It seems that the Ubuntu community has found out that their opinion does not count as much as they thought and that Ubuntu “is not a democracy“. So the purple, I mean aubergine, theme is here to stay and the window control button placement will be on the top left (and in the opposite order from OSX for the moment). I guess this is a really big issue because you can not change themes or configuration files in Ubuntu… wait… you can? Oh well then, move along, nothing to see here. I can almost guarantee that there will be a script released that changes the window control placement to the right side, just as many scripts are available to install all the “restricted” multimedia codecs that are not installed by default.
We all have known for a long time that Arch is not a democracy. So Ubuntu users set to move to a new distro where they can contribute nothing but still have their opinion count should not look towards Arch.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at the Ubuntu thing.
This is where Apple-Microsoft’s “appliance-isation” of computer operating systems has led us: a different default GUI theme is considered a “major change” that drives away users. I even saw the method of changing it using the GUI “Appearance” tool dismissed as “too geeky”. (And I don’t blame Canonical: they’re just catering to a market that’s already been infantalized by Windows/OSX.)
Okay, so most people aren’t ready for Arch, but it’s only a new theme; they haven’t dumped the GUI altogether or anything. It’s as if a radio manufacturer had anounced that all its products would now come tuned to the FM band by default instead of AM.
“But how can you make such a major change without consulting your customers?”
“We think it’s better. Most of them use FM anyway.”
“You aren’t listening! We don’t like it!”
“Well, it’s very easy to change: just flip the ‘Band’ switch.”
“Aaargh! I’m not a radio engineer! That’s too hard!”
Perfect! To tell the truth, i think that Shuttleworth is right. It is not a democracy, it is a meritocracy. Want to be heard? Then do something for this.
>> I can almost guarantee that there will be a script released that changes the window control placement to the right side
Close enough
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1434658
But, but, but…. *bottom lip quivering*
I want it *now* Daddy… Buy me a Golden Goose with buttons on the *right*!!!
“So Ubuntu users set to move to a new distro where they can contribute nothing but still have their opinion count should not look towards Arch.”
Haha! I dont think you are gonna have much luck on this one. A resspected percentage of users which will leave Ubuntu for reasons like that is likely to end up your way.
On a side note. Why do you think that even though Arch’s userbase numbers have exploded during the last year, the number of contributors (not counting the AUR) remains almost the same?
From what i can tell less than 10% of pacman’s code written during the past year , was contributed by people who are new to Arch. But statistics are your game.
At times when even really knowledgable people, experienced Linux users and developers recommend Arch all over the Internet, the people contributing to the distribution remain the same.
PS. The number and the expertise of the developers is still the same as well. But there you dont really care about code but rather packaging beetles.
Yeah, Most sane people are aware that contributing developers are the people that have say. Even help fetching debug information is more than enough to get a little say. After all, just contributing a semi-automated bug report is not going to get nearly the attention of a well written description of exactly how to reproduce the problem.
The default theme design is no different than any other commercially backed distribution. Frankly, the first thing I do on any installation is change arround my desktop settings to the way I like them, which involves moving everything, changing the colors, and all that stuff.
I’m more upset with their hard-linking of PulseAudio into their version of the GNOME libraries, and setting it to take control of the hardware devices directly. I could rant for hours on all of the incompatibilities and disadvantages this creates. Strangely, all of these would have gone away if they had just switched those two compile options off, and used ESound or ALSA compatibility. This is actually a case of them listening to the wrong users in the wrong way. Everyone wanted them to include PulseAudio, just not in this manner. I don’t think this is what users meant by “integrate” PulseAudio into the main distribution. The developers should have used better judgment. Hence, full democracy isn’t always the best option.
All in all, I’m probably switching to Arch soon for my computer. Where I have to maintain my wife’s computer easily, I’ll probably