Like Ubuntu's Unity interface? Great. If not, you can easily change it to look and act like Ubuntu used to. This tutorial shows how.
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Member since:2011-01-28
Gone fishing,
"Canonical could have done what you suggest, they instead chose to develop their own desktop environment, and pursue their own vision of what a Modern Desktop should be like. I think this will in the end turn out to be the right decision."
Working on unity may be the right direction for the present. However gnome 2 was still the most popular useful mature desktop at the time, they should have kept an option for it. I understand that you want users to have Unity, but I don't understand why you don't want them to have gnome 2. The controversy over this doesn't make any sense - if they cared about users, they would have left gnome 2 in as an option just like the other desktop choices available.
"Obviously Ubuntu is not asking you to, they want you to use Unity and the new functionality."
Exactly, they did not give users a choice. I don't understand why anyone would consider this a good thing.
"I haven't tried to return to Gnome 2, but I do have two WMs installed Blackbox, and Fluxbox. It really was as easy as running a single command"
Ok, but that's shifting the goalpost.
"Mint is quite cool, time will tell if either Ubuntu or Mint got it right. In my opinion Canonical made the decision to advance the Linux desktop in a new and unique direction and I think that will turn out to be right decision."
Only if you continue to treat these as mutually exclusive, which they are not. I never suggested (or even thought) that Ubuntu should not pursue Unity. My beef is that they unilaterally removed gnome 2 for many who were still asking for it and who's needs were not being met by the replacement. That move was obviously not done in the interest of users. I keep agreeing that they have every right to do it, it may even be well intentioned. But it has a totalitarian nature to it "do it this way because I want you to, not because you want to". I think this is bad for an open source operating system.
If you respond again please clarify why removing the choice of gnome 2 was good for users, not why having unity was good for users (I don't disagree with this).
Edited 2012-07-18 14:42 UTC
Member since:2006-02-22
Member since:2005-08-18
The overhead and manpower needed to maintain gnome2 by themselves in addition to developing Unity?
Maybe if the GNOME project had maintained the 2.x series alongside 3 it would still had been an option in Ubuntu.
This is really nothing new. The same thing happened when distros changed their default DE from KDE1 to KDE2, KDE2 to KDE3, GNOME to GNOME2 or whatever. You got a new default and if you wanted to stay with the old stuff there was some work to do on your own.
Much OSS software is totalitarian and has always been. Linus (dictator for life, remember?) decides what goes in the official kernel, Theo decides what goes in OpenBSD, Canonical decides the direction of Ubuntu, RedHat decides the direction of RHEL etc etc.
"Microsoft has sensationally abandoned its controversial plans to restrict the sharing of XBox One games, and has also removed daily online authentication requirements for its forthcoming console", reports The Guardian. They had no choice. Still a good move."A snippet of code in the Steam digital distribution platform has revealed that Valve may be planning to let users easily share their games with friends in the future. The Verge has verified the code's authenticity, which was originally spotted by a member of the NeoGAF gaming forum; the code references a 'shared game library' and a notification that would alert a user when their games are currently in use by a borrower." This would change the, uh, game.
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it."I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)"."The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane."MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight."
Member since:
2006-02-22
Canonical could have done what you suggest, they instead chose to develop their own desktop environment, and pursue their own vision of what a Modern Desktop should be like. I think this will in the end turn out to be the right decision. Remember that Mint has already done this, their desktop is nothing like a standard Gnome 2 Desktop, I also suspect that Mint will pursue the Cinnamon desktop and when it is mature drop MATE. Ubuntu's vision is more radical than Mints and less Windows like.
Obviously Ubuntu is not asking you to, they want you to use Unity and the new functionality. I haven't tried to return to Gnome 2, but I do have two WMs installed Blackbox, and Fluxbox. It really was as easy as running a single command
This is true and I also think Mint is quite cool, time will tell if either Ubuntu or Mint got it right. In my opinion Canonical made the decision to advance the Linux desktop in a new and unique direction and I think that will turn out to be right decision.