time. I'm not saying that all Ubuntu users <i>are</i> newbies.. but Ubuntu is the distro to starts with if you're a beginner. Lots of my university friend who had no knowledge of Linux would get up and running with Ubunty in minutes. (A live cd, tool to help create partitions, [next], [next], automatically configure network). I mean, a Windows user would almost feel at home on Ubuntu.<p>Soooo, I find it weird that the author complains about Ubuntu saying it's not the right direction. We all know there are dozen of distributions and dozen of window managers. By all means, if you don't like the new updates, just take a WM more lightweight (For instance, fluxbox, awesome, stumpwm, xmonad, etc.) As for the distro, I'm using ArchLinux for a couple of years and I'm loving it.<p>It's not that I <i>don't like</i> beautiful intuitive UI; it's just that it's not for me (At least on my computers). However, I've got an iPhone and I love the fact that <i>everything just work</i>. But please, don't force me to use GUI everywhere on my desktop; let that for people who enjoys the <i>everything just work</i>.<p>But then, maybe I'm wrong. I assumed that Ubuntu always was axed for beginners.. Was I wrong with that assumption?

This is somehow reminiscent of Sun Tzu's _Art of War_.<p>My interpretation of the article: it would be more prudent to compete with Apple's weaknesses (developer friendliness) than to compete with their strengths (UI, zero configuration).

I think the author misses various ways that OS X has been developer friendly. Last I checked, Xcode is free, and OS X ships with Python, PHP, Ruby, and Apache.<p>Plus, as div said, developers live mostly in the terminal, so there isn't much that Canonical can do to cater to us. I'd rather have everything hidden from the end user but easily available to the power user via the command line.

&#62; Apple [...] things that just work for most people irrespective of prior computer usage.<p>I've spent way to many hours helping fellow developers, friends and relatives to debug their Apple. Apple does <i>not</i> make things that just work irrespective of prior computer usage. People get totally lost with Apple just as they do with other environments and that is indeed irrespective of prior computer knowledge, which means so-called developers also get lost (MySQL-python anyone? Or maybe you'd rather have another slice of RMagick?)

The amount of "Power users shouldn't use Ubuntu" comments on here are fairly indicative of why those outside the power user/dev community view us the way they do. It's just elitist whining at the end of the day. Who the hell are "we" to decide what people should and shouldn't use based on their ability? It's just this sort of thing that turns the lay person away from wanting to know more.<p>Fact of the matter is, if you don't like Unity don't bloody use it. I've never found a single thing I couldn't do in Ubuntu that would force me over to another distro. I mean sure, we could all build our own Gentoo installs from the ground up but who the hell has that sort of time on their hands?<p>To indicate that Ubuntu is inherently a newbie only system because of eye candy smacks of both arrogance and a complete lack of understanding. It's like calling a mansion a shack because you don't like the colour of the window frames.

Unix power user, huh?..<p>If you are unix power user - you should not care much about default desktop. You should customize it right away from the moment you installed _any_ distro to fit your needs.<p>Ubuntu do a great job of turning more people into <i>nix environment. And it is good for you and for </i>nix developers.

&#62; Ubuntu can easily ship with a default arsenal of programming tools. Last I checked the default install already includes Python.<p>As does OS X's, in addition to Perl, Ruby, PHP...

“[Our] goal is 200 million users of Ubuntu in 4 years. We’re not playing a game for developers hearts and minds – we’re playing a game for the worlds hearts and minds. and to achieve that we’re going to have to play by a new set of rules.”<p><a href="http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/05/mark-shuttleworth-delivers-uds-keynote-address-sets-goal-for-200-million-ubuntu-users-in-4-years/" rel="nofollow">http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/05/mark-shuttleworth-deliver...</a><p>Also, re: screensavers -- upstream GNOME removed that ability, and Ubuntu inherited the behavior. From what I understand, we're putting it back.<p>[canonical employee, speaking on my own behalf]

<i>A generation of hackers may have started with BASIC on Apple IIs, but getting a C compiler on a modern Mac is a 4GB XCode download</i><p>The size of Xcode annoys me too, since I never use it. So I've been using this GCC install on my Mac: <a href="https://github.com/kennethreitz/osx-gcc-installer" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/kennethreitz/osx-gcc-installer</a><p>Couple hundred megabytes. It's still a lot larger than Orca/C was on my Apple IIgs (1 or 2 3.5" floppies?), but then again, compilers come with a lot of libraries these days.

I think he has no idea what he's talking about. Being user-friendly doesn't mean abandoning developers or locking up the platform. He's just another "power user" upset because his old tricks are no longer useful.

What percentage of users are developers? 5 percent? Lower? It's unwise to cater the entire OS to the needs of such a small minority especially when they are the best suited to change the environment to meet their needs. Complaining about needing to download Xcode is a perfect example of why it is wrong. If it's bundled into the OS you're wasting 4GB of space on tens of millions of machines to save the 5% a 4GB download. That makes no sense.<p>The big problem with Ubutunu is still that it is, no matter how much nicer they make it look, a collection of inconsistently designed user interfaces for mediocre clones of better applications on other platforms. It has no soul. It just stumbles forward feebly copying whatever else happens to be popular on other platforms. It's always going to be playing catch-up to ever moving goal posts. Unless you have some religious zeal to use OSS software there is no good reason to even consider Ubuntu over Windows or OSX.

I agree wholeheartedly with his take on this halfassed push towards poorly designed minimalism masquerading as user friendliness but I disagree that ubuntu should be some kind of developers distribution, that's never what Ubuntu was supposed to be. It's entire purpose is to be a novice distribution.<p>Power users should not be using it, it's not built for them.

They go for the 99%. _majority_ aren't _power user_ so if they make it simple, more people would jump on the boat

I think part of Shuttleworth's philosophy is that he wants Ubuntu to be(come) an OS that the rest of the world can use, not just the traditional Linux power users, but even the emerging computer markets that may not be able to afford the latest and greatest hardware with a proprietary OS.

<i>A generation of hackers may have started with BASIC on Apple IIs, but getting a C compiler on a modern Mac is a 4GB XCode download.</i><p>A hefty download, perhaps, but free and once it's installed you have a good, modern, IDE with extensive documentation and perhaps the richest and most mature UI toolkit there is to play with. Getting something into the app store for sale may require crossing more speed bumps than necessary but if you want to learn systems or UI hacking it's far easier on a Mac now than it was on an Apple II.<p>Ubuntu may have taken this simplification strategy too far but catering primarily to the power user and developer is what earned Linux its minuscule market share in the first place.

Surely the author should just pick a different distro? Why is this Canonical's problem? Isn't this sorta the whole point of Linux? If you don't like something there is seemingly infinite choice so you can always have what you want.

I haven't used Linux as a primary desktop OS for almost 7 years, so I figured I'd give it a go - so I got a ThinkPad W520 running Ubuntu 11.10 for work (software development.) Verdict so far? Next time I'm going for a Mac again.<p>Why?<p>* X doesn't automatically set up my nvidia graphics card. Sure, I can manually install the driver and set up Xorg.conf, but I just don't want to do that. Luckily there's also an integrated Intel graphics card.¨<p>* VGA port does not work (no presentations using the projector for me) because of previous point.<p>* The wireless keeps freezing. At least 10 times a day I have to (using the physical switch on the side of the laptop) turn off the wireless card and turn it on again. Wow. This also is something I'm sure can be fixed by jumbling around with drivers, but again - I just don't want to do that.<p>* Gnome is horrible. I might be spoiled (lets face it: I AM spoiled) by Apple and their 'everything just works' - which it pretty much does as far as UI goes. Currently I'm running Xfce, which I found to be pleasantly simple. I found Gnome to be buggy and annyoing. Just like in the old days.<p>Of course there are a lot of positives, like apt being great (my main reason for the switch), and all the available GNU/Linux tools. As others have pointed out, if you use the terminal a lot it's great - but that goes for pretty much any distro.<p>As far as Ubuntu goes I totally agree with OP. It just doesn't cut it. It's supposed to bring Linux to the people, isn't it? Well, it's not doing a good job of that. I installed Ubuntu to have a system that just works. It doesn't.<p>If Apple were to bring in a customizable packaging system like apt it'd be a dangerously perfect match. Don't see that happening though.

While I'm 100% behind this, no questions asked, couldn't have said it better myself, Canonical has one huge disadvantage going for them if they were to try and create the best damn development platform out there: Hardware.<p>I do agree though, and I do hope Canonical takes this advice and succeeds at it. They're possibly one of the only groups both big enough and organized enough to pull it off and do it well.

Do a lot of developers use Ubuntu nowadays?<p>When Ubuntu first came along, I was a Linux user, and I tried Ubuntu on a few different occasions, but I never liked it mostly for the same reasons why people seem to be complaining. It just felt like eye candies tacked onto Debian. There are many other good distributions that are geared toward power users. Why are so many complaining?

Designing for non-power versus power users is a false dichotomy. If it were a true one, developers won't be swarming to macbook pros.

I've simply come to accept that Unity is not for 'us', in the way that ipad is not for 'us'. I install xubuntu instead.

Maybe Canonical is trying to sell software and services, and needs a better UI in order to compete? While I echo the sentiments of the author, I'm guessing that Canonical is knowingly pursuing a certain market. A certain market that exceeds the Linux power-user/developer market in size.

I've been complaining about Unity since 11.04. The only worthwhile improvement in 11.10 is that Dasher is no longer ugly solid black. Well, the menu in the upper right has some sensible options now. They took away screensavers, like it's up to Canonical to make the world green? I never used them on my systems on a full time basis but it was nice to take a break sometimes and play with them. I can't change fonts now, even my wife who is a non-technical user said, "the new fonts are terrible why can't I change them?".<p>I'm going to try out KDE for a while, it's heavy or it used to be, Gnome 2 was just right. I've tried XFCE and it feels like an older Gnome (which isn't a bad thing), down the road it might be the better option until they get a wild hair and go nutts too.

I believe, the problem is, various implementations of the same subsystems do not cooperate well (if they even cooperate at all). For example, NetworkManager does not cooperate with /etc/network/* or /etc/ppp/* or wpa_supplicant — it either steps away and does nothing or uses its own configuration (stored in completely separate manner). Sure, some approaches work (say, NM calls pppd, thus /etc/ppp/options have some effect), while some don't (good luck teaching NM to run PPPoE over 802.11 bridge).<p>This leads to a problem that one just can't have easily co-existing multiple approaches to work and configuration (i.e. "Ubuntu newbie" vs "seasoned GNU/Linux guru" ways). You have either one or another, and switching between is a pain.

&#62; Given the growing lockdown of Apple’s systems<p>I see that kind of stuff said from time to time. But I don't quite understand. How is it growing?<p>And people talk about it (App Store) as if it's terribly evil of Apple but it's okay when it gets done on say a Xbox.

I would go about making Ubuntu into a development environment through the web. There are various points in the browsing experience when a visual HTML editor could be useful, then in the visual HTML editor, touching an element could drop you down into JavaScript to add events. In the same manner, more complex constructs could be progressively introduced to the user.<p>Furthermore, I personally use versions of Android on my tablets and Ubuntu on my desktops. I see no reason that Ubuntu should "make a dent in the tablet market" when Android is already doing fine for us.

I think, the problems with the Ubuntu are :<p>1- They think users are plan stupid so they have to decide what's good for users.<p>2- They're just copying from Apple, don't think about why apple did like that. This will end up with a mess. When i use my friend's mac, i think "this thing can't be better" and then when i use ubuntu with unity all i can think is "What the f<i></i>k they were thinking ?"

I never thought of Ubuntu as a power user distro. I always thought Debian was for power users and Ubuntu was the gateway drug...

Why encourage users to be developers at the EXPENSE of things that "just work"?<p>When I think of a Linux I should install just to get things done, I think of Ubuntu. The more it positions itself that way, the more it will get users. The GPL and free software culture should take care of the rest. It is the responsibility of developers to build an ecosystem for themselves, because they know how to do it.<p>Don't you guys see this is why Linux's marketshare has been so small for now? If you don't like Ubuntu, by the way, there are always other Linux distros. You're welcome to install Slackware. On my server, I run CentOS. Why can't there be ONE linux distro that regular people can use without reading a manual?

If you swap gnome for ubuntu and gnome3 for Unity you have a brand new story. Part of me sort of blames Ubuntu or Ubuntu's influence for the terrible direction of Gnome in general.

I agree completely. I've had many of these same thoughts myself when using Ubuntu.

Unity is all about re-arranging the deck chairs on the titanic.<p>The relative failure of Linux as a traditional desktop platform has very little to do with the UI. Sure Gnome 2 looks clunky and outdated now but it's basically a Win2000/XP Clone as far as UI is concerned (startmenu + taskbar + quicklaunch). So it will have been familiar enough to most users who come from a windows background (who are going to be the ones most wanting to try it). The UI is the not <i>big</i> issue here...<p>The problems with the Linux desktop for "normal users" (whoever they are) are and always have been:<p>Lack of ports of popular commercial software for many tasks and in many (not all) cases a lack of a "good enough" open source alternative.<p>Lack of reliable support for many consumer hardware configurations that are bundled with cheap desktops (nvidia/ATI support still isn't 100% for example), also on some netbooks you install ubuntu and the Fn + F(Key) combinations don't work unless you know to install a specific package. Also support for niche hardware for some tasks is hit/miss.<p>Weird intermittent issues that some people experience with power saving , wireless , flash etc..<p>No amount of changing the dock/menubar will fix <i>any</i> of these issues.<p>Let's face it , default unity is <i>ugly</i>.. it makes windows 7 look gorgeous by comparison but this has pretty much always been the way with Gnome/KDE. For many users (like me) the customisation aspect has been more than enough to make up for this however, unity pretty much kills that.<p>The only reasons I can think to advise anybody to run a linux desktop are:<p>You really care about OSS ideals and will not use any non-free software (in which case you want debian not ubuntu).<p>You are super paranoid and want something secure to install in a VM for using online banking etc.<p>You want a second OS so that you can diagnose more easily whether something is a hardware/software problem.<p>You develop software that will run on a Linux server so want a desktop environment that is as close to production as possible (this is me and probably most serious workplace Linux users)<p>Your a geek and like playing with different OSes<p>If somebody genuinely only wants to run facebook/youtube etc then pretty much any OS out there will suit their needs, in which case they will want to move over to something closer to iOS / Android rather than some half baked unity.<p>Even Microsoft have acknologed that you can't really easily build a UI that will work for the casual tablet / netbook user and the "content creator"/business user hence the seperation of metro and the standard Windows UI. I have almost 0 faith in canonical succeeding here.<p>Building a super simple UI on top of Linux should be left to the likes of Google/HTC, with commercial OSes being increasingly locked down a space is opening for a serious "power user" system with high customisability, this is where Ubuntu could win big.<p>Of course people will say to me "oh your not the target market , use another distro" Well there are a few problems with this argument:<p>The reason I use Ubuntu is because it is the closest thing the Linux desktop has to a defacto standard setup. Anybody who cares about distributing Linux applications will make sure they work with ubuntu and usually provide a tested .deb or an apt repo. If I switch distro there is a fair chance I lose this and end up back with source tarballs and weird install scripts. I spent a large part of the last 10 years trying different distros and this has consistently been the worst part of the experience.<p>Just because I am a power user does not mean I don't want my applications to "just work" and be installable through a standard simple interface, Ubuntu does this very very well (for the most part).<p>I think the whole idea of having different distros for novices and advanced users pretty idiotic really, a good distro should install with sensible defaults that "just work" and allow anybody who wants to customise to a greater or lesser degree. Many developers and other advanced users seem to have no problem customising the "beginner friendly" mac OS for their needs.<p>I could go on , but I think I'll leave it there :)

Conservatives expressing concerns are almost always a turn off.

Respectfully, eat a dick. Just... no. If you know what you're doing with Linux, Ubuntu is the wrong distro for you to start with.