[ubuntu-za] 11.04 Beta 2

[Daniël Louw]

A while ago we had a similar discussion. I think it was about 10.10 then,
but the main focus was the Unity/Gnome debacle and why Canonical decided to
phase out Gnome and replace It with Unity.

At some stage I wrote a very lengthy letter stipulating my opinions, and I
believe many agreed with me. I am not going to repeat myself, you can look
in the archives for that particular discussion.

Basically it (in my opinion) boils down to the following.

All these decisions that Canonical made, makes sense when we look at it from
a 'market share' point of view. If we regard ourselves, Ubuntu users, as
being involved in a battle to take over the world with Ubuntu, what are we
going to use as weapons? Gnome Classic, with it's vast customization options
that can easily overwhelm someone that's new to it? Or Unity? Albeit slow
and restrictive, it's easier to understand for new users and because it's so
restrictive, it prevents a new user from breaking it.

I drag my poor mother into discussions like this too often, but she's a good
guinea pig and a fine example. She has the worst case of finger-trouble that
I know of. She managed to put my dad's bakkie in 4X4, and keep it there, all
the way from Sandton to Waterkloof (ouch!). I will NEVER trust her on my pc,
running Lucid standard. I will however, trust her on a Unity machine, as
it's more difficult for her break something there.

The beauty, and the whole point of GNU/Linux is to give it's users the
choice and freedom to do what they want. If you do not like Unity, take it
off, and replace it with something else. Easy peasy.
Unity is going to open the doors for a lot of hardware vendors enabling them
to sell Ubuntu machines, and knowing that they will not have unhappy
clients.

All of us should stop worrying about what we want (we're GNU/Linux users, we
will never get what we want). We should rather worry about what we will need
to help convince someone to switch to Ubuntu, and GNU/Linux in general.

Because in the end, it's all about taking over the world. :-)

PLEASE NOTE: This mail is not aimed at anyone specific. And everything is my
opinion, you do not have to agree (if you do, that'll be awesome!).

-- 
Regards

*Daniël Louw*
================================
daniel at dline.co.za
www.dline.co.za
+27 84 2499 299
+12 12 347 8305
================================
*"Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft
building progress by weight." - *Bill Gates
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