Published at LXer:

Changing Ubuntu's default interface to Unity instead of GNOME is madness! If you ever watched the movie “300” then you know that one of the supporting characters proclaims at one point that “…this is madness!” shortly before being fatally kicked into a deep, dark hole by one of the main characters.

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What?!?! Who agrees with this article? Not me, that's for sure.

Here's why:

https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubu...ty-form-factor

This is what Shuttleworth is implementing: Unity form factors for both desktop and netbook use. The Unity for the desktop will *NOT* be the same as the Unity for the netbook.

This is Ubuntuuuuuuuuuuuu !!! *kick*

you should yell it, like leonidas did

lol, anyone imagine shuttleworth screaming that battle-cry and kicking the blogger into the giant pit of death?

Does that mean Gubuntu will be released soon? Cool name

What's after "Natty Narwhal"? Obnoxious Octopus?

Obese Ostrich.

Wonder what one of those would look like! A bit top-heavy...

Here's what Unity (and Ubuntu in general) is: Not Slackware, Arch, or Gentoo with minimal Live CDs without X that wireless networks are impossible to configure on, that's for sure! In my opinion Ubuntu is the Firefox of Linuxes (along with Mint): it installs and configures in a fashion that newbies are used to, especially newbies coming from Windoze or O$ X, which are the newbies of the majority.

This is why in my opinion recommending Arch, Slackware, Gentoo, LFS, or minimal Debian to newbies is a bad idea -- especially if they have the added burden of satisfying dependencies, especially build dependencies, of packages manually.

Why? Because newbies will simply stop at the failure to build or install some software package, crying "configure: error: <blah blah blah>: Help me!" or for that matter similar issues with the Slackware package manager about packages not installing.

Face it: The reason why Firefox and OpenOffice became as popular as they are is because they offered *free* and comparable alternatives to proprietary software. That's exactly what Ubuntu is morphing into, and us geeks just have to respect it. Why? At least it's Linux -- AFAIR *free* and *open source* -- and not some proprietary OS with restrictive EULAs, "activation", or vendor lock in.

Every newbie should be able to install a standard Debian, Fedora, openSuse, or, or, or, if he is able to install Windows (that is its real name, not some childish Windoze or similar). And isn't Ubuntu One and the Ubuntu music store some kind of vendor lock in?

At least Ubuntu seems to have the same kind of fanboys like Windows.

Yeah, Debian but not Rolling Debian -- that's what LMDE is for.

And it was Slackware, Gentoo, LFS, Arch, FreeBSD, etc. that I was ranting about, not Debian (which in most cases has a DE on the Live CD, unlike those others). Especially if recommended to people who barely know Windoze or O$ X.

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No, that is what Debian Testing or Unstable are for.

LFS, and I think Arch, Gentoo and FreeBSD, too (I don't know about Slackware) state clearly on their websites that you have to do the configuration mostly manual and that they are for the more advanced user. LFS even warns that you have to have at least basic knowledge, so I think here you are right, these are not beginner distros. I know that the Slackware people think different about this, just my personal opinion. So they shouldn't be recommended to beginners that are not even able to manage their Windows or OS X installation. But I don't see the point in recommending any OS to anyone, if he is not able to administer his own computer. In my opinion those people should learn how to do it, or pay someone to do it for them.

By the way, why are you bumping threads not even 3 hours after the last reply?

Bob will strike you down.

Kenny likes bumping threads. That's what Kenny does.