[DC LoCo] Oracle gives up on OpenOffice after community forks the project

[Mackenzie Morgan]

On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 4:09 PM, Michael Haney <thezorch at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 3:08 PM, Mackenzie Morgan <macoafi at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 2:21 PM, Michael Haney <thezorch at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> (actually, a Gnome 2-only fork of Ubuntu 11.04 has already been
>>> started).
>>
>> Why would they duplicate effort like that?  11.04 includes class GNOME
>> 2 as an option at login time.
>>
>
> That's 11.04.  Its been officially announced that Unity in 11.10 will
> be compulsory.  I'm willing to give Unity a try, anything that can
> help Ubuntu run faster on my old PC is welcome.  Xubuntu doesn't have
> the features I need.

Like what? You can use any GNOME app you want (including the panel
applets) in Xfce.

>>> One of them is the whole saga with Unity, and the other is
>>> the lack of a monitor type selection option in the screen resolution
>>> preferences window.  That one alone has made it impossible for
>>> literally thousands of new users to give Ubuntu serious consideration.
>>
>> gnome-display-properties isn't an Ubuntu-specific application.  If you
>> want to try to convince GNOME that it's a good idea to have more
>> options available to users, I wish you luck.[1]
>>
>
> That's what I'm talking about.  The blame tossing again.  Its not our
> fault, go talk to Gnome or the Xorg people.  Canonical has access to
> the source code, correct?  So why can't they make a solution for us
> non-programmers who need one.  It would be greatly appreciated if
> something was done rather than just say ... "its the other guy's fault
> go complain to them."

The distribution's job is to package up and distribute the software.
That's it. Fixing bugs post-release happens too, but adding new
features to existing software? That is best done upstream, period.
That benefits **everyone** no matter what distro they use.  This isn't
"blame tossing."  That application flat-out is not a Canonical
product. It is a GNOME product. End of story.

Deviating from GNOME has repercussions. It means having to maintain a
pile of patches through every release, even as GNOME changes becoming
less compatible with your patches. It means having to re-test
everything in case your patch breaks it. It means having to redo
translation templates and translations. It just plain adds a bunch of
extra work that continues as long as the patch exists.  It's not just
a matter of the few hours it takes to initially write the patch.

And it means people whining that "waaaahhhh Ubuntu did something
different from GNOME! EVIL! *wave pitchforks angrily*"

It is highly preferable that patches go upstream.  It makes upstream
happy.  Upstreams tend to get a bit angry when distros add in patches
all willy nilly as you may have noticed in the Ubuntu/GNOME fights of
late.  If you know of a patch that would fix this and is languishing
on Launchpad waiting for someone to do something with it (like send it
upstream to GNOME), give me a link, and I'll pass it on.

You are doing the equivalent of getting angry at Dell because there's
a bug in the pre-installed Internet Explorer that came on your laptop.

> Incorrect, at least for me.  Tried adding modes with xrandr, followed
> the instructions correctly and it has never worked.  I had to go back,
> install an old version of Ubuntu with the monitor selection tab in the
> screen resolution window, choose the setting that worked, make a copy
> of the modified xorg.conf, reinstall the new version of Ubuntu, enable
> my nVidia card and then replace the existing xorg.conf.  I've been
> using that same xorg.conf file ever since.
>
> The point is, I should not have to do that.

Oh, right, Nvidia. They're not compatible with xrandr yet are they?
Nvidia has its own separate display settings tool.  Did you try it?

> Also, is it is so
> hard to have a feature that reverts settings back to their previous
> settings unless you lock a button on a window that asks if its working
> correctly or not.  This is a MODERN Linux distribution.  A MODERN OS,
> and there are features and capabilities that are EXPECTED to be there.

Instant application of settings is very common on the GNOME desktop.
Perhaps you would be more happy with KDE, a desktop environment that
uses manual apply exclusively as far as I can tell.

-- 
Mackenzie Morgan