11.04 schism

[Samuel Thurston]

On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 3:05 AM, Amedee Van Gasse
<amedee-ubuntu at amedee.be> wrote:
> On Mon, April 11, 2011 04:43, chris wrote:
>> On Sun, 2011-04-10 at 20:51 -0500, Samuel Thurston wrote:
>>> with the recent spate of religious discussion here on sounder, I am
>>> left to wonder about the future of Ubuntu.  I for one will probably
>>> not use a distro based around unity because it doesn't meet my
>>> workflow needs.  (at least not unless it matures quickly)
>>>
>>> I'm not sold on gnome shell yet which seems to be the preferred
>>> alternative.
>>>
>>> But this makes me wonder, will the community split into two factions?
>>>
>>> perhaps Unity-arians and GNOstics?
>>>
>>> :P
>>>
>>
>> What about us agNOSTICS?

I suppose you're not sure what DE is right for you?

>
> What about Ignostics?

All the DE's are wrong: you must be a CLI-only user.

>
> Seriously guys (and girls, although I haven't seen a lot of them on this
> list, and that's a shame), millions of people use Ubuntu (Wikipedia
> states: "With an estimated global usage of more than 12 million users",
> that's as much as a medium-sized European country) and only a handful of
> them complain online. Some perspective would be nice.
>
>

Well while I was initally just making a bit of a joke,  consider that
enough people complained (as it were) upfront in the project to get a
sizeable faction of Kubuntu users to splinter-- are these folks
counted in your 12 million figure? likely.  Yet there are still two
"separate" communities. As well as xbuntu, edubuntu, and so on.  Will
there now be a gbuntu or gnobuntu or whatever to satsify people like
me?

It's an old maxim in marketing, and I'm paraphrasing here:  A
satisfied customer might tell 1 or 2 friends, a dissatisfied customer
on average tells 10.

Squeaky wheels tend to get the grease, in other words. I also think
it's probable that the small fraction complaining represents a larger
group of "silent but grumpy" users.

Also keep in mind I'm not complaining about the switch to unity.  I
just don't think it's for me, and if mainstream support for what I
consider a "real" DE doesn't stay part of Ubuntu, I'm likely to look
elsewhere.  It's not that I don't think Unity will ever get there, I
just don't think it's there yet, and I don't have any devices except
maybe my android phone where I could see any benefit from it.