On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 11:06 PM, James Freer jessejazza3.uk@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 8:32 AM, Wayne Stallwood ALUGlist@digimatic.co.uk wrote:
On 17/10/11 13:00, James Freer wrote:
What i meant but perhaps didn't put very well is that i feel it's a step too far too quickly. ubuntu is still making a huge loss per year i gather - they are trying to be market leaders with unity and it's not working. How much longer will Mr Shuttleworth support the loss (i'd have thought he was beginning to run short)?
The truth is that it seems this is how Canonical try to drive things forward...make them default across a huge userbase and the problems have to get fixed...nobody wants to work on a project that nobody is using so by making technology mainstream it gets the focus it needs to flourish.
Pretty much every time they have added a major technology it has followed this roadmap of being available on a release very early in it's development cycle (compiz, Pulse, the self developed Upstart etc and now the self developed Unity) then literally the next release has it as default and is problem ridden at first but because it is the default bugs get filed and hopefully fixed. I have no doubt the same will happen with Unity.
I'd agree with you. That a "similar and different" way of putting it almost akin to M$ style (win 95 three versions, win 98 three versions (1st SE, Me) after that i don't know as i ceased to use it... and client pays each time $$$$$$$!).
"problem ridden at first" - i think that's a poor attitude to have for an OS. Why not get the thing properly sorted and then released - but then i'm back to my old view... if they did an annual release; properly developed and sorted they'd win more users. Having used xubuntu it seems quite a lot different in development to ubuntu - they just plod along at a reasonable pace with realistic targets to achieve. Seems ubuntu haven't learnt much at times over the last five years.
james
Perhaps i should add. Is it on my conscience to donate to ubuntu... not while it undergoes major testing. Do i donate to xubuntu as an appreciation of the time and effort developers put in - yes.
james