07.02.11
Posted in GNU/Linux, Ubuntu at 7:42 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Ubuntu is no longer making waves, just ripples
Summary: Analysis of a likely scenario where Ubuntu loses its leadership among GNU/Linux distributions for the desktop
Occasionally we write about the role of Android in Linux popularisation (because it is probably the fastest-growing Linux-powered platform), yet rarely do we cover Ubuntu anymore. One of our readers, Roy, suggested that we should sometimes deviate from our focus on external threats to GNU/Linux and perhaps focus on advocacy, not just in the daily links. He did have a point and now that we do not have many posts to write (simply because there are not as many distinct threats as there used to be, at least not many that we have not tackled already), it might be reasonable to issue a commentary about Ubuntu.
“A lot of people already know Ubuntu, so they need not go to Distrowatch and browse that particular site for additional information about Ubuntu.”Well, many people are quick to point out that in Distrowatch rankings for particular time spans Ubuntu is now second or third. This has not happened in years. That site, however, is not a very valid prominence indicator as it counts a level or curiosity or exploration. A lot of people already know Ubuntu, so they need not go to Distrowatch and browse that particular site for additional information about Ubuntu. Rather, they want to know what else is out there and how it is unique (or what the homepage is and what reviewers day) Going by trends, however, it is possible to argue that Distrowatch shows decreased interest in Ubuntu.
Headlines from the news matching “ubuntu” are being accumulated by my mail client several times per day. Some of these headlines are not about Ubuntu the distribution but about cuisine and basketball for example (long story, not relevant to this post). But about 80% of the results are about the operating system, so it dominates the name. Last week I compared June of 2011 with June of 2010. In terms of news volume matching “ubuntu” there was a major decline this year. Last year there was about 50% more coverage (after merging similar headlines), This can validate suspicion that, assuming not much has changed in Google’s algorithms/spiders, among journalists there is decreased interest in Ubuntu. Is it because of Google’s Android and the Chrome family of products (these are Linux based)? It would be easy to guess but not to tell for sure. For all we know, Ubuntu has not suffered any notable departures in months and backlash against Unity has quieted down. The main question remains then, why has Ubuntu gone so quiet? And also, is this an opportunity to rival distributions such as Mageia? Your thoughts on this are welcome.
In actual news about Ubuntu, Canonical goes deeper into the whole ‘cloud’ (Fog Computing) venture, as shown in the following:
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I have never been a big fan of cloud computing, due to the risk of losing ownership of my data. But, I do like the concept of a ‘copy’ of my data (not the only copy of my data) available on cloud so that I can share it with others or access it from where ever I want. Honestly speaking with 16GB Nexus S, 32GB Samsung Galaxy Tab and a 360GB Ubuntu Dell Mini along with a portable 500GB HDD, I don’t have to worry about availability of my data, I carry my it with me, just the way I carry my credit cards with me.
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The Ubuntu Promise states that it will always remain free. Canonical’s Business Model is to build a set of Cloud Services around the Ubuntu OS which by itself is offered free. The cloud services will be free upto a certain limit after which a nominal fee is charged for the service that helps sustain the company that will keep on investing in Ubuntu to make it bigger and better.
Canonical’s Business Model relies heavily on the success of their Cloud Services. The company offered its first cloud service in 2009 by the name of Ubuntu One as a File Sync and Storage service free with a limit of 2GB. They made steady progress debuting new features and extending the service to smartphones as well by publishing iPhone and Android apps.
Ubuntu itself (desktop side) is working on its own changes, irrespective of the upstream:
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Ubuntu 11.10 Alpha 2 is expected late next week. To help temper your appetite until its release here are a couple of recent changes in Oneiric…
Would it not have been safer for Ubuntu to just stick with classic GNOME or KDE? Mark Shuttleworth is trying to “Cross the Chasm”, but instead he is falling into it by disappointing some of the same geeks who recommended Ubuntu to friends, peers, family, and colleagues. I am going to try Unity this month and judge for myself. █
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06.14.11
Posted in GNU/Linux, Novell, OpenSUSE, Red Hat, Ubuntu at 12:50 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Volunteer Gardener
Summary: How communities of large GNU/Linux distributions are often perceived by their patrons, even if this is not explicitly stated
ONE taboo subject in the GNU/Linux community was brought up last night in IRC. People get insulted or fearful (depending on their role) if someone points out the value of communities to the company with trademarks and control over these communities. If an unpaid volunteer perceives peers as people more worthy and better rewarded, there is backlash (see what selective monetary invectives did to Debian about 4 years ago). There are certain things that just cannot be said and certain illusions that are necessary for the status quo.
Here is an example scenario. If it is said that some volunteers help with the expectation of receiving a job that way (like placements and internships), they deny this aggressively. If a volunteer is called an employee of the company which pays a wage to run its community, then too opposition comes from many directions. It’s not that the claim is untrue, it’s just not a convent one to grasp.
“It’s not that the claim is untrue, it’s just not a convent one to grasp.”But let’s face it and be true to ourselves. Companies like Novell, Red Hat and even tiny Canonical have obligations to themselves and often to shareholders. The development communities are convenient to them because they reduce the cost of doing business (key products which are carriers to the rest of the portfolio), where the toll is the time and effort of people. As long as a company maintains full control of a community and has a clear priority when it comes to strategic direction (e.g. through paid community members) it remains an integral part of this community and also its proprietor. To merely say this is not heresy; it’s common sense. Perhaps it’s just the way one says which really counts at the end.
To be critical of the above is not the same as highlighting it and to self-censor based on what is ‘safe’ to argue is to no longer care about what’s true.
Speaking of which, “NOVELL” news is very scarce now because the company no longer exists as an independent entity, a lot of the staff was laid off, and managers mostly moved on and joined other companies. With the exception of few people like one who still organises Weekly News, we hardly see OpenSUSE activities from unpaid members. Communities collapse when the volunteers base gets to grips with the reality of exploitative companies like Novell. █
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05.09.11
Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Patents, Ubuntu at 9:03 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Some of the most ubiquitous Linux distributions are still being pursued by the Mono lobby, whose aim is to increase/promote the use of C# and Microsoft APIs in GNU/Linux and everywhere else
The Mono maniacs and bullies are still scraping the bottom of the barrel in an attempt to daemonise us and incite against us. They are using gossip to distract from the real issues (now they mention “rape”).
We are not going to go there or even acknowledge the bullies by naming them or linking to their disgusting daily smears (a distraction not worth addressing). Instead, we will assume that we are on the right subject, which is what makes them nervous and at times aggressive. “More micromoles in trying to get into Ubuntu,” alerts us one of the site’s readers this afternoon, linking to this request from a familiar person [1, 2] whose work we mentioned here before. Ubuntu is quickly becoming more of a target for Mono infestation or manifestation (even Microsoft is pushing for Canonical to adopt Mono developers). MinceR writes in #boycottnovell-social: “as for micromoles trying to get into ubuntu, that’s a bit like Microsoft employees trying to get into a Microsoft office building”
“What’s worse is he apparently signed the Ubuntu code of conduct prior to the membership application,” wrote another site participant. “That in principle should preclude any work on Mono or mono-derived works.” It is not just a problem for Ubuntu, which is a victim of entryism in a sense.
Google should reject Mono on Android (which already has Dalvik) for its own safety amid Microsoft patent attacks and now more than ever this rejection makes sense. The news about Mono ending (as a sponsored project) was uplifting. It is not about the layoffs, but about Microsoft/Novell no longer pumping money into the project. Maybe Google Summer of Code won’t bother, either. Mono development is unlikely to survive for much longer. More recently we saw the Mono team targeting Android with a Novell-funded/sponsored announcement and it is premature to state that it’s all over now. The Mono boosters will do whatever they can to find fostering companies and it now turns out that on Launchpad there is this project which strives to put Tomboy on Android. Valorie Zimmerman wrote about it some days ago (it’s not about MonoDroid [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15]), noting:
I really hated to download all that gnome/ubuntu/mono stuff to support it…
It remains to be seen if Ubuntu can remove the dependency on Mono. The project is a dead end. █
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04.15.11
Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Ubuntu at 8:49 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
The first release of Netrunner
Summary: A new Ubuntu alternative which totally omits Mono is released while Novell keeps pushing Microsoft software into the GNU/Linux community
A NEW release of Ubuntu is coming quite soon. It will contain more Mono than before (more than the direct predecessor, due to Banshee) and a project we wrote about before, Netrunner [1, 2], addresses the Mono issue as a matter of principle. It comes with the latest and greatest, including KDE 4.6.1, so go get it while it’s hot. From the announcement which the lead developer has just made: [via DistroWatch]
Our goal was to provide a slick yet beautiful KDE desktop as default,
while making Gnome/GTK+apps look well integrated.
We updated to the latest KDE 4.6.1, FF4, integrated dolphin as the default file manager and switched wine to experimental 1.3.12.
Underneath the hood, everything ought to work just like Ubuntu. By downloading Ubuntu 11.04 and then removing Novell’s Banshee we still allow Canonical to create the impression that there is demand for Novell’s Mono, so arguments along the lines of freedom/choice by negation (e.g. removing Mono after it’s installed by default, unnecessarily) evade the possibility of just supporting the good team which brought us Netrunner (the classic Linux Mint still has too much Mono). Here is some more Mono advertising which neglects to mention the Mono dependency [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]. It’s becoming a nameless risk factor, a quiet Trojan horse, one might say. This is dangerous due to API domination, not just patents. API is control, it might as well stand for “Absolute Power through Interfaces”.
“This is dangerous due to API domination, not just patents.”Novell is falling into line with Microsoft (soon enough even Novell’s patents will be Microsoft’s, not OIN’s), so it’s time to take a step away from anything Novell, including Moonlight (emulating/mimicking virtually abandoned software from Microsoft). Novell is still promoting Moonlight in Planet GNOME. This promoter also defames me, but that’s another story and we would rather stick to the issues, not personal gossip.
Novell is quite a dead company in the sense that it has no direction which makes it future-proof. It just reaches out to Microsoft in the same way that Nokia did (more on that in a later post) and it brags about one of those phony awards which glorify its proprietary software legacy. The reality is, “SUSE Linux shops await Novell deal completion” in the sense that they become cautious. They too realise that Novell is under the guillotine and the new report says:
Suse Linux shops are still anxiously awaiting completion of Attachmate’s buyout of Novell so they can get on with their lives.
The $2.2 billion deal was expected to close by the end of March but was delayed at least in part by regulatory issues over a side deal in which a Microsoft-led consortium was to buy some Novell patents.
These shops are better off moving to Debian, CentOS, or even RHEL. There is nothing in SLE* which is really unique (except perhaps the patent royalties which get paid to Microsoft). As for OpenSUSE? Well, it’s hard to find news about it these days. There are some HOWTOs, e.g. [1, 2], but hardly any news. Many community members abandoned the project and they do not trust AttachMSFT, which provided no substantial assurance to their community.
The bottom line is, Novell is a dead duck and its products are too. Mono is developed along with Microsoft (Mono also contains Microsoft code with Microsoft licences), so if it lives on, guess who may take the lead? Canonical’s management should listen more carefully to the CTO. █
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04.09.11
Posted in Debian, GNU/Linux, Mono, Ubuntu at 6:08 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: An affinity for the ripoff of the ripoff of Java is costing Debian and its descendent’s, Ubuntu, dearly
MONO is not software, it’s a doctrine. It’s the belief that Microsoft is the centre of all things and that all platforms — GNU/Linux included — should just become clients of Microsoft despite the known risks.
Banshee is the latest Mono addition to Ubuntu and as a notable blogger put it, “I wonder what is the next platform they’re going to take on now that both Windows and Mac are already supported.”
Banshee — like Mono in general — is about .NET, it's not about GNU/Linux. It never was. That says a lot. In fact, a lot of the people who promote Mono inside GNU/Linux are not even GNU/Linux users. They have an agenda, which is to increase the use of Microsoft APIs. It’s no wonder that the lead developer of Mono is a Microsoft MVP.
According to this, Banshee was added to Ubuntu prematurely. It’s buggy. We have heard the same thing in IRC and in E-mail. What was Canonical thinking??? All that Banshee has done for Ubuntu so far is harm its reputation (the Bansheegate).
According to this other new post, “Debian 6 [is] sluggish and slow due to Mono”.
It says: “To cut a long story short, I have no need for Mono and decided to erase it.
apt-get purge cli-common libmono-*
“If you are a Ubuntu user reading this, please do not run this command.
“Now the interesting thing after performing this action was I noticed my desktop was more snappy and responsive, and more inline with Fedora 14.”
Fedora avoids Mono as a matter of principle. █
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03.13.11
Posted in GNU/Linux, Review, Ubuntu at 1:38 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Rave about Linux Mint 10, which is a recommended option to existing Ubuntu users
Ubuntu, Ubuntu, Ubuntu. Android, Android, Android. Welcome to the new world of GNU/Linux, where brands are merely trademarks of companies which increasingly treat “community” as convenient PR/free labour and do what the heck they want. I decided to give the nice Irishmen from Mint a go and see if it’s time to live a Minty lifestyle. On Saturday I used Mint 10 and it lasted almost all day. The reason it did not last a whole day will be explained in a moment. As a bit of background, I’ve been exploring Ubuntu alternatives that reject poor decisions from Canonical and take what’s good in Ubuntu. So, I went with Mint. It was not the KDE version, which had not come out before I burned Mint 10 to a CD and then wrote about it some time last month.
“Granted, a lot of credit is given here to Mint for what Ubuntu has done in the same way that Debian receives little or no credit for what it gave to Canonical over the many years.”The desktop experience based on the Live CD was fantastic on good hardware. It hardly felt like a live session at all, it was very polished, the default theme was stunning (although better wallpapers come with the stock), and the selected applications were just right for my needs. The only unexpected downside is that twice throughout the day the session sort of fell. First the mouse pointer vanished from one monitor (just the cursor, the pointer was still functional), then the session froze (just shortly thereafter). Having to restart a live session is a pain because all the stored passwords need to be reentered, not to mention bookmarks and the likes of those. The second crash came just an hour later and it was a real crash, not a freeze that came rather spontaneously. Based on my experience with a Live CD of PCLinuxOS back in 2009, this is not too unusual. Perhaps working uninterrupted for consecutive days on a live session is not too easy. A lot depends on what’s in memory and the CD is a sort of unreliable bus, as well.
All in all, however, Mint 10 is better than anything I’ve ever come across in all the Ubuntu versions I’ve used (almost all of them) and it is definitely worth using. Granted, a lot of credit is given here to Mint for what Ubuntu has done in the same way that Debian receives little or no credit for what it gave to Canonical over the many years.
The new “Techrights headquarters” so to speak has no wired Internet connection yet, which means I must use cellular networks to access the Internet (slow and expensive). As such, there’s going to be no regular posting pace in the week to come (if not week and a half, depending on BT).
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03.01.11
Posted in GNU/Linux, Novell, Ubuntu at 1:50 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Novell employees still use the Novell-developed, Mono-based, Microsoft patents-infringing Banshee to smear Ubuntu
FROM the company which brought us Mono and Moonlight comes a sneaky attack on Canonical, which we last mentioned this morning. Canonical has been selling music for profit for quite a while now and things got complicated when Canonical started dabbling in Novell-copyrighted software with patent liabilities. Following the lead of Miguel de Icaza et al. comes another bigwig from Novell (a disclosure would be nice) taking a shot at Canonical and pretending to be a victim (“Canonical, you’re breaking my heart” is the title). The staff at Novell (Microsoft-funded) uses this patents-loaded Trojan horse (Banshee) to ruin Ubuntu’s reputation. They are portraying this as poor developers (Mono proponents) fighting the ‘giant’ which is Canonical when in fact Novell is a lot bigger, it gets money from Microsoft to promote Microsoft agenda, and the developers are paid by Novell to write Banshee. They are naming GNOME for sentimental blackmail, pretending that Canonical ‘steals’ money from GNOME. These people breed hate.
“They are naming GNOME for sentimental blackmail, pretending that Canonical ‘steals’ money from GNOME.”In some sense, Banshee is interfering with Canonical’s older multimedia-playing program (RhythmBox), which did not cause much controversy (neither because of referrals nor Mono-type complications). In my many conversations with Jono Bacon about this I warned him even a year ago that relying on Novell software is a bad idea not just because of Mono; he politely declined to do something about it. Inaction is sometimes suicidal, but again, Ubuntu is not the culprit here, it is just being characterised this way by Novell’s PR charade. It is them who hurt the community while trying to accuse their critics — yours truly included — of hurting the community. We just don’t have the PR power of Novell and neither does Canonical. Canonical should have never touched Banshee/Novell in the first place. It’s a case of asking for trouble when entering the Microsoft camp; however, lobbying from Novell is similar to Microsoft’s. If you decline their push (e.g. of Mono), then they label/call you a “hater”, or something along those lines. This is how Microsoft manages to get into many panels and events of its opposition. They use “hate” as a persuasion tool. Ubuntu and Canonical should know better that excessive tolerance of those whose interests are opposite to yours can be destructive.
In other news, LibreOffice is coming to OpenSUSE 11.4 and even though some lesser-known distributions have already come with LibreOffice, Sean claims OpenSUSE to be a first:
The first complete major Linux distribution to integrate LibreOffice instead of OpenOffice.org is….
openSUSE 11.4
The Novell led openSUSE Linux distribution is out this week with RC2 of openSUSE 11.4 and in my view it will be among the first big Linux distros that has moved to LibreOffice in a generally available release.
Certainly other distros have LibreOffice in their repositories now, but just circumstances of release timing make openSUSE 11.4 the first. Ubuntu’s Natty and Fedora 15 will both likely include LibreOffice as well, but both of those release are still months away from general availability. LibreOffice itself just hit general availability at the end of January.
Sean ignores ‘smaller’ distros as though they do not count or even exist. Novell is not really the first here; The Novell/Go-OO people may have played a role in pushing OOXML into LibreOffice [1, 2, 3, 4], so what credit does SUSE/Novell really deserve? People treat them with suspicion; so should Canonical. Novell is funded by Microsoft and this funding comes with strings (obligations). Who knows… maybe Steve Ballmer will pat Ron Hovsepian on the shoulder for making Ubuntu look malicious, LibreOffice controversial due to OOXML exporters, and OOXML a ‘real standard’ that everyone can implement. Novell works for money and it knows where the money comes from; it’s the Microsoft funnel and its own proprietary software, not Free software. █
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Ubuntu at 3:28 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Wikipedia image modified for humourous purposes (this Wikipedia article about Miguel de Icaza says that “[i]“n summer of 1997, he was interviewed by Microsoft for a job in the Internet Explorer Unix team”)
Summary: Miguel de Icaza, who is at Microsoft right now (Microsoft MVP Summit), is attacking Ubuntu/Canonical along with his Microsoft-funded colleagues
Microsoft MVP Miguel de Icaza keeps focusing only on Mono. It is hard to argue that the person splits his time between Microsoft and non-Microsoft projects because the other project he is associated with right now is Moonlight, not GNOME. The Microsoft/Novell crossover can also be seen in his very recent post which says:
Next week I will be in Bellevue, WA from Sunday to Wednesday to participate in the 2011 Microsoft MVP Summit.
That’s why we said he should be ostracised. He is no better than a Microsoft employee steering for certain directions to be taken in the FOSS world. A fellow Microsoft MVP (in the site of another Microsoft MVP, Chris Pirillo) says that Vista 7 SP1 will harm dual-boot Linux, as always [1, 2]. And this is the sort of company de Icaza wants us to trust and collaborate with? This morning’s post about Micromoles ought to serve as a warning because de Icaza went to Microsoft for a job interview. He works for de Icaza, not for software freedom; Microsoft is where he finds dividends (while publicly saying/implying in Microsoft-organised events that there is no money in FOSS).
“Novell’s interest is in spreading Mono, the product it co-develops with Microsoft and has exclusive protection for use (until next year).”At Novell, de Icaza is more than just this one man. He manages a team of like-minded people to whom Microsoft is a partner and also a source of revenue/paychecks (Microsoft funnels a lot of money into Novell for the company to behave the way Microsoft wants it to). There are many articles regarding the Ubuntu/Banshee argument which we covered at its earliest stages. Almost none of the articles dares to say that the Banshee developers are Novell employees (possibly bossed by de Icaza). “I’d refine that good advice in one respect,” wrote Groklaw about this Banshee controversy. “Canonical has lawyers, after all. It’s the community that needs to realize they need lawyers too. Lawyers of their own. Not lawyers they share with a company whose interests are not identical with their own.”
Novell’s interest is in spreading Mono, the product it co-develops with Microsoft and has exclusive protection for use (until next year). Novell is paid by Microsoft to be this sort of parasite and Canonical is now allowing a Microsoft patent liability to enter millions of GNU/Linux desktops. That’s a very foolish decision and it works in Microsoft’s (and Novell’s) favour.
“Canonical has lawyers [...] Not lawyers they share with a company whose interests are not identical with their own.”
–Pamela Jones, GroklawMiguel de Icaza is already exploiting the controversy by making Ubuntu look bad (in Twitter). He links to derogatory Mark Shuttleworth cartoons that make Shuttleworth look greedy, whereas de Icaza will never say a word about the bad behaviour of Bill Gates. Welcome again to the world of spin, where “Linux people” are greedy, zealous, and evil, whereas Microsoft is all fair, professional, and pro-choice (that’s what they would have us believe).
This whole maneuver from Novell’s Micromoles has harmed Ubuntu’s reputation and led to articles such as this one. Canonical is now victimised by Novell/Microsoft Micromoles like de Icaza who conveniently mock it; Canonical is not the problem, it is the victim. The problem is those who want to harm Ubuntu, e.g. by pushing Microsoft patents into it. Edward Wyatt says that a Patent Bill was debated yesterday. To quote: “The Senate on Monday will begin debating a bill that critics say will undermine American strength abroad, plunder the United States economy and exceed the government’s constitutional authority.” Patrick Leahy, Orrin Hatch, and Chuck Grassley pushed for the Patent Reform Act of 2011, as we have been noting recently.
As long as software patents are valid in the United States, the likes of de Icaza are knowingly polluting GNU/Linux, priming it for lawsuits and extortion from their beloved Microsoft. Why is this allowed to carry on? █
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