Updates to this story
Figures from Distro-watch show that the popular front of Linux, Ubuntu, is sliding in popularity.
While the distro is still tops, it is starting to look like others are eating into its user base faster than Homer Simpson at an all you can eat penguin steak buffet.
It is jolly easy to pin most of Ubuntu's woes on one thing - Unity. Unity was Mark Shuttleworth's attempt to make a more user friendly GUI for Ubuntu which has always looked a little too much like a Windows XP clone.
Unfortunately, he miffed a lot of people who want Ubuntu because it looked like a Windows XP clone and they didn't want to learn a new skill set. The other problem with Unity was that it took out all the things that allowed Linux fanboys to tinker.
It meant that setting up Linux on a laptop from hell turned out a lot more problematic than it would have been in the past. Once it was set up, it was an arse to find things like command lines. It runs ok, but it was clunky and buggy.
When users have a huge number of Linux distros to choose from and they find one does not perform like they hoped, they will go somewhere else.
Ubuntu people will point out to you that you can choose to use the old Gnome interface if you want, but that requires a few more steps in the set-up and that sort of defeats the whole Ubuntu premise. Ubuntu is supposed to be as easy to install as Windows. If you have to flip GUI then it simply is not,
Looking at the Distro-watch figures, they are going to Mint and Fedora. Mint is very similar to Ubuntu. In fact when it was recently upgraded it was thought that it might run Unity. The distributors made a good call on that one and it looks like a lot of people might have shuttled away from Ubuntu towards it.
Fedora was always Ubuntu for grown ups. Fedora also has a vibrant community of programmers dedicated to it. Like the latest version of Ubuntu, Fedora 13 got mixed reviews mostly because it lacked easy access to the basic bundled software. It also growled at you if you wanted to use things like Flash.
Ubuntu users tend to fall into three camps. There are those who don't want to run Windows and Ubuntu gives them the same stuff cheaper. There are those who just want a simple computer to do web browsing and a basic office package. Then there are those who want an introduction to Linux which they can tinker around with.
Unity made the last group walk, leaving the other two groups wondering how to set everything up. Ok, we are being simplistic here, but the same people who don't like Unity generally don't like some other things that Cannonical has done lately.
Unity was about Shuttleworth making a desperate move towards making Ubuntu the default standard on the desktop. He reasoned that Ubuntu was not able to capitalise on Microsoft's Vista fail was because Linux had a GUI which was not pretty or user friendly enough.
There is some truth to that, but the reason that Linux was unable to capitalise on Vista was more to do with the fact that Linux still suffers from driver and software shortages.
True, you might have a free app store packed with goodies, but that is useless to you if you can't run things like Photoshop. Anyone who has tried to use Gimp and says it is just as good has never used Photoshop.
But to push through his Unity idea, Shuttleworth had to hack off a lot of Open Saucers who wrote his code. The Open Source community works in its own mysterious way, and many felt railroaded by Shuttleworth's insistence about how things should be.
What is sad is that Shuttleworth's GUI gambit does not appear to have paid off. Not only had it failed to put Ubuntu onto more desktops, it has alienated a lot of people who were propping things up.
Unlike some, I don't think Ubuntu is on its way out. But Cannonical will have to move fast to improve things, or they will lose the image of being the user-friendly Linux distro.
Unity is a big step away from the usual Ubuntu experience, but I quite like it, didn't think I was going to, in fact I was looking at fedora and gnome 3 (gnome shell) but I found it very hard to get on with, not fedora though I'm talking about gnome shell, which has come a long way ( I wrote some themes for it a while back)
Unity is good, and it may confuse some people but I don't think it'll be Ubuntu's downfall.
As for using classic gnome on Ubuntu, it's easy to set up, you just need to select it from the log in screen, no extra messing about is needed.
And in case you are wondering I fall into the third category in your article, I'm forever messing about with the system, and I would just like to defend GIMP (yes it's a very bad choice of name) I use photoshop, and photoshop elements and I prefer GIMP, I've found I can do a lot more with less fuss in GIMP than I can in either photoshop or elements.
;-)
I don't want to go back to Redhat, I also don't want to use Unity. It's likely going to be a great browsers desktop, but it's not a desktop for working.
I've got real work to do. And it doesn't get done faster by Gnome's crapola eye candy and the phenomenal, dumbed down bloat in KDE.
We need our OS's to be harder, better, faster, stronger. Those needing cutesy toys can get iphones or netbooks.
Did they name it Unity to describe the combined IQ of the design team? ;-)
er, saying the App Store is useless because you can't run Photoshop is illogical -- what does this have to do with Ubuntu? Photoshop can't be run native on any Linux system unless you run WINE - so using it as a mark against Ubuntu is moot.
and as far as GIMP being 'as good as Photoshop': 99% of the Photoshop tinkerers/users out there don't use 99% of its features besides to make a comment like this it shows that you obviously haven't touched GIMP in the past 5 years - GIMP is a *very* useful image editing program for the non-professional designer - I've used it for the past 7 years on both OS X & Ubuntu for CD cover and web design with little to no problems. And anything I needed I could find in either a plugin, a brush or a script.
I'm now on Mint. I had never bothered to try it before but I've found a new love. It's cleaner, faster and makes Natty look like an unfinished product by comparison. Without Unity, I would have never know what I was missing!
This is more than true. My adventure started with Ubuntu 10.10. I said to myself that now Linux can take over the world with this. It was so welcoming to an old Windows user. I really felt home.
Unity just pissed me off completely. Thank God i found Kubuntu. I am quite happy with it.
GNome 2 & KDE FTW!!!!
That anyone could defend Unity or Gnome 3 is a bit suspicio.....hmm. Let me just rephrase it.
I have been using Ubu since the Badger. It was, before the unwelcome and odious introduction of Unity, perhaps the finest OS to be found. While Shuttleworthless is free to make Ubu as lovely or appalling as he desires; others are free to call crap crap. Ubu has been defiled, and Unity is good for watching teletubbies - if you can actually even do that.
I use GIMP and am a big fan, but I'd never dare compare it to photoshop. That would be like comparing a Ford to a Tesla to me, and clearly full of beans.
I know a lot of people who use Ubu, ranging from programmers, standard users, writers and IT folks. Without exception, every one of them, including myself are furious about these changes. We finally find something close to perfection, and someone has to ruin it. Just because it is free does not mean anything really. Microsoft made Vista, and people were pissed just the same. This move is a slap in the face many loyal supporters, and I hope it is never forgotten. It is a very explicit statement of disrespect to intelligent users by "the authorities", and should treated accordingly. It seems more than obvious that no good intentions were involved.
However, Gnome in 11.04 is somewhat broken. Parts of the panels disappear and when I use Smplayer, the pull-down menus disappear behind the playback window and are completely unusable.
It seems that display support has deteriorated. I have (had now) 3 PCs running 11.04 and video playback has become jerkier. Even on a 4-core PC, 1080p video is slightly jerky and nowhere near as smooth as in 10.10. I tried Mint 11. The graphics problems remain and even worse, Gimp slows down badly, e.g. resizing an image takes 10 to 20 times longer. And, extended use of Gimp resulted a couple of times in a complete freeze.
So, now, it's back to Ubuntu 10.10 and Linux Mint 10 for me. I hope Shuttleworth wakes up to the fact that he should not shove his ideas down peoples' throats and listen while experimenting with innovation. I hope he decides not kill off Gnome by 11.10 and to fix the display problems.
There is one more problem with 11.04 - folder and file sharing in Ubuntu 11.04 has become a bigger pain to set up.
On Distrowatch, it's obvious to see that in the last 30 and 7 days, Ubuntu users are shifting to Mint.
If Shuttleworth insists to keep stubbornly on his track, I am considering abandoning Ubuntu completely and switch to the Mint-Debian distro.
Agreed - I can't see how anyone can suggest that the Unity interface resembles that of XP in any way shape or form.
Agreed - I can't see how anyone can suggest that the Gnome interface resembles that of XP in any way shape or form. MInd you I much prefer KDE 4 myself, which Windows 7 appears to have ripped off big-style
I believe we should never discourage innovation. It is the best part of free software. And personally, I love Unity. Even though there is room for improvement, it is simple, efficient and beautiful.
Beside, I do not understand why the writer of this article pretends that Ubuntu is harder to install than Windows and lacks application. It seems he has never installed Ubuntu (or Windows) and has not yet discovered Synaptic...
I'm not a fan.
Just last night I replaced a faulty hard drive on a Vista-based laptop and put 11.04 on it. Several GL-based games and apps would cause the interface to lose focus, and only the mouse worked. Hard booting was the only solution.
This isn't just me - I searched through countless forum posts and found many others had this problem - especially those with the well-documented (and supported) Intel integrated graphics chipsets. You know, the MOST POPULAR CHIPSET IN THE WORLD?!
It's 2011, for f*ck's sake, aren't we done with this kind of crap? Is anyone bothering TESTING these releases before they are released?
Ultimately, I ended up going back to the 'classic' interface - no problems there. Mr. Shuttlesworth, you are a smart guy - and you are a RICH guy. We appreciate your efforts but please, let your engineers do their jobs. Keep unity as an option, but leave the 'classic' interface in as the default.
KDE might look and behave a bit like XP
Gnome is veering closer and closer to a wannabe OS X paradigm than anything remotely like XP
and although Shuttleworth had an art directors hand in the creation of Unity - it WAS designed by a bunch of young coders at Canonical with obviously very little UI experience except for 'yo dude, what if there were *no* menus? - wouldn't that be freakin' *awesome* ?'
Classic Gnome: yes Classic is selectable and is still 2.x for now - but it will become Gnome 3.x in future versions of Ubuntu - what kind of choice is that?
as for popular distros: all one needs do is saunter over to DistroWatch and run the numbers to watch Ubuntu lose market share - talk about shooting yourself in the foot
A friend had trouble with an app, and posted that running it in terminal returned an error that it could not be found. His post stated that he was in the correct directory, the file was present, and the execution bit was enabled. He was running it with ./app_name.
The response was less than stellar. One person said "Is the execution bit set?". Another chimed in, "Make sure you are in the correct directory..." And so on. Apparently reading comprehension is not the strong suit for some.
It was shades of windows user experience. I was half expecting someone to say "try restarting your machine..."
The problem was resolved by checking the source code for dependencies. One was not listed in the deb, not installed by default and probably came standard in ubuntu, so was easily missed.
I left mint in frustration shortly after that when turning on the source repository simply did not work. A peep into /etc/apt showed that they had chopped sources.list into multiple files. I tried fiddling with it, but my changes never did seem to take effect.
I was growing as a linux user and reading through the forums neatly illustrated that they were pandering to, and largely comprised of casual users. For the same reason I didnt need unity, I dont need mint.
So I moved to debian squeeze.
Why did you find it necessary to plug in this old fud? Legacy software on legacy systems has nothing to do with the subject of this discussion.
I mean how many people even use photoshop? An absolute tiny drop in the ocean compared to the world at large. Such a tiny niche is hardly any reason to avoid a given platform for the vast majority of people.
The one artist I know prefers gimp to photoshop anyway, and he doesn't use gnu/linux - and he's pretty sick of the snobs who prefer photoshop for the simple reason that they wasted their money on it just to re-size a few jpegs. Nobody else I know would even have a use for it.
I know that Linux is not KDE or Unity, however the GUI is what I see of the operating system, or in the case of Unity don't see. If you look at Distrowatch you will see that Ubunutu use has been sliding for the last year and a half
The nice thing about Linux is that it allows you to select which DE you want to use at login. If you want a braindead simple OS that doesn't require you to think then OS X is your best bet.
besides i always suspected many a fanboi goes over there to do clicky click on their favorite every day. that would explain a lot of "popular" distros.
so, distrowatch ranking - it means nothing in particular. sad truth is that nobody knows linux market share. not for ubuntu, not for other distros. when someone says they know the number of computers running their distro, they're lying through their teeth.
is ubuntu on it's way out though? likely. nobody can pour money down a bottomless pit *forever*. but community can always take over and maintain it, eh XD
and i hope they don't forget to bring synaptic and gimp back when they do.
also, fedora was mentioned. that's a permanent beta for red hat. you can't be serious i should put that on my work machine.
so, yes, i run debian :) of course i do, i'm no fool.
Even using the Classic Gnome option isn't going to help. Shuttleworth has stated that eventually Unity will be the only Window Manager they offer. Whether you use Gnome, KDE, or another WDM, eventually you have to face the choice of Unity or moving to a new distribution.
I want options, I want the pretty features of Compiz, I want to spend the better part of a week to tweak the hell out of my OS.
So, I definitely walked from Ubuntu because of Unity and Shuttleworth's dictatorship. I was annoyed with him when he switched the minimize, maximize, and close buttons to the opposite side (it was so arbitrary and ultimately amounted to nothing), but Unity got me to test, and love, openSUSE's KDE variant.
Good riddance Ubuntu.
Perhaps it simply means Ubuntu is now MORE popular - a known quantity - and thus gets fewer page hits.
You owe some explanation of your methodology and reasoning here.
These are factors - all of them at once. Ubuntu is like an old man unable to keep up with the times. People are losing interest, the name itself is forked into too many different unfinished and unpolished projects - further confirming that Ubuntu is a fat, bloated OS that needs too much hardware.
Before you laugh me out of here, check out PinguyOS, at least he made good use of a left side dock by putting your Places folders on it! Mint 11 is good too.
So, did Shuttleworth influence the Gnome project for Gnome3 or vice versa? That's what I want to know!
Mint games the Distrowatch ranking by including all of the different DEs as Mint. Think about it -- "Mint" includes Gnome, KDE, XfCE, LXDE, XFCE Debian, Gnome Debian, Fluxbox. In other words, could Mint's uptick be attributed to people choosing the Debian spins, XFCE or KDE over Ubuntu? What proof is there people are specifically choosing Mint Gnome (Non-Debian) over Ubuntu?
Also, if Ubuntu did what Mint does, then they would include Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu into the Distrowatch count. If they did that, Ubuntu would easily come out on top.
A final thought: could Fedora's solid showing in the Distrowatch rankings be a sign that people are using (or are at least curious about) Gnome3?
*H.P.D = hits per day not downloads.
2155
2291
2467
1875
Hmm interesting but nothing more.
Also you have lost all credibility with that XP slur.
---
Unity is different but looks good so far.
This should read:
"He reasoned that Ubuntu was not able to capitalise on Microsoft's Vista fail was because Ubuntu had a GUI which was not pretty or user friendly enough."
As many people in the media said in the recent past: "Ubuntu is not Linux"
Sorry fanboys, but it is ugly as sin, and it is going from bad to worse. Free yourself and try another distro. Even Mint or anything KDE will do!
I got as far as that comparison and stopped reading. If the author is that ignorant why bother with the rest?
Before Unity, to launch a terminal for example, you only had to go to application (1 click), then roll menus to find Terminal and launch it (1 click). Takes 1 second.
On Unity, you have to click the "Ubuntu button" (1 click), go back to your keyboard (WTF?), start typing "terminal" (??? there are a lot of applications I don't know the name !!) and then press Enter. Takes 3 seconds.
The lack of the task bar also is one of the reasons I'll never use Unity. Let's open a Firefox window. Then open a new one. And a new one. On classic gnome, with the task bar, in one click you see your 3 opened windows and can click on the one you need to show back (1 click). On Unity, you have to put your mouse on the left of the screen, wait for the dock to show up (2 seconds), click on the Firefox icon (1 click), then it shows the list of opened windows, find the one you want and click on it (1 click). Gnome classic : 0,5 to 1 second. Unity : 3 to 4 seconds.
And let's talk about those dubm BIIIIG icons appearing when you click on the Ubuntu button... 4 icons : internet / mail / music / <and i don't remember the last one>. Wait what ?! That's the kind of shortcuts I installed on my grandmother's computer to help her find her way. And the icons are sooo big, that the first time I opened that up, my eyes immediately started bleeding :-o
Unity is for people who don't have needs to speed up there work and OS interactions. It's a good job I think for old people learning how to use a basic computer.
But for people wanting a powerful desktop and speed up their productivity, let's move to something else... even with the shortcuts.
Three years back I started with Linux using ubuntu and the first thing I noticed is the dated look and feel of gnome (and KDE for that manner). Incredible... I came from windows XP which was at that moment 8 years old! and still gnome and KDE felt dated.
I ask you what is better, stay with something that doesn't seem to get any better or take a step back and work on something that can be improved?
Don't get me wrong, I have sincere respect for most of the developers, but be fair... gnome hasn't advanced much last years.
Few more steps in the setup for gnome classic?
Vista was a gui fail?
You can't run Photoshop?
You are a fucking joke... do a proper research you fucking journalist wanna-be fail.
This post is a bad joke!
Are Gnome and Unity simply trying to retire all working computers?
1. OK if you just want a chromebox for the cloud
2. OK on my eee 901
3. I wear out my mouse on my 18 inch laptop
4. forget where my mouse is on my 22 inch desktop
5. but having a lot of fun with my droid Xoom
Since I cannot configure anything work related without downloading a special config file - that I need to search the net for - have they turned my expensive systems into little more than web browsers?
The Gnome people should fire all of their ms windows developers - and replace them with people who work on computers.
I wrote in a Linux blog that shuttleworth will be around to see the huge mistake that has come by his own hand. He bears to much confidence in the user base he so heavily relies on. You cannot be a dictator in a open source society. I don't care who's money is funding what. He will wake up one morning and say to himself, "My God, What Have I Done?"
Tried it a bit, moved to Gnome 2.3 and found out that Compiz was broken. I think it's a shame that something that good was abandoned by Canonical. I tried out Linux Mint 11. This is the OS I love! One simple taskbar on the bottom, completed with the Menu-buton. This is looking like Windows XP, but much better! Don't forget, Windows XP is loved by many Windows fans, who will be looking somewhere in 2014 for a new OS, when XP expires! Linux Mint could be that OS for them!
"Three years back I started with Linux using ubuntu and the first thing I noticed is the dated look and feel of gnome ... I ask you what is better, stay with something that doesn't seem to get any better or take a step back and work on something that can be improved? ..."
It's interesting how two people can have such different perspectives.
Three years back I started with Linux using Ubuntu (8.04, Gnome) and one of the first things I noticed was the efficient panel and menu setup. It took little time to learn to find things, and once set up starting applications and closing them was very quick and took little work (generally opening with one click on the top panel.) So, I ask you what is better, stay with something that gives excellent performance and works, or take a step back and fix what ain't broken so you can try to fix it again in future years.
I've switched to Mint 9 (Gnome) which I consider a great release-stable and quick, SL 6.0, Xubuntu 11.04 (which I really like, once changing the bottom panel so it doesn't autohide) and Debian Wheezy with an XFCE desktop-which I like even more than Xubuntu 11.04 so far.
Linux is great-we have choices. Some will stick with Gnome (as many stuck with KDE 4 through its growing pains), some will like Unity, and others with switch to KDE, LXDE, XFCE or something else. To me, switching from Gnome, XFCE 4.8 seems quick, just about as easy to use as classic Gnome (probably now easy enough to recommend to newcomers,) stable and configurable, so it seems the natural switch for Gnome users unhappy with the direction of Gnome 3-or Unity. (That's not to criticize KDE or LXDE, both of which I've used and both of which have much to recommend them, I'm just suggesting XFCE 4.8's characteristics may be a good match for those who would formerly have preferred Gnome 2.)
Lightroom, is not as good.
NX2, is not as good.
All the rest are not, as good.
Anyone who says "Photoshop", is better, hasn't used the Gimp.
Otherwise, it looks like unfinished interface.
I used to love Ubuntu 10.10, but after the update to 11.04 I can say I'm done with Ubuntu, at least until 11.10. It's not Unity's fault, I tried to like it, I didn't, I changed to the classic interface, no big deal.
Problem is, 11.04 is much more unstable and buggier than 10.10, just try to use Pidgin and XChat in parallel for a couple of days and you'll understand what I'm talking about. And it's not the only problem with it. Overall it's a big step back when it comes to a stable, reliable OS.
Mint is just fine, maybe I'll try Debian one of these days, too...
http://www.go2linux.org/linux/2011/06/unity-and-gnome-3-what-good-and-what-evil-1090.html
What do you mean with efficient panel en menu setup? Since you are quoting me, you probably find this relevant relevant in relation to my remark about the dated look and feel of gnome?
About not fixing whats not broken: this is an excellent way to get that dated look and feel Gnome has. Windows doesn't mind, they like to get their 1% desktop market share back :)
i wont drink product x bc not everyone else does. catch22
note: had a much more articulate and pointed post, but android has some ironing left to do...
i started looking away from ubuntu after i got comfortable with it. its was a great gateway linux distro... maybe it still is. honestly, it cant be easier than mint! if my mom can use it, yours can too.
ubuntu is desperate to find that great desktop innovation, but not really bringing much to the party. its sad but i only really like ubuntu for thier upstream, not their desktop anymore.
I must be lucky because I'm not that smart, I didn't have any unsolvable issues with Unity. There is a review on Toms Hardware by Adam Overa that will get most things solved, but there are many other things to do, try clear-looks and window your pages instead of full screen, the buttons go to the right side like early Microsoft, (I say early Microsoft because everyone is moving those to the left in the new releases).
Move your windowed page to the top right of the screen and drag it bigger until the new Launch Bar just stays visible, now look at the Task bar that is always present at the top of the screen and you have all your Menu Buttons at the top left when your mouse is hovering there.
Now go into the same settings where you found Clear- Looks find custom or advanced then set Opacity to say 80% or 60%, (depends on Hardware and Preference), now you have Glass type windows, you can get free source apps that can make those cubes also, this is a 3D desktop with Unity enabled.
There I spoiled all the fun for people that like to find these things on their own. By the time 11.10 is released you can run six monitors using ATI AMD and let the games begin.
Terminal is where I have always found it, since my first red hat in 1998. just relax, don't let new things confuse you.
The most fun I have with a new OS is taking a few minutes and customizing it for my own. Unity is the easiest and most fun I ever worked with.
The biggest thing I have found about Unity on 11.04 is it really helps to have AMD/ATI HD graphics card. They are really low cost, if you have an old Intel desktop with any graphics slot just spend $20.00 US and put a AMD/ATI HD graphics card in, Intel integrated graphics is not good enough and NVidia drivers are not easy for this new OS.
But those chips will work if you select that you have no decent graphics at log in from the drop down. You just won't have 3D.
If you can find an old Unix person, they can get your NVidia graphics working as good as an ATI on Unity, remember this is a 3D GUI that is why you are having trouble. But Integrated Intel chip users are out of luck, there is no 3D Intel graphics or ever will be.
I was lucky I guess, because I have two really smart nephews that taught me to relax and use common sense on a computer when they were 10 or 12 years old back in the day many years ago.
Don't let a computer out smart you.