Canonical pulls the plug on Kubuntu [LWN.net]

Canonical pulls the plug on Kubuntu

Posted Feb 7, 2012 7:00 UTC (Tue) by danieldk (guest, #27876)
Parent article: Canonical pulls funding from Kubuntu

First of all, I'd like to thank Jonathan for his work. I have never used KUbuntu, but it has probably benefitted a lot of people.

But... I have always wondered why Ubuntu kept so many supported and unsupported variants around (Kubuntu and Xubuntu). If you want to target the end user and gain some foothold in the marketplace, you have to focus on making one approach perfect, rather than scattering focus over some subpar solutions (for the end user).

There are plenty of distributions for expert people that want to run Xfce, KDE, or fvwm, including Debian. But there is almost no distribution that focuses on just one environment, and makes it perfect for the 'average joe', like Apple did with OS X.

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Canonical pulls the plug on Kubuntu

Posted Feb 7, 2012 7:58 UTC (Tue) by Cato (guest, #7643) [Link]

I like the fact that Ubuntu has variants - despite being such a popular distro it has space for Xubuntu, Lubuntu, etc, most of which fill different niches to the main Ubuntu. It also makes sense for the project - if people stop using Ubuntu for some reason (*cough* Unity...) there's a chance they will still use a *buntu variant.

On the other hand, I've switched to Linux Mint and really like it - enough of an Ubuntu base for a good package base, but more stable and better for "Aunty Tilly" - you can have a very simple start menu showing just the few applications someone needs to use most of the time.

OSX is not perfect for anybody

Posted Feb 7, 2012 8:35 UTC (Tue) by kragilkragil2 (guest, #76172) [Link] (8 responses)

Again, this stupid notion that OSX is perfect for the "average Joe", whatever that means. Now I have to even read it on LWN. I think that is utter BS. OSX is good in a few respects and falls short in many others.
OSX "success"(6% marketshare) is mainly achieved by a very big marketing budget and to a much lesser extent by good/sexy hardware. Those are way more important than the OS, which people don't really care about as long as they can run the applications they need.

OSX is not perfect for anybody

Posted Feb 7, 2012 9:08 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (2 responses)

100% agree. To really measure success of MacOS X (as compared to success of Mac) you only need to take a look on the Hackintosh - i.e. on the version of MacOS which is not developed in tandem with the hardware it runs on.

It's hard to get strong numbers but empirical evidence shows that it's less popular then even Linux. Most users who do a conscious choice about the solftware they want to use pick [illegal copy of] Windows, not [illegal copy of] Hackintosh or even [legal copy of] Linux.

OSX is not perfect for anybody

Posted Feb 7, 2012 11:02 UTC (Tue) by Cato (guest, #7643) [Link] (1 responses)

I don't think it's valid to measure OS X popularity by the uptake of Hackintosh OS X. If you want to install Linux or Windows, almost any PC will work, whereas for a Hackintosh you need to be very careful about what hardware you choose (see the front page of the main Hackintosh site: http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page ).

I don't think OS X is perfect, but as pre-installed on Macs it's clearly quite usable, and Apple has done a lot of usability testing that shows in the product.

When Ubuntu or Mint are installed and configured correctly they can also be very usable, and they are probably easier to lock down and simplify for people who just need to run a few apps.

OSX is not perfect for anybody

Posted Feb 7, 2012 12:35 UTC (Tue) by danieldk (guest, #27876) [Link]

"I don't think it's valid to measure OS X popularity by the uptake of Hackintosh OS X."

Indeed. I have used various Linux distributions and BSD operating systems since 1994. Even after some amount of work, I was not able to install Hackintosh on my HP desktop machine. So, it's nothing what a very tiny contingent of enthusiasts would or could install.

OSX is not perfect for anybody

Posted Feb 7, 2012 10:44 UTC (Tue) by fb (guest, #53265) [Link]

> Again, this stupid notion that OSX is perfect for the "average Joe", whatever that means. Now I have to even read it on LWN. I think that is utter BS. OSX is good in a few respects and falls short in many others.

Very true.

I've managed Ubuntu (and Kubuntu) machines for my parents, and I also help my wife with an OSX laptop.

Apple gets a lot right but make no mistake, there are loads of serious inconvenient flaws in OSX. I am not talking about "oh, it's so much easier in Debian", but things that inconvenience my wife a lot while using the computer.

I think the reference comparison for OSX users is the WinXP they upgraded from. Also there is the buyer of an expensive gadget, say Apple laptop, (unconsciously) trying to justify the decision. That distorts perspective a lot.

Based on the experience of my parents using Ubuntu, I sincerely believe that Ubuntu beats OSX in usability in many aspects. However, even with a seasoned Linux husband to help, the number of 'deal breaker flaws' in Ubuntu was such that we ruled it out when replacing my wife's WinXP laptop.

OSX is not perfect for anybody

Posted Feb 7, 2012 12:32 UTC (Tue) by danieldk (guest, #27876) [Link] (2 responses)

There's only one thing worse than anecdotal evidence, that is no evidence (as in your comment). But, I have many friends who barely know anything about computers and are happy OS X users. In the past, I also installed Linux on family's and friends' machines, but they usually reverted back to Windows in days or weeks. This was caused by everything from incompatibility (OO.org/LibreOffice mangles my PowerPoint presentations), hardware incompatibility, instability (program X crashes), incompleteness (what user-friendly program can I use to edit a movie, like Adobe Premier Elements), installation of software that is not in the distro's repositories and confusion (I want to write an e-mail, but see five different programs).

Of course, some of these issues are not directly related to polish, i.e. as hardware support (since Apple only has to support their own) and the availability of widely used applications (Office, Adobe CS, games, etc.). But, OS X also offers users a simple and polished environment, where they never have to use a terminal to do what they want. Needless to say, they even nailed user-friendliness better with iOS.

Unfortunately, many computer-savvy people are blind to the concerns of the average computer user.

OSX is not perfect for anybody

Posted Feb 7, 2012 22:46 UTC (Tue) by kragilkragil2 (guest, #76172) [Link] (1 responses)

Bla, you are obviously one of those über-happy Apple customers that post all over the internet.
You said it was perfect and I just don't see it. If they need PowerPoint, Premiere etc they need Windows or OSX, sure. If they want to play big budget games they need Windows and OSX isn't perfect anymore.

If like most people they just want to surf the web, write letters and manage their photos and they don't want to be bothered with updates and viruses they can run Linux just fine. A properly setup Linux box is the most worry-free computer you will find, no terminals involved. So I can also claim it is perfection, can I? My extended family is proof. I had no instabilities on good hardware ( where are your bugreports? :-P I want to see evidence)

OSX is not perfect for anybody

Posted Feb 8, 2012 16:49 UTC (Wed) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link]

Agreed, and same experiences here (happy Ubuntu LTS users all around).

I also didn't personally get to enjoy OS X during my half a year of occasional use, it felt cluttered compared to Ubuntu and it was not the easiness of usage utopia it's said to be.

But yes it's annoying that the OS X is the best and only truth folks are everywhere, especially since a) world is not black-and-white and b) it seems ignorant to only praise Apple that has so many negative sides for many average Joes, even if OS X is an ok software to use (Apple and only Apple) computer with.

Like said, too bad most people don't get to experience proper off-the-shelf Linux experience in the PC world.

OSX is not perfect for anybody

Posted Feb 7, 2012 22:56 UTC (Tue) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link]

The problem is that actually lots of people do not have valid choice.
Where I works, people are offered the choice between Mac laptop and Linux-hostile laptops. People choosing Linux end up disgusted with the poor hardware support. On the other hand, I buy laptops with perfect linux support (e.g. stable suspend to disk since 1998), but most Linux users have no idea how to proceed. Even computers sold with Linux preinstalled often fail to have perfect hardware support.

So if you are looking for perfect hardware support, Mac is the easy option. It even beats Windows.

Canonical pulls the plug on Kubuntu

Posted Feb 8, 2012 21:02 UTC (Wed) by pebolle (guest, #35204) [Link] (1 responses)

> But... I have always wondered why Ubuntu kept so many supported and
> unsupported variants around (Kubuntu and Xubuntu). If you want to target
> the end user and gain some foothold in the marketplace, you have to focus
> on making one approach perfect, rather than scattering focus over some
> subpar solutions (for the end user).

0) I've always wondered about that too. Matthew Paul Thomas once wrote - when he was employed by Canonical, which I assume Paul still is - a rather nice blog post about "Ubuntu and “desktop environments”" (now available through http://web.archive.org/web/20101205084715/http://mpt.net.... ). That post focusses on desktop choice at install time. But to me it seems the same arguments apply to download time (ie, Canonical should focus only on Ubuntu, and should not bother with its variants).

1) Perhaps Canonical doesn't want to put all its eggs in one basket. But if that's the case one could still wonder why the variants get the exposure they get now.

2) Whatever Canonical's reasons, their behaviour fits in a pattern of Linux distributions targeting the (rather small) market segment of free software desktops with different offerings. See for example Fedora - the distribution which I actually use - which offers both two full scale desktop "spins" (Gnome and KDE) and two light weight desktop "spins" (LXDE and Xfce).

3) Do I need to elaborate on the downsides of this, well, balkanization of free software desktop offerings?

Canonical pulls the plug on Kubuntu

Posted Feb 8, 2012 22:39 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

remember that when Ubuntu started they did not have any KDE support. Kubuntu started off as a community fork to replace GNOME with KDE and it was popular enough for Canonical to put some resources into supporting it.

Canonical pulls the plug on Kubuntu

Posted Feb 9, 2012 0:12 UTC (Thu) by lenov (guest, #15428) [Link]

I note that a lot of "so what" comments start by "I have never been a kubuntu user". Well, if you were a kubuntu user, maybe you'd know that Kubuntu is closer to the "average joe" user than ubuntu. I did the test on several people around, including kids, and they are more "at home" with Kubuntu. I don't really know why. But it seems ubuntu is rather closer to the classical Linux/Unix users (although Unity changed that quite a lot).

And KDE is way more esthetic than Gnome or Unity, but that is a totally personal and subjective statement :-)