I have been debating writing about this since we are mainly a gaming news site (I should really setup another site for all the other Linux news I want to write about!), but Canonical switching back to GNOME on Ubuntu is very big news for everyone.
Question: Is there any interest in me doing a separate site to cover general Linux news?
Mark Shuttleworth, Founder of Ubuntu and Canonical wrote a rather shocking blog post announcing that Ubuntu 18.04 will officially drop the Unity desktop environment. If you didn't hear about it due to living under a large rock, let that sink in for a moment. Ubuntu is dropping a desktop environment they've worked on for years and poured tons of resources into building and rewriting for Unity 8.
I've had some time to let the news sink in now, after initially thinking it was a late April fools joke, when in reality it's very real and it makes perfect sense.
Unity was part of a long-term plan for Canonical with Ubuntu as part of their convergence strategy, which ultimately failed to gain any real traction. There's only so much time and money you can put into something when it's not giving you the results you wanted and it seems Canonical is in need of investors, as it turns out it has had to cut its workforce.
This now means there's going to be a little less fragmentation when it comes to the Linux desktop too. For all the good it does having lots of choice, having likely the biggest desktop-Linux distribution use a more standard desktop will help many things. For one thing, developers will no longer have to work around Unity/Compiz specific issues in games. It will also help the stability of GNOME Shell too, since they have even more people using it and working on it thanks to this.
This, in turn, makes Ubuntu go back to what made me originally love it. A polished GNOME desktop experience released every 6 months with the latest and greatest with a little extra love and polish thrown in for good measure. A good, solid desktop experience to introduce people new to Linux with. To me, it sounds fantastic again.
As expected, Unity 8 looks like it will be carried on by a few developers. Will be interesting to see if this actually gains any traction, or if it will fade away with little interest. Personally, I don't see any need to continue it, we have enough desktops already with GNOME Shell, KDE, Xfce, Budgie, LXQt, Cinnamon, MATE and the list goes on and on. Enough already I say, they all vary a lot in terms of features and time could be better spent on many others parts of the Linux desktop now.
Finally, I'm still very happy after switching from Ubuntu to Antergos. I've now settled with the GNOME Shell desktop with two extensions and it's glorious:
I couldn't imagine having to go back to PPAs again to get extra software, my love for the Arch AUR is never ending.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: liamdaweQuoting: SkarjakComplaining about fragmentation is completely ridiculous.To you maybe, but some of us know what fragmentation causes.
Quoting: SkarjakA lot of people seem to think they can tell others what to do with their time.No one is telling anyone what to do lol, cool down.
I hope you realize this in no way addresses my point.
Quoting: snizzoYou are annoyed by Michael Larabel's coverage of AMD and Mesa because you prefer Nvidia, and you are complaining about zealotry. I am not misreading your words here. Larabel for all his sins (and he has a few) does give fairly broad coverage of all kinds of topics in the Linux community, including Nvidia.Quoting: HamishOh gosh. My message is so difficult to understand? I'm not complaining that phoronix covers some topics (that I don't hate). I'd prefer it to be a news site that gives the same space to everything and treat it objectively, like a journalist do and unlike a blogger do. I'm more and more thrilled to see how many people just don't get what's written in a small comment.Quoting: snizzoYes please. Just don't be like phoronix and turn this website into a kde, mesa, manjaro, amd etc. zealots center. It's so annoying just reading over 9000 news about the latest commit on amd mesa and all of the hate towards nvidia in general (given that's still the best vendor hardware/software for gaming on linux).So basically you are complaining that Phoronix covers topics that you hate? And then you turn around and complain about other people being haters?
I think you need to do a little introspection here.
You just need to do a quick search to see that I am right:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_topic&q=NVIDIA
AMD and Mesa are going through a huge amount of change right now and have been doing so for the past ten years. I think that is worthy of the amount of news coverage it has been getting. Nvidia is not getting forgotten. You just seem to be irked by the fact that your preferred option does not completely dominate the conversation.
EDIT: Case in point, here are some statistics:
794 AMD news articles published on Phoronix.
612 NVIDIA news articles published on Phoronix.
Now that is a 9000/1 ratio if ever I saw one...
EDIT 2: And just so I can not be accused of selective quoting, in reference to your original post:
Quoting: snizzoSo yes, I'd like you to post news about linux in general, just don't be too obsessive writing at topics that generate traffic through hate and religion like phoronix do.You mention KDE, Mesa, Manjaro, and AMD in the same breath as "topics that generate traffic through hate and religion" and yet you still maintain that you do not hate the subject matter. Again, some introspection here would be nice. You do seem to take considerable umbridge with them being discussed.
Last edited by Hamish on 8 April 2017 at 7:12 pm UTC
Kuduzkehpan Apr 10, 2017
convergence idea still good thing to make things universal and clever and easy to learn adopt. imagine one universal interface for all kind of smart devices. but this needs little bit monopoly over smart device vendors and software industry so let it stay as a dream.
now ok come back to real life. ofc its sad news. made me think about to install windows cuz without unity it seems all rest of DE is old fashion and just a diversion. Then i installed gnome-shell 3.22 and what a mess is that. Then i found some extensions. now its shiny elegant more integrated than any other DE. and its new fashion. and has good community support. also Gnome-shell really faster than Unity7. only unity-2d (which is stopped) can be competitive to gnome-shell in the name of speed.
now i like gnome-shell more than any other DE.
Ubuntu's unity drop is kind of come back in the loosing game. And cannonical will make ubuntu gnome much more better state ever seen. more extensions more stability and bleeding edge softwares updates for ubuntu. no waste of resources on re-inventing somethings.
and about MS and partnership MS is almost 3rd open source contributor and supporter. unless there is no monopoly ideas all helps are welcomes and "freedom" for everyone.
now my current desktop is ubuntu 17.04 and de is Gnome-shell 3.22
Last edited by Kuduzkehpan on 10 April 2017 at 4:32 pm UTC
Quoting: EikeI'm referring to the horrendous amount of non-useful things spamming the sides of my screen.Quoting: lvlarkMy $0.03 on the vertical/horizontal taskbar:
$0.01: Having little use of horizontal screen space is a mistake of applications/websites (thankfully not GOL).
I wonder what you're referring to, here. For good reasons, lines are not printed too wide for at least centuries now - and so does GoL:
Having lines not span the width of a screen is, indeed, a good thing. But often websites will cut them too short to do an inline picture, that could've gone to the side, but there's advertisement/clickbait/whatever there.
I've always considered Unity in beta, even after final releases. It was always buggy.
Also, the information that if offered was not of interest to me.
If Cannonical want to swing Ubuntu back in the game they should start polishing more the release and ask in the forums what people really want from the OS, and do it. It's so simple I really don't understand why nobody does it.
Quoting: LinuxwarperIs it me or is launching of apps in Unity much better than Gnome 3? I installed Gnome 3, to try it out, and it's app launching methods is lacking. Unity: Superkey+n (n= 0-9), Gnome: Super +Hover to app/Type and navigate with arrow key+Click/Execute key. Am I only one who have noticed this?
use the Dash to Dock extension on GNOME, not only can it give you a unity like launcher but it has the same functionality with superkey+n. it is highly configurable. you can even scroll the mouse wheel on the launcher to switch virtual desktops.
Quoting: neowiz73Cheers:)Quoting: LinuxwarperIs it me or is launching of apps in Unity much better than Gnome 3? I installed Gnome 3, to try it out, and it's app launching methods is lacking. Unity: Superkey+n (n= 0-9), Gnome: Super +Hover to app/Type and navigate with arrow key+Click/Execute key. Am I only one who have noticed this?
use the Dash to Dock extension on GNOME, not only can it give you a unity like launcher but it has the same functionality with superkey+n. it is highly configurable. you can even scroll the mouse wheel on the launcher to switch virtual desktops.
Quoting: HamishQuoting: snizzoYou are annoyed by Michael Larabel's coverage of AMD and Mesa because you prefer Nvidia, and you are complaining about zealotry. I am not misreading your words here. Larabel for all his sins (and he has a few) does give fairly broad coverage of all kinds of topics in the Linux community, including Nvidia.Quoting: HamishOh gosh. My message is so difficult to understand? I'm not complaining that phoronix covers some topics (that I don't hate). I'd prefer it to be a news site that gives the same space to everything and treat it objectively, like a journalist do and unlike a blogger do. I'm more and more thrilled to see how many people just don't get what's written in a small comment.Quoting: snizzoYes please. Just don't be like phoronix and turn this website into a kde, mesa, manjaro, amd etc. zealots center. It's so annoying just reading over 9000 news about the latest commit on amd mesa and all of the hate towards nvidia in general (given that's still the best vendor hardware/software for gaming on linux).So basically you are complaining that Phoronix covers topics that you hate? And then you turn around and complain about other people being haters?
I think you need to do a little introspection here.
You just need to do a quick search to see that I am right:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_topic&q=NVIDIA
AMD and Mesa are going through a huge amount of change right now and have been doing so for the past ten years. I think that is worthy of the amount of news coverage it has been getting. Nvidia is not getting forgotten. You just seem to be irked by the fact that your preferred option does not completely dominate the conversation.
EDIT: Case in point, here are some statistics:
794 AMD news articles published on Phoronix.
612 NVIDIA news articles published on Phoronix.
Now that is a 9000/1 ratio if ever I saw one...
EDIT 2: And just so I can not be accused of selective quoting, in reference to your original post:
Quoting: snizzoSo yes, I'd like you to post news about linux in general, just don't be too obsessive writing at topics that generate traffic through hate and religion like phoronix do.You mention KDE, Mesa, Manjaro, and AMD in the same breath as "topics that generate traffic through hate and religion" and yet you still maintain that you do not hate the subject matter. Again, some introspection here would be nice. You do seem to take considerable umbridge with them being discussed.
I could reply to you to all these points (like making you notice that the pure number of articles is of absolutely no meaning towards what you're trying to demonstrate (hint: objectivity and not doing click-baiting covering topics that will generate free hate, more hints? look at difference between omgubuntu and phoronix reader base.) but it's no more worth my time. You're using rethoric and mixing pseudo science with real (infused?) truth, while, of course I was talking about an opinion. The fact that you replied so hard on this, and that you want me to admit my supposed guilt, simply demostrate, at my eyes, that my personal opinion was right and reinforced.
Therefore, I won't reply again, my ego does not depend on people reading comments on forums.
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