Mastodawn

I keep hearing everyone freak out over Ubuntu killing Unity and not focusing on Desktop anymore. My question is now that another main Distro now is running gnome and the death of Unity might help Gnome. Linux Desktop is not dead but now that will push more dev on one GUI. Hopefully that will make Gnome much better. What do you think?

[email protected]May 18, 2017

@omnipotens I think GNOME3's beyond saving at this point, but I'm also the kind of person that won't use a DE if it can be avoided. I really like using small, purpose-built tools over whole suites of tools I may never use.

That said, with more people working on it, hopefully it'll become more appealing to people that like the idea of a DE

Michael Brazda May 18, 2017

@architect I like Gnome. I like it because its customisations and I can set it up to work with my hybrid laptop for my touch screen. My only complaint is gnome-shell is kinda heavy and uses to much resource. Other than that I like it more than Unity. With that said each windows manager has its place

AmericanIdiot May 18, 2017

@omnipotens @architect I am trying out Gnome again for the first time in ages, and I have to say - I like it better than Unity (less quirks, so far). It is heavy, but the Galago is a HiDPI device, so I have only a few choices right now that support that reasonably well.

Michael Brazda May 18, 2017

@architect @AmericanIdiot With this announcement I think hardware vendors are going to start hitting Gnome harder and hopefully get HiDPi support better on Gnome. Gnomes HiDPi support is already better than Windows.

frostclaw20 May 18, 2017

@omnipotens I mean most people that seriously use Linux are in other DEs.

André Bação May 18, 2017

@omnipotens I don't mind the death of unity but for sure that Canonical will end with the Linux Desktop effort.
My vision is that they will only focus on server and from time to time, fix some bugs that might appear in Gnome or other.
The desktop doesn't give them direct money.

Michael Brazda May 18, 2017

@abacao That's not entirely true the desktop does give them money. It's just not as profitable. Hardware vendors and other companies purchase desktop support licenses. The issue is more people use Ubuntu in the cloud than on desktops.

André Bação May 18, 2017

@omnipotens like I said, the desktop don't give them direct money. And I don't think they get money from support of desktop but for support for server or am I wrong?

SeaSharp May 18, 2017

@abacao @omnipotens Didn't the Ubuntu Gnome team recently put out a survey requesting input on Ubuntu Gnome features? They seem to be leaning up for sure, but I don't think the desktop is going anywhere, just slowing down.

It's not a bad thing for Ubuntu to leverage the Gnome dev base like this I think.

Michael Brazda May 18, 2017

@seasharp @abacao I dont think its a bad thing in general. I think it will create more focus to fix one gui. Companies like system76 Dell and many others already develop for desktop and its mostly been unity. Now it will bring them all to Gnome which can have a greater effect with redhat and others developing more. And like I said before Unity code is out there if its truly worth it then it will get forked.

Michael Brazda May 18, 2017

@abacao They do get money from desktop support. Companies like Dell purchase and even amazom purchases desktop support.

Catbot May 18, 2017

@omnipotens I think it is clear that using Gnome is a means to reduce effort while still being able to offer a quality desktop. For Gnome that's really good news, a growing user- and contributor base. But that comes at the expense of Unity, so the number of people active in the Linux desktop does certainly not grow from Canonical's decision.

Michael Brazda May 18, 2017

@Catbot Do we need them behind Unity for it to survive? Look at gnome 2 it was not it's time to die so it gave birth to Mate. Great thing about open source is the community controls the destiny not a single company.

Catbot May 18, 2017

@omnipotens @Catbot I really don't know. The obvious answer is No, Unity can survive. And it might, we just can't predict how many users will become contributors, and how many contributors will go away.

kelbot May 18, 2017

@omnipotens I think it has potential to be good for Gnome users. Doesn't really effect me at all because I don't like gnome.

Vassilis Palassopoulos May 18, 2017

@omnipotens Canonical switching to GNOME is one of the best news I've heard in the last 5+ years when it comes to desktop linux. The other would be Steam for linux.

Personally I always found the development of Unity being slow and the technical decisions being ill-informed (Mir, multiple rewrites of Unity).

Now they can focus on what they do best.

Desktop Ubuntu will turn more cost-effective while delivering better quality.

P.S.: I'm using arch with KDE