Ubuntu is under attack

[Mike Bird]

On Sun, 2005-12-18 at 19:42, Eric Dunbar wrote:
> FYI IIRC Ubuntu came out of the gate more-or-less AS IT
> CURRENTLY EXISTS!!

Sorry, you remembered incorrectly.

Ubuntu installed Postfix and Mailx by default until it was
dumbed down.  The desktop dumbing-down seems to be an
ongoing task.

The Ubuntu goal relevant to this discussion is that Ubuntu
be Immediately Useful: "You have a full set of business
productivity applications, internet applications, drawing
and graphics applications, and games.  That one CD gives you a
very good desktop environment out of the box, with many
applications for business, home and personal computer users
installed by default."

There's nothing there about Ubuntu being the firmware for
two thousand dollar IPods.

Those of us really using Ubuntu can't afford to lose our
documents, architectural drawings, newspapers, musical
compositions, accounts receivable, recipes, personal
check register, pictures of the grandkids, programming
projects, etc.  We expect Ubuntu to notify us by email
when a backup fails or a mirror breaks or a virus is found
or the anti-virus update fails.  Log files are for
investigating problems, not problem notifications.  Popups
are transient - what if the grandkids were slaughtering
bad guys when the mirror breaks?  Email is both the
traditional and best solution and in fact the only one
that works until you implement something better.

Now if Ubuntu has changed direction, and has decided to
dumb itself down rather than keep its top-level promise
of being immediately useful and its mid-level promise of
switching from exim to postfix as the required MTA, then
Ubuntu should tell us so that those of us who have people
who rely on our advice can start evaluating distros again.

Hopefully, though, this dumbing down is all a mistake by
some mid-level PHB and will be fixed when Canonical's
brains are back online.

--Mike Bird