[ubuntu-uk] Unity launcher ....

[Avi Greenbury]

Neil Greenwood wrote:

> Well, you can volunteer to support it, and put the option back in. Or
> pay someone to do it if you don't have the skills yourself. That's
> the joy of free software.
> 
> However, Canonical decided they weren't going to keep paying to
> support it. That's their right too.
> 

I don't think anyone's questioned that. In fact your the first here (as
far as I can see) to mention whether it's some right of Canonical's or
not to do this.

This, I think, is the problem with a lot of responses to these
messages. They're not straight-up complaints so much as expressions of
disappointment in the main. Nobody's trying to claim that Canonicalis
somehow obliged to not change the DE or not make the backgrounds of
terminals purple[0], or that users are somehow tied to using
Ubuntu (or, even, that Ubuntu users are tied to Unity)[1] - they're just
rather disappointed that Ubuntu appears to be no longer interested in
what it used to be interested in, and specifically the bits of its past
interest that an apparently vocal part of the userbase particularly
liked it for. 

Perhaps the reasons are sound; I can't honestly claim to
know what they are since the only response anybody seems to get to
recent questioning of Unity's behaviour is "try Fedora".

To simply say that these users can use something else is rather missing
the point; in the main they're the user group who are already aware of
other distros (even if, somehow, the knowledge of other DEs for Ubuntu
has escaped the majority of them), but they're still perfectly entitled
to be disappointed in the apparent large shift in direction. I *want* to
use and like and support Ubuntu (and even Unity) for reasons that I'm
having trouble remembering, but that doesn't mean I actually *do*.

Anyway, I decided to stop getting into these discussions - I only
meant to take issue with your precise argument rather than actually
pick a side here.

-- 
Avi


[0] I still check the VGA lead every time I log into a Ubuntu server :)