I already made some statements about what I think about this. I do not like Ubuntu neither Canonical or Mark Shuttleworth. But that's not the point why I think Ubuntu is a problem.

Yes, I think Ubuntu is a problem for the open source community.

Why is Ubuntu a problem?

Ubuntu is a problem from my perspective, because they're trying to do something different. They do not follow the Community, they try to do their own thing. The first approch into another direction was the integration of the amazon-search in their desktop. The second one was Mir.

The problem is not, that they want to be inovative. I even think that it is really good to be inovative, just look at docker! But they're doing something wrong, all the time! They do not learn from their mistakes! One big mistake was Unity. The Unity desktop environment simply sucks. It is optimized for small netbooks, which have a small screen – but it uses way too much resources and there are already well-established alternatives which are way better – LXDE and Xfce!

... and the community?

Now, it is not only that Ubuntu is a problem. The community around Ubuntu is a problem, too! I don't want to offend anybody, but the Ubuntu community is a really big community and they still tell outstanding people that Ubuntu is a very good beginner distribution when switching to linux. It is not. It is crap for beginners.

If one of you out there want to do a simple experiment, if you have the ability: Take a Windows user and give him an Ubuntu whateverversion with Unity and another one with Ubuntu and Gnome installed. Tell them to write a Document with the contents of the wikipedia page on Canonical and then install gimp (don't know, is it preinstalled? If yes, some other random software which is not installed...). Don't tell them that they have to compete! I would bet the one with Gnome is faster!

tags: #linux #ubuntu