back to article The year GNOMES, Ubuntu sufferers forked off to Mint Linux

It's been a rough year for Linux on the desktop. More specifically, it's been a rough year for GNOME-based Linux on the desktop. But a glimmer of hope may have appeared thanks to a Mint-flavoured distribution of the open-source operating system. KDE, XFCE and other desktop interfaces soldiered on in 2012 in their stolid ways, …

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    1. Hungry Sean
      Thumb Up

      Re: a fight to get into a space that no one wants?

      yup, that's on the money. And there's another important point in Linux's (and sadly, particularly Ubuntu's) favor for power users-- it is the easiest platform for developing android code. All the google tool-chains are setup around Ubuntu, and with (presumably) lots of money from app development and mobile services, why wouldn't you want your power users / content developers to run systems that match and play nicely with whatever it is you are offering customers via "cloud" and "mobile" services?

      But my grandma running Linux? Not happening, and unity-whizz-bang-wtf is certainly not going to convince me to walk her through it when it takes me 20 minutes just to figure out how to get a terminal or where my windows are.

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Show us YOUR numbers!

    @ Greg Eden--

    "...I could almost guarantee that Unity would win by 20 million users (a rough estimate plucked from the air)...."

    Just plucked that little devil right out of thin air, did you? Who do you think you're kidding? "20 million" is The Space Cadet's favorite number. If you don't believe it, just type into a search engine "mark shuttleworth twenty million".

    Here's one, for your amusement:

    "We sell millions of PCs with HP, Lenovo, Dell, Asus, Acer. We expect to to ship close to 20 million PCs in the next year,"

    No kidding? Twenty million? Has anyone seen any indication?

    Here's another:

    " In a recent interview with Julie Bort, Canonical and Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth said, "We expect to ship close to 20 million PCs in the next year." .

    And here's a real knee-slapper:

    “[Our] goal is 200 million users of Ubuntu in 4 years..." (Shuttleworth addressing the 2011 UBUNTU developers' conference). I suppose inflation hits everywhere, even Shuttleworth's imagination.

    (I'm not giving any citations because you'll readily find the sources when you 'google' "mark shuttleworth twenty million")

    Between you and Shuttleworth, you two could have Ubuntu ruling the LInux AND the desktop worlds. Kinda like King Midas, except all you two have to do is open your mouths. The rest of the Ubuntu cult could keep silent.

    If only...

    1. Greg Eden

      Re: Show us YOUR numbers!

      Ha, Ubuntu Cult? Me? I am not an Ubuntu user myself. I have tried it a few times but always end up back in Debian. But as you asked for numbers .....

      I am realist enough to know that Ubuntu users outnumber the rest of us many times over. Just look at the forums. Some say that the forums are so big because they are all learners, but that is just living in denial. And most of them use Unity.

      There are surveys (Lifehacker) that put Ubuntu at over 50% of Linux users. If Linux makes up 1 - 1.5% of all computer users in the world, then do a quick guesstimate and you get a very big number. According to World Stats as of June 2012 there are 2.4 billion unique Internet users. Add shared connections and that number must pass 3 billion. 1.5% Linux users = 45 million. Half go to Ubuntu = 22.5 million.

      Nobody will deny that those figures are all guesswork. It is impossible to ever know for sure.

      And, just to be clear, I dislike Unity and would never use it. But I do use Gnome Shell and would never go back to the old ways.

  2. Ceiling Cat
    Pint

    No love for Kubuntu . . .

    Even though it, as far as I can tell, is actually useable*.

    Granted, KDE has gotten a bit bloated and "fancy" itself, but they still let you turn off the eye candy. There's none of this "lens" nonsense either.

    * - your opinion of "useability" and mine may be radically different, so feel free to downvote this comment and tell me - in no uncertain terms - why I am a complete noobcake for using KDE, and what the advantages of your favorite window manager are. After all, there's nothing like "userbase fragmentation" to prove that Linux is ready for the desktop :^)

    Beer, 'cos I have to go to work today (it's not yet 01/01/2013 here).

    1. Vic

      Re: No love for Kubuntu . . .

      > Even though it, as far as I can tell, is actually useable*.

      KDE 3.5 was a fantastic desktop. I still use it in places.

      Then KDE 4.0 came along. And it was *terrible*.

      Now everyone tells me that it's gotten a lot better since 4.0 - and I'm quite prepared to believe it has. But the pain is still too fresh, and I'm just not ready to try it again just yet...

      Vic.

      1. Morten Bjoernsvik

        Re: No love for Kubuntu . . .

        > KDE 3.5 was a fantastic desktop. I still use it in places.

        > Then KDE 4.0 came along. And it was *terrible*.

        KDE4.9 is fantastic. I've been using it ~8h/day since beginning of September and it has not crashed once.

        Now you can move all icons around from anywhere to everywhere. The shortcuts are stable and always working, which was not the case earlier. Now I'm watining for KDE4.10

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So with Mint you get the choice of a GUI that's an unimaginative rip-off of Windows 95, or... a GUI that's an unimaginative rip-off of Windows 95. Wow, what a tempting plethora of options.

    1. Charles 9

      Well, since Windows 95 seems to be the GUI with which most people are comfortable, why fix what essentially isn't broken (the style isn't the problem, really--it's the behind-the-scenes stuff)?

  4. Andus McCoatover
    Windows

    I "Forked" off to Mint 13.

    Then, I forked off a lot of other people, by shoving it up their orifices (DVD version).

    Does what they want. When Ubuntu went Unity, the world went Universally - effing crazy!!!! Stupid move. Does it enhance performance? No. Does nothing different. Period, fullstop, end-of-line. Oh, fucks your computer, "but apart from that, Mrs Lincoln, what did you think of the play/software upgrade?" (It'll take a minute or two...)

  5. Miek
    Linux

    "why, for the love of all things usable, is there still no button to minimise windows?" -- There is a minimise button, it has just been disabled in gconf editor. Also the minimise button is a feature of Metacity not Gnome itself.

  6. A J Stiles

    Is it just me

    Is it just me who actually prefers Unity?

    I find the launch bar down the left-hand side, and the Amiga / Mac-like unified top menus, perfect for my Thinkpad's letterbox screen (where vertical real estate is very much at a premium).

    Though, it wouldn't make a lot of sense on the more square monitors attached to my other boxen. So they are running KDE.

    1. Andus McCoatover
      Windows

      Re: Is it just me

      At least the 'more square monitors' of which you speak don't have rounded corners...

  7. Joe K

    Now its all clear

    Todays story about the Ubuntu phone, now the crazy Shuttleworth traincrash makes sense.

    The moron believes he can take on Google, MS and Apple via the Unity backdoor.

    What a nutcase.

    1. jake Silver badge

      Re: Now its all clear

      He's not a nutcase. He's a space cadet. Not that there is much difference.

  8. crhylove
    FAIL

    Best option not even mentioned!

    Mate and Cinnamon both suck. XFCE is fantastic, and Mint's implementation is particularly good.

  9. J 3
    Thumb Down

    Ubuntu trouble

    The latest version of Ubuntu, 12.10, has been a disaster for me. Crashes like there is no tomorrow -- and soon there won't be for Ubuntu in my machines if it goes on like this. The interface? I actually got to like Unity after I learned its workings. A few hours work and I got really efficient in it. A "traditional desktop" (like the CentOS running KDE at work) slows me down now. But they broke the stuff under the hood, apparently, and if I wanted pretty shiny things that are crappy I would have stayed with another OS (ahem....).

    Now, I know the .10 releases are usually supposed to be more bleeding edge, experimental, prone to problems. But I've been using Ubuntu for many years (at least since 2007), and have never seen such an unstable Ubuntu -- and that in two completely different computers of mine which had never had problems before running previous versions of Ubuntu.

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