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: M@GOidPersonally, I always used KDE. But I find funny when people say Unity was a disaster, when the students in my lab never showed problems using it. Very easy to learn DE if you ask me.
I don't believe, for now, that what we will see in 18.04 will be a stock Gnome 3. I downloaded a ISO from Ubuntu Gnome 17.04 to check it out and my God, what a mess was that. It is too alien for a new user, make no sense for those who came from a traditional desktop Like Gnome 2 or KDE, exactly like the mistakes Microsoft did with Windows 8, but in a different form. And what STUPID thing to disable by default "tap to touch" option? Now I understand why people did fork the hell of Gnome 2.
With that said, I bet Canonical will put some make up in Gnome 3 to make it look like Unity. If not, they will loose more users than they already have.
+1
I never use .deb based distros for anything as I have a severe dislike of the package format, but last time I used Ubuntu (back in '13), Unity seemed to be working as well as I could possibly want.
I've tried to use GNOME 3, but I found I just can't. It just doesn't work for me the way KDE does (biggest difference is the multi-monitor support, which GTK simply can't seem to handle).
It's not just me, a lot of people I know who I put in front of a GNOME 3 box just don't take to it like they do to KDE. The only guy I ever met who did like GNOME was a JavaScript dev.
Quoting: liamdaweQuoting: khalismurThis is nothing to do with GOL, as stated. And actually, 99% of the time I do something "against the community" it ends up that I'm right ;) because the people who say that are usually the 1%.Quoting: liamdaweWell, I actually made a decision earlier about doing a new site for general Linux news. Will do a proper announcement on it later.:-( As I said, there is enough redundancy already..... GoL was unique in terms of size, structure and community (there is also boilingsteam).
I totally understand some people have reservations about me doing it, but I will explain more when it's time to.
General news, oh, there are so many already.... Too bad Liam.
You asked the question, almost all answers were negative or neutral and you decided to go for it. I remember that going against your comminuty is seldom a great idea !
That's exactly what I was referring to. Canonical wants to make mir and unity? Let them. Nvidia wants to make closed drivers? Not my problem. I think people in OSS news sites perceive themselves as the decisional power motivated by hate, and that's wrong and against the freedom behind the opensource/free software movement.
Just do what you want Liam. Many of us will follow, some of us will hate. Just do what you feel is right, everything else is secondary.
p.s. "I remember that going against your comminuty is seldom a great idea" ... is this even serious? I'm speechless.
A lot of people seem to think they can tell others what to do with their time. "No, don't work on that project, I don't like it! Work on this other thing instead!" Tough luck, people can decide to do whatever they want and they don't need your permission. You can complain if you want but it's not gonna make people stop working on whatever they feel like working on.
Basically, no one owes anything to anyone. Everyone is free to work on what they want.
I, for one, am glad that people have decided to maintain Unity for those who use it. I'm more of a i3 guy myself but there's a lot of people who enjoyed Unity's features.
Quoting: SkarjakComplaining about fragmentation is completely ridiculous. The whole point of free software is that people are given the freedom to make their own versions and share them.
I once read (might have been on GoL) that it would be a good idea to have a non-fragmented base (like Kernel, base tools, X, Wayland, ...), but a wide variety of user applications.
Quoting: 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.
Quoting: ThePierrasseQuoteThis, 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.
It's funny that you say that, since I originally left Ubuntu in 2010 because I got tired of GNOME 2. I regain interest in Ubuntu when Canonical introduced Unity, and tbh it gave me the best desktop experience i've ever had. Hopefully Unity 7 will still be available as an optional UI in 18.04.
This is exactly my experience. My first Linux back in 2003 was a Suse Linux (yeah it was called Suse Linux back in the days) and it just was so Windows-ish with its KDE. After several years on and off Debian, I restarted my Linux endevours as Steam came into Beta. At that point I installed Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and fell in love with Unity right away.
Because there is one thing that Unity 7 did absolutly right compared to ALL other Linux DE's out there, in times where 16:9 widescreens are the norm, vertical screen space is very precious compared to horizontal screen space. Having a monstrous launcher bar at the bottom is just bad UX design when you can have it at the left side of the screen, preserving precious vertical screen space and using the available but only 80% or so used horizontal screen space. And delivering such a good out of the box experience is what drives Ubuntu.
But it is a good descision by Canonical to let go off Unity 8, and hopefully Mir. Their refocus on the "standard" Linux Desktop Components is good and makes it better for all. For me personally, I will start looking for a new Linux Distro, because without Unity, Ubuntu is not worth it anymore, cause I dislike all their friendship with Microsoft.
Next halt: trying Solus and Antergos and deciding on my future Linux distro.
As for your question Liam, no you don't need a specific website for Linux news. If the news is somehow related to gaming (like this topic definitely is) you can always write about it. At the end of the day, this is your site and you decide the content, if you feel it is newsworthy for us fellow Linux gamers, just write about it. We are free to skip it if we think so. ;)
oldrocker99 Apr 7, 2017
QuoteI have been debating writing about this since we are mainly a gaming news site
At first i wondered why you didnt covered at first, but then i thought: oh well it wont affect gaming as much.
It really made my jaw hit the ground, not only as ubuntu and unity fan but as someone who has grown to like the shuttleworth run canonical wants to do. i am positive mir would have ended up being great and might have even swayed people into it, but alas one can dream...
QuoteQuestion: Is there any interest in me doing a separate site to cover general Linux news?
yes theres is
Quoting: snizzop.s. "I remember that going against your comminuty is seldom a great idea" ... is this even serious? I'm speechless.Well good thing you won't be able to discuss and I won't lose time. But it is serious.
Quoting: khalismurQuoting: snizzop.s. "I remember that going against your comminuty is seldom a great idea" ... is this even serious? I'm speechless.Well good thing you won't be able to discuss and I won't lose time. But it is serious.
I won't feed a troll. No luck for you today.
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