Switched off Ubuntu

Wed Jul 31 10:34:51 MST 2013

Not sure what I started here, but to clarify I didn't mean my comment as a knock against Ubuntu, it's a distro that works hard to achieve goals that aren't of interest to me.  If other people like it that's great, but I'm not particularly interested in getting more people to use any particular distro or Linux in general.  I just happen to be the sort of user that spends 90% of my time in my shell and a distro that fits that paradigm will be at odds with a motto like "Linux for human beings".

As a side note, I do think it's justifiable to worry about the future of Linux if the well-funded distros focus on consumers.  Linux's server market share is massive, it's desktop market share not so much.  The more we rally around systems that facilitate desktops and get in the way on servers the less advantageous it is for the people paying for Linux development to keep doing so. Regardless of how you feel about Enterprise Linux without Red Hat (the company) success we would be years behind where we are right now.

Paul Mooring
Operations Engineer
www.opscode.com

________________________________
From: plug-discuss-bounces at lists.phxlinux.org <plug-discuss-bounces at lists.phxlinux.org> on behalf of Stephen <cryptworks at gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, July 31, 2013 8:05 AM
To: Main PLUG discussion list
Subject: Re: Switched off Ubuntu

Part of Ubuntu's Success is making Linux something anyone can use without having to invest in getting over such a steep learning curve. Well done there. Part of what Draws us to Linux is we can do what we want with it. We mold the experience to our desires. Ubuntu is becoming a pretty solid gateway for people that would never have considered Linux before to now realize it is powerful, useable, and professional.

And yes there is some sacrifice for it. It is loaded in a hey you can use this right now and we think its awesome. this allows for a common interface to enhance documentation and support, which is where ubuntu makes a majority of its money (which i personally applaud).

Is it the best distro ever, no. does it do what I want and how i want it. mostly. But even with the unified presence delivered by ubuntu I can still chose to do things my way.

I have yet to find a perfect home distro, I really do not think i will. to be honest aside from where some config files are, and package management they are all so similar its nutty to consider how may distros there are that are simply variations of a root distro.

On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 6:56 AM, Kevin Fries <kevin at fries-biro.com<mailto:kevin at fries-biro.com>> wrote:

I'm with you Paul.   I have been feeling less and less in control of my desktop o er the past few years.   If I wanted to be told what was "good"  for me why would I not be using Windows or Mac?   Lately I have been using Arch and begun remembering why it was I liked Linux to start with.   I think I found a new "distro-home"  at least for a little while.

Kevin

On Jul 30, 2013 11:29 AM, "Paul Mooring" <paul at opscode.com<mailto:paul at opscode.com>> wrote:
In my case Unity was more like the straw that broke the camel's back.  I don't particularly care for any of the changes Ubuntu made and have never liked debian packaging.  I could maybe put up with upstart or unity or the frequent broken upgrade cycle on their own, but once unity launched and it was one more thing to hack around I had reached the point of wanting to just find greener pastures.

That being said, you're right just switching distros for the desktop environment wouldn't make a whole lot of since, but things like apt (and it's overly opinionated packages) and upstart are too integral to the OS to make using alternatives not a huge pain.

Paul Mooring
Operations Engineer
www.opscode.com<http://www.opscode.com>

________________________________
From: plug-discuss-bounces at lists.phxlinux.org<mailto:plug-discuss-bounces at lists.phxlinux.org> <plug-discuss-bounces at lists.phxlinux.org<mailto:plug-discuss-bounces at lists.phxlinux.org>> on behalf of Stephen <cryptworks at gmail.com<mailto:cryptworks at gmail.com>>
Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 2013 9:26 AM
To: Main PLUG discussion list
Subject: Re: @@@ Pre-order your UBUNTU EDGE convergence phone today :) @@@

I find it weird that people will drop a distribution because of unit. I dislike it, but it is so easy to flip to Gnome, KDE, XFCE, TWM, whatever that the overall hardware compatibility i get with an Ubuntu install combined with the ease of use apt management system and the huge supply of goodies in the repo far outweigh unity. besides, I'm pretty sure the default desktop experience will be configurable because Linux is cool like that.

On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 9:12 AM, Paul Mooring <paul at opscode.com<mailto:paul at opscode.com>> wrote:
I think that's how a lot of people feel, I disliked unity enough to
finally switch distros and haven't looked back since.  That being said, if
canonical can actually deliver on the dream of dropping my phone into a
dock and having a full Linux desktop and then just pulling it out and
taking it with me when I'm done, I'll put up with Unity without any
complaints at all.
--
Paul Mooring
Operations Engineer

www.opscode.com<http://www.opscode.com>

On 7/29/13 6:17 PM, "Michael Butash" <michael at butash.net<mailto:michael at butash.net>> wrote:

>I agree, I bought in on one - I really hope they come though.  I'm super
>stoked for this...
>
>I've tried with android phones running linux atop their kernel, but ui
>is always a bit clunky/unusable (unity just simply never worked).  I'm
>keen to see just how functional they or I can make the desktop
>experience, as normally first thing I do is disable unity with ubuntu.
>
>Need a local hackfest if/when these come through.
>
>-mb
>
>
>On 07/26/2013 11:18 AM, Paul Mooring wrote:
>> Keep in mind what they are shooting for is convergence, a multi-core
>> processor with 4GB(+?) of RAM that acts as the "brain" of your desktop
>> computer.  At $725 people would call this a steal as an ultra-light
>> laptop, combine that with a carrier like T-mobile that allows you to not
>> pay for a phone if you don't get one and that's a whole lot of value for
>> less than $1k.
>> --
>> Paul Mooring
>> Operations Engineer
>>
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--
A mouse trap, placed on top of your alarm clock, will prevent you from rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snooze button.

Stephen

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A mouse trap, placed on top of your alarm clock, will prevent you from rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snooze button.

Stephen

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