Ubuntu is a desktop distribution. It always has been. It is not directed towards enterprise at present. If that is their desire then they need to make this clear and perhaps release an enterprise edition like Novell does with SLED. There is the issue of Mono itself with its cloudy licensing. The Microsoft guarantee not to prosecute covers Novell and not Canonical. So if they are aiming for enterprise they are going about it all wrong. They should suck it up and go to Microsoft and beg forgiveness (Shuttleworth has spurned them more than once and been outspoken about it) and sign away their rights like Novell did. This would protect enterprise users and without such protection they are unlikely to choose Ubuntu with its indefinite status when they can choose Novell and be guaranteed.
It does not serve desktop users well for Canonical to be taking us down a path that is not for us, but I don't think that is what is happening and that enterprise is a red herring. I just think that there is some bad decision making taking place. I can let go of the GIMP because it is still in the repositories and I use Kubuntu and it comes without the GIMP or any GTK. It just *feels* wrong because the GIMP is what made GNOME (which is written using the GIMP Toolkit or GTK) and the timing is poor in light of the GIMP's major improvements from 2.4 to 2.6 and their stated goal of improving the interface with the upcoming release. The developers are putting on a brave face, but it has to hurt to be tossed aside for F-spot which is bad and PiTiVi which is not ready. The problem is not so much the GIMP, but what they are doing instead. They are putting their eggs in the F-spot and PiTiVi basket. F-spot just plain sucks for photo editing. It cannot handle adjusting levels and for more than two years the developers have known a bug that over writes EXIF metadata and they have not fixed it. That means that when you organize your files by metadata, you will have to do it over and over each time you import the file into F-spot. So it is not a good photo editor and it is not good for what it is meant to do, organizes photos. It is lame. If you want to edit photos then install Krita and Digikam (both KDE) but at least the are up to the task. Do not use F-spot until it is fixed. The second problem is the decision to include PiTiVi which is not ready for prime time to put it politely. It is bug ridden. How many people own a video camera compared to a digital camera and home many of those take the time to edit videos? I would wager that it is low. I would also wager that the installation of the GIMP would far exceed the number of installations of PiTiVi. I have not heard any users demanding video editing. This is a case of Canonical having Mac envy, but in both cases the programmes are not good substitutes for the Macs. Mac envy is not enough. You actually have to work hard to be good. Choose good programmes and not bad ones or you do more harm than good. The cost of Mono is that it will scare off enterprise users due to no protection from litigation and that it has to take up large amounts of disk space since it is based on monolithic .NET. The benefits are dubious at best. It gives F-spot which is lame as explained above, Tomboy which can be replaced by Gnote and Gnome-Do/ Docky which is something most people do not use. PiTiVi is not Mono, but it isn't something that people have demanded. The decision making is faulty, IMO and contrary to the best interests of Linux, ESPECIALLY if you are an enterprise user. I noticed on Lucid's list of apps that KDE base is included. A wise decision would be to get rid of F-spot, wait on PiTiVi and to include good KDE apps to replace bad GNOME ones, like F-spot. They should sacrifice Mono to achieve this and IF they want enterprise users then they should definitely scrap Mono. Roy 2009/12/3 Chris Miller <[email protected]> > On Dec 3, 2009, at 4:10 PM, Roy wrote: > > There are other decisions that could have been made. They could have > removed Mono and saved tons of disk space. In Brainstorm the removal of Mono > gets many more votes for than against. Yet it stays. You have to wonder why. > There are replacements for most Mono programmes except GNOME-Do which I > suspect most people don't use anyway. F-spot is the only one that people > would miss but I have already covered why it is useless anyway. > > > Simply put, Mono gives them corporate users migrating from .NET. It's a > strategic decision. If a large corporation with 1,500 or even 10,000 > workstations needs Mono, but not GIMP, they can save a lot of network > traffic by bundling Mono by default. Corporate IT is usually unwilling to > make their own custom installation media, so Canonical has to work to tailor > their installation packages to reflect the largest cross section of their > current *and desired* customers. > > Corporations and their beefy support contracts are going to be Canonical's > bread and butter, so don't be surprised if other things that don't cater to > the corporate user get thrown into the "install it yourself after > installation" lifeboat. > > Registered Linux Addict #431495 > For Faith and Family! | John 3:16! > http://cmiller.fsdev.net/ > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Linux Users > Group. > To post a message, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe, send email to [email protected] > For more options, visit our group at > http://groups.google.com/group/linuxusersgroup > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Linux Users Group. To post a message, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit our group at http://groups.google.com/group/linuxusersgroup
