[ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu - Wrong Direction?

[Kris Douglas]

On 2 December 2011 09:00, Alan Bell <alan.bell at libertus.co.uk> wrote:
> On 02/12/11 01:20, Ivan Wright wrote:
>>
>> I think they needed to move on and change style, we couldn't sit with a
>> 1995 styled OS forever.
>> What should be done is to do away with the six month development cycle,
>> which is far too short for the amount of work needed on Unity. An 8-12
>> month cycle would have been far better and allowed time for more bug
>> fixes.
>
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases 10.04 is a supported release to 2013 on the
> desktop and 2015 on the server. In April 2012 12.04 will come out which will
> be supported for 5 years. It has been 2 years to get Unity into a state
> where it can go into a release that will be supported for 5 years. Ubuntu
> has a 6 month cycle, with a 24 month cycle on top of that. Various people
> have opinions on whether that is too long and there should be a rolling
> release, other people feel it is too short and should be a 12 month release,
> others feel it should be a "when it's ready" release cycle like Debian.
> There simply isn't one right answer to this, different projects and
> distributions have different release policies, Ubuntu has predictable
> releases every 6 months with an LTS every 24 months. In terms of allowing
> time for bug fixing, this cycle the builds are *much* better than last time.
> Precise is really quite use-able and functional, last time most of the
> accessibility testing was crammed into the end when it started working at
> all. I would encourage you to give Precise a test and file bugs (if you
> can't find any then try booting from a live CD, press Ctrl+S at the first
> installer screen then turn your monitor off and carry on using the screen
> reader).

I have found myself leaving the Unity interface, which is completely
anti-developer, and moved to XFCE, which is providing me with
everything I need and more to cope with my system.

I have found that the complete lack of window management for multiple
monitors and the horrific memory leaks a strong cause for a lot of
people not using it. The icon-based window management works great for
home users until you open more than one of something, then you have no
idea what is what. Finally, I can have my PC on for upwards of 3
weeks, it would crash after a few days on Unity, but this machine has
been on for about 3 weeks now with no memory or performance problems.

There is something just not quite there with Unity, I'm sure it will
get there but the Ubuntu developers have to remember if they scare all
their users away with very "beta" software, they will not easily come
back. Honestly, if I hadn't already installed Ubuntu on my machine I
would have switched to Mint, but I decided to try installing Xubuntu
packages from the repo, haven't regretted it yet.


Just my thoughts.

-- 
Regards, Kris Douglas.
 www.krisd.eu