[GLLUG] Why I left Ubuntu

ebcha1974 ebcha1974 at hotmail.com
Sun Jul 21 12:54:29 EDT 2013


I really love MIR, I really love Unity and Gnome Shell And everything Ubuntu related. So whiners get over! 
By the way I am just kidding, I am actually running Arch with LXDE & X11. I just wanted to see how high the flames in this thread. You know there are no correct answers to this debate. 
Have a nice weekend. 


Sent from my T-Mobile 4G LTE Device

-------- Original message --------
From: linux-user-request at egr.msu.edu 
Date: 07/20/2013  12:00 PM  (GMT-05:00) 
To: linux-user at egr.msu.edu 
Subject: linux-user Digest, Vol 123, Issue 9 
 
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Today's Topics:

   1. Why I left Ubuntu ~ Everyday Linux User (Chick Tower)
   2. Re: Why I left Ubuntu ~ Everyday Linux User (Matt Parrott)
   3. Re: Why I left Ubuntu ~ Everyday Linux User (bfdamkoehler)
   4. Re: Why I left Ubuntu ~ Everyday Linux User (Jonathan Billings)


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Message: 1
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2013 23:36:57 -0500
From: Chick Tower <c.e.tower at gmail.com>
To: "linux-user at egr.msu.edu" <linux-user at egr.msu.edu>
Subject: [GLLUG] Why I left Ubuntu ~ Everyday Linux User
Message-ID: <51EA13E9.50804 at gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

Are any of the rest of you concerned about Mir?

http://www.everydaylinuxuser.com/2013/07/why-i-left-ubuntu.html
-- 

                                Chick


------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Sat, 20 Jul 2013 08:54:19 -0400
From: Matt Parrott <parrott.matt at gmail.com>
To: "linux-user at egr.msu.edu" <linux-user at egr.msu.edu>
Subject: Re: [GLLUG] Why I left Ubuntu ~ Everyday Linux User
Message-ID:
<CAJqTABUKkx2W1FB7VJCH6RTpr_kWFXSeE+NgAG=utw_ehTSQ3g at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

The bad news is that the open source community has proven itself utterly
incapable of creatively and effectively adapting its core principles to the
desktop, and has failed spectacularly. The good news is that the browser
will completely swallow the desktop, which will place Linux in a tactically
enviable position once again. Linux is going to win despite decades of
heroic attempts to lose spectacularly at the GUI game.

When you think about it philosophically, a computer desktop which is
aligned with Unix principles would be networked, tools-and-pipes oriented,
and flexible enough to deploy on a variety of operating systems and
contexts. In other words, the Linux Desktop has been around the whole time
and has been kicking ass. For historical reasons, the Linux Desktop is
called a "web browser". A ChromeBook-like experience atop a Linux engine is
the end game.

I switched to ChromeBook a year ago and I haven't looked back (the keyboard
is infinitely superior to the cluttered nightmare you get with Win boxes,
like Happy Hacker laptop-edition). The community hasn't come around to
providing the ChromeBook front-end with a local Linux backend, yet, but I
can remotely access my EC2 box for my programming and sysadmin work, which
works in my situation.

For those unwilling to go that far, Lubuntu is a great way to enjoy
Ubuntu's stable package management without being subjected to whatever
bloated dead-end mess they're serving up for a GUI of the week.

- Matt Parrott <http://www.swarmstrategies.com/matt> ? (317) 324-8282 ?
Skype: matt.parrott


On Sat, Jul 20, 2013 at 12:36 AM, Chick Tower <c.e.tower at gmail.com> wrote:

> Are any of the rest of you concerned about Mir?
>
> http://www.everydaylinuxuser.**com/2013/07/why-i-left-ubuntu.**html<http://www.everydaylinuxuser.com/2013/07/why-i-left-ubuntu.html>
> --
>
>                                Chick
> ______________________________**_________________
> linux-user mailing list
> linux-user at egr.msu.edu
> http://mailman.egr.msu.edu/**mailman/listinfo/linux-user<http://mailman.egr.msu.edu/mailman/listinfo/linux-user>
>
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Message: 3
Date: Sat, 20 Jul 2013 10:59:39 -0400
From: bfdamkoehler <bfdamkoehler at sbcglobal.net>
To: linux-user at egr.msu.edu
Subject: Re: [GLLUG] Why I left Ubuntu ~ Everyday Linux User
Message-ID: <51EAA5DB.50002 at sbcglobal.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; Format="flowed"


Another way of looking at it is that when Linux started its goal was 
100% alignment with the established "real" Unix base. Now that it has 
become a stronger force than "real" Unix, it is starting to shed some of 
the long time inefficiencies of Unix. X Windows has always had issues. 
We are now seeing a programming force around planet trying to come up 
with something better. Like anything open source in nature, there are a 
few contenders out there (Mir, Wayland). Time will show what happens...

If you don't like Mir, there are plenty of other distros out there this 
still offer X Windows.


On 07/20/2013 08:54 AM, Matt Parrott wrote:
> The bad news is that the open source community has proven itself
> utterly incapable of creatively and effectively adapting its core 
> principles to the desktop, and has failed spectacularly. The good news 
> is that the browser will completely swallow the desktop, which will 
> place Linux in a tactically enviable position once again. Linux is 
> going to win despite decades of heroic attempts to lose spectacularly 
> at the GUI game.
>
> When you think about it philosophically, a computer desktop which is 
> aligned with Unix principles would be networked, tools-and-pipes 
> oriented, and flexible enough to deploy on a variety of operating 
> systems and contexts. In other words, the Linux Desktop has been 
> around the whole time and has been kicking ass. For historical 
> reasons, the Linux Desktop is called a "web browser". A 
> ChromeBook-like experience atop a Linux engine is the end game.
>
> I switched to ChromeBook a year ago and I haven't looked back (the 
> keyboard is infinitely superior to the cluttered nightmare you get 
> with Win boxes, like Happy Hacker laptop-edition). The community 
> hasn't come around to providing the ChromeBook front-end with a local 
> Linux backend, yet, but I can remotely access my EC2 box for my 
> programming and sysadmin work, which works in my situation.
>
> For those unwilling to go that far, Lubuntu is a great way to enjoy 
> Ubuntu's stable package management without being subjected to whatever 
> bloated dead-end mess they're serving up for a GUI of the week.
>
> - Matt Parrott <http://www.swarmstrategies.com/matt> ? (317) 
> 324-8282 ? Skype: matt.parrott
>
>
> On Sat, Jul 20, 2013 at 12:36 AM, Chick Tower <c.e.tower at gmail.com 
> <mailto:c.e.tower at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     Are any of the rest of you concerned about Mir?
>
>     http://www.everydaylinuxuser.com/2013/07/why-i-left-ubuntu.html
>     -- 
>
>                                    Chick
>     _______________________________________________
>     linux-user mailing list
>     linux-user at egr.msu.edu <mailto:linux-user at egr.msu.edu>
>     http://mailman.egr.msu.edu/mailman/listinfo/linux-user
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> linux-user mailing list
> linux-user at egr.msu.edu
> http://mailman.egr.msu.edu/mailman/listinfo/linux-user

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Message: 4
Date: Sat, 20 Jul 2013 11:13:17 -0400
From: Jonathan Billings <billings at negate.org>
To: linux-user at egr.msu.edu
Subject: Re: [GLLUG] Why I left Ubuntu ~ Everyday Linux User
Message-ID: <20130720151317.GB12960 at negate.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

On Sweetmorn, the 55th of Confusion, 3179 , Matt Parrott said:
> The bad news is that the open source community has proven itself utterly
> incapable of creatively and effectively adapting its core principles to the
> desktop, and has failed spectacularly. 

Those are pretty bold premises, I assume you have evidence?  As far as
I can tell, Linux suffers from an abundance of creativity when it
comes to adapting to the desktop, which is the whole reason why the
Mir situation is so frustrating -- how can desktop environment
developers expect to build a platform when the underpinnings are going
in two (or more, if you count X) simultaneous directions?

> The good news is that the browser
> will completely swallow the desktop, which will place Linux in a tactically
> enviable position once again. Linux is going to win despite decades of
> heroic attempts to lose spectacularly at the GUI game.

That is a particularly limited view of what Linux users use the
Desktop to do.  Perhaps your use cases are fine, but I doubt your
claim covers all use.

Perhaps you can get away with using a browser and an SSH client to do
your job, but there are so many different uses of a Desktop system
that currently do not work in a Browser, nor does it make sense to
turn them into a web page.  For example, much of the Scientific and
Engineering software I support use extremely complicated interfaces
and their own windowing toolkits, on both Windows and Linux.  I see
little incentive for these companies to turn them into browser-based
applications.

Anyway, as you end up buiding more and more complicated browser-based
desktop environments, you're going to end up back at square one, where
you've got a bunch of implementations that don't 100% work together,
and you end up having to pick and choose which you can use.  Have you
ever tried to make a complicated web site work in both IE and Firefox?
On top of that, IE works best with Microsoft's clouds, and Chrome
works best with Google's cloud, and each company has an agenda to get
you to use their browser.  This leads to worse cross-browser support,
and not better.

On top of that, most of these browser-based desktops are NOT EVEN OPEN
SOURCE.  Sure, parts of the Chromebook's OS are based on source that's
open, but to get it to work, you have to rely on Google's
infrastructure, which is closed.  Google Chrome itself has parts that
aren't open.  

By pushing into closed clouds like Google, you're actually moving away
from the Open Source community.  I like Google, and I don't think that
they're out to get us, but they have their own financial interests at
heart, which doesn't necessarily overlap with the best interests of
Linux users. 

Lastly, I have a bone to pick with Google.  They dropped Chrome
support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and all the distros based off of
RHEL (CentOS, Scientific Linux, PU_IAS, etc.).  So, it's pretty clear
they have no interest in supporting Enterprise customers.  This leads
me to believe that Google really only is interested in supporting
their browsers on 1.) Their own OS 2.) Windows (They support Chrome on
XP and MacOSX 10.6) and 3.) Non-enterprise linux users willing to
always run cutting-edge OSs.  

-- 
Jonathan Billings <billings at negate.org>


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