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What do LQ members think about the future direction of Ubuntu?

--jeremy

The good thing about Linux, diversity. The bad thing about Linux, diversity. Having "more than half a dozen official flavors and many more derivatives" means a lot of misplaced effort in adapting each flavor. Innovation should be encouraged, but it can be more focused. Furthermore, focusing on a "core" product should minimize the introduction of "bugs" associated with adapting each flavor and result in improved quality.

Slappy,Pappy,Mammy,Happy,Snappy.

I guess it is no different than Puppy, Slitaz, Tinycore, Slackware, Gentoo, etc...........
package management.

Just a bigger user base is all.
I am not afeared of what others do.

Adapt or die. Glad I learned other ways of doing the same thing.

Edit:

Have another cup of coffee jeremy. Ubuntu is not the future of Debian I would think. Might be the future of Mint. But not Debian. Just funnin.

I would rather like to see a mixed approach: The core system and basically anything that is open source (and therefore can be adapted to run on your distribution of choice) should be managed in the traditional way, while container based formats like Snappy are great for closed-source third party applications. Or, like for example Steam does, provide stable runtime libraries for closed source applications.
I don't think that the one-size-fits-all, regardless if it is DEB packages or stuff like Snappy, is a good idea anymore.

Edit: Also, container based formats make sense for open source software that develops to fast for traditional distro management, see the OwnCloud disaster with Ubuntu 12.04.

That's what I get for working on multiple things at once. Typo fixed, thanks for the heads up. "What do LQ members think about the future direction of Ubuntu?"

--jeremy

Canonical is the tail wagging the dog.

The current emphasis of Canonical on portable devices, while simultaneously retaining compatibility with PC, has created a desktop that is not optimized to any particular hardware but rather has even more issues to deal with as it competes on multiple platforms.

Sequestering that desktop into its own package manager may promote internal focus but it further alienates Ubuntu users from the wider Linux community beyond what has already happened with Unity.

IMO Canonical is drowning in their own bathtub and will probably lose influence eventually as they drop support for hardware deemed of marginal importance in favor of hardware that is contributing to their revenue stream.

Suppose I should be thankful for a distro that does not break on every tenth kernel update, but...

I am still waiting for a clean universal desktop experience that is compatible with all applications, power management and suspend/resume/sleep that works properly on my hardware, stable device drivers that take advantage of the full audio and video and networking capability, etc. but without any significant profit motive driving toward hardware compatibility or unified desktop experience, Linux in general seems destined to remain primarily a user-unfriendly server OS.

This bodes very poorly for Canonical business model unless there is some sort of revival in socialist computing that brings together all popular distros to push for a single desktop/hardware standard, anathema to open source model and virtually impossible to enforce with hardware vendors who barely cooperate.

Not likely to happen.

At some point Canonical will realize that it cannot be all things to all hardware and drop support for something, and when it does, competitors will rush in to fill the vacuum.

Meanwhile, impoverished countries without the resources to pay licensing fees will become more important segment of the Linux desktop market. They have no national allegiance to any single provider of any given distro. They are the 'wild card' in play that we need to look to for clues about the direction of open source.

When Torvalds retires/expires there could be a power vacuum with concomitant loss of focus and the resulting kernel/file system chaos may throw Linux into a tailspin.

Ubuntu, based on Debian, faces similar risk if anything goes haywire immediately upstream. The exposure all derivative distros have to their roots is a risk that (to my eyes anyway) looks to be something that I would be concerned about reducing if I were working on a derivative distro that presumes to have taken first place in market share.

IMO Ubuntu would benefit long-term from re-inventing itself as upstream distro and trying to truly unify the desktop experience while retaining KISS philosophy rather than piling more layers of complexity on someone else's code base and just hoping nothing upstream falls apart, including the kernel itself.

Since I have done no research and do not even program, my opinion is from a very distant perspective. Insider opinions are doubtless of more relevance than mine.

Good yarn there.

Thanks for writing it.

I want a banana split today. Think I'll jump on the scooter and go get it.

Edit: before I do. I better comment again on the package management thing and sense of entitlement.

If Ubuntu travels down a certain path. I have the choice to run it or not. That at least is in my power. I handle the things that I can control and disregard the things I cannot control.
Which means I have no sense of entitlement in me.
Just a happy camper with what is available with the world as it is.