Pertinent to the thread on this list recently, I thought some of you
might be interested in what the guy who (currently) bankrolls a lot of
the Ubuntu development has to say on the matter. In an open online chat
via The Register yesterday:-
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/28/mark_shuttleworth_live_chat/
Just thought it might give people some background on things and what
direction we're heading. Not trying to stir up the hornets nest, just
passing on what the boss says :)
Things that rang true for me:-
Comment From Nick
mr Shuttleworth,regarding your reference on Unity,we can see a slight
dislike of experienced and new ubuntu users regarding it's "hard to use"
interface.What are your comments on that matter?
Mark Shuttleworth:
@Nick, yes, there was a lot of consternation at the change. But we
didn't see any way to get from old to perfect new without going through
imperfect new, and we felt it was obsolescence if we didn't make the
commitment. We had to leave a lot of friends behind, most of them are
friends again.
Register Gav:
what was at stake for UB if that change wasn't made: the embrace of all
interfaces, the 2008 "reboot", the switch to Unity? was this a
make-or-break for Ubuntu?
Mark Shuttleworth:
It was tough to lead, I can tell you. We had done very well just
shipping the best of FLOSS, but it clearly wasn't enough. Back in 2008
we had a very hard time getting anyone to listen on the topic of design,
and when we tried to lead, we found industry politics blocked us. So we
decided to JFDI, and I'm glad we did. The rest have followed, grumbling.
Mark Shuttleworth:
Windows 8 is really interesting. Microsoft have realised they need to
address all form factors. The Metro work is world class, but the
tablet/desktop integration in Win 8 is sucky, in part because they were
not willing or able to move the desktop as hard as we were in the shift
to Unity. If we had tried to marry Gnome2 and a tablet, you would get
Win8 :). So Unity on the desktop was in large part designed to make the
tablet / desktop convergence slick. It's been copied by others, but I
don't think they understand exactly what they were copying ;)
Comment From Big Dave
Do you see Linux Mint as a threat and are there any plans to bring
Ubuntu closer to Linux Mint with its improved ease-of-use for users?
Mark Shuttleworth:
@Big Dave, am happy for Mint to be addressing the needs of its users. As
a fellow Debian-based distro, we have a lot in common. I think there's a
limit to how far you can go if you only appeal to people who are grumpy
about change, though, because then you either have to maintain the old,
or introduce new change yourself.
Mint said they would maintain Gnome2, then stopped. Then said they would
offer Gnome Shell Extensions. Then forked Gnome Shell. It's all good and
OK, but I think it gets more difficult over time unless you commit to a
vision and drive it. And I don't know what that vision is.
Cheers,
--
Alan Pope
Engineering Manager
Canonical - Product Strategy
+44 (0) 7973 620 164
alan.p...@canonical.com
http://ubuntu.com/
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