Ted may be right about where the growth market is.  Especially if he primarily considers the 15-35 year groups.  On the other hand, there are hundreds of millions of current users with history of using a desktop and people who want/need bigger displays who detest the who "Let's make everything work like a tablet" concept.  I have a tablet and a smartphone and I appreciate how they work.  But I and most of the people I know (in 4 computer clubs) want our big screens to remain highly usable and that will never be with a touch interface.

Case in point: Global menu on a screen with multiple visible windows is just plain stupid.  Global menu is fine as long as I can turn it off.  I used to hate unity, but now I miss it when I don't have it.  That said, I hate the number of configurable things we are losing to the "growth market".

I work with a lot of elderly people and most of them do not want to learn tablet and touch interfaces.  I am having a lot of success with Linux for people who absolutely do not want Windows 8.  Linux is much easier for them.  Until I have to explain global menu.  So I end up using other desktops for almost all of them.


On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 8:05 AM, Stephen <cryptworks@gmail.com> wrote:
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@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@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

From: plug-discuss-bounces@lists.phxlinux.org <plug-discuss-bounces@lists.phxlinux.org> on behalf of Stephen <cryptworks@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@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






On 7/29/13 6:17 PM, "Michael Butash" <michael@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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Stephen


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Dazed_75 a.k.a. Larry

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