 firephotoKDEPremium
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| Kubuntu loses Canonical funding »blogs.kde.org/node/4531
said by Jonathan Riddell :Today I bring the disappointing news that Canonical will no longer be funding my work on Kubuntu after 12.04. Canonical wants to treat Kubuntu in the same way as the other community flavors such as Edubuntu, Lubuntu, and Xubuntu, and support the projects with infrastructure. This is a big challenge to Kubuntu of course and KDE as well.
I haven't used Kubuntu regularly for years mostly because of the Canonical inspired changes that weren't actually Jonathan's (stupid menu thing to match the gnome desktop) and other non kde things added just to match the gnome version but even so it was a good easy install of KDE with a lot of update software to go along with it.
It probably also means it might be a harder road forward for KDE on Ubuntu if they make changes to their core system to support whatever they build their own desktop environment into. I also wonder if they didn't want the internal competition going forward on the mobile front since Plasma Active would be easy to use with their ARM spins.
Last note, there would be no Kubuntu if it wasn't for Jonathan himself. He drove it from the very beginning and was able to get the support he got from Canonical to let those first breaths advance on to what it became with a team from the community supporting him along the way. |
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| I'm a big fan of KDE and I'm using it with KXStudio. It'd be a disappointment to see Kubuntu go away without funding or having Kubuntu be a community-supported distribution.
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 orion940No longer a burden on societyPremium
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With the lastest directions Ubuntu has gone in, it's not the distro for me right now to begin with. Not funding Kubuntu is just another nail in the coffin for Ubuntu as far as Im concerned.
O.
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| I'm not a big fan of KDE but I've used KUbuntu more than anything with Unity. It's a stupid move by Canonical as it does even more to alienate the geeks and tinkerers who helped put the Ubuntu project in the dominant position on the market. Mark, stop snorting that space-coke!
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pabloMVM
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kudos:1
1 edit | reply to firephoto
Thank you for the post. I'll continue with `openSUSE + KDE' Every once in a while, I get an itch to look at other distros and I always come back to `openSUSE'
::: Edit :::
o Fixed typo
Cheers,
-pablo
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Never had much use for KDE so this is not a big deal for me. I feel for those that acquired a liking for Kubuntu though.
Unity and HUD, on the other hand, are big deals for me. Gnome3 is currently not an option either. When asked, I tell folks inquiring about Ubuntu to D/L 10.4.3.
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 reub2000Premium
join:2001-12-28
Evanston, IL | reply to firephoto
I know I've complained about Kubuntu being Canonical's blue headed stepchild, but I thought Kubuntu was valuable distribution.
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 MaxoYour tax dollars at work.Premium,VIP
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Tallahassee, FL | reply to firephoto
This has probably been a long time coming. I think the shift to Unity was just step one in a long line of really big changes coming down for the project. The push to run on phone's, tablets, TVs, ICS, etc. is part two. More is likely to come.
I think Canonical is looking to push Ubuntu from being in (friendly) competition with RedHat, SUSE, etc and being a real competitor to Microsoft, Apple, and even Google's Android. With this will come a tightening of focus, more revenue generating options (further pushing Ubuntu One) and further divergence from looking and feeling like traditional OS/Linux offerings, in favor of its custom-built software that meets its needs better.
If done right, older users of Linux will complain, but many more newer FOSS converts will come in and threaten traditional proprietary vendors.
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| said by Maxo:This has probably been a long time coming. I think the shift to Unity was just step one in a long line of really big changes coming down for the project. The push to run on phone's, tablets, TVs, ICS, etc. is part two. More is likely to come.
I think Canonical is looking to push Ubuntu from being in (friendly) competition with RedHat, SUSE, etc and being a real competitor to Microsoft, Apple, and even Google's Android. With this will come a tightening of focus, more revenue generating options (further pushing Ubuntu One) and further divergence from looking and feeling like traditional OS/Linux offerings, in favor of its custom-built software that meets its needs better.
If done right, older users of Linux will complain, but many more newer FOSS converts will come in and threaten traditional proprietary vendors.
Maybe
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 RexterYeeHaw
join:2002-11-17
cloud 9 | Kubuntu lookes like vanilla KDE anyway. Why not just install KDE on ubuntu yourself? |
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| If you want Unity but want KDE, go with Ubuntu Minimal (netboot install via TFTP) and then apt-get install kubuntu-desktop. |
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said by Maxo:T but many more newer FOSS converts will come in and threaten traditional proprietary vendors.
Lol, yeah right.. If it's the same caliber as in the Android community, they'll start including blobs of proprietary code into software released under FLOSS licenses. I know of one case, where the devs really mean well but their ignorance created a bit of a mess.
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MaxoYour tax dollars at work.Premium,VIP
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Tallahassee, FL | said by FiReSTaRT:said by Maxo:T but many more newer FOSS converts will come in and threaten traditional proprietary vendors.
Lol, yeah right.. If it's the same caliber as in the Android community, they'll start including blobs of proprietary code into software released under FLOSS licenses. I know of one case, where the devs really mean well but their ignorance created a bit of a mess. I mean that I believe this to be Canonical's intention. They may well have accepted that Linux on the desktop is a far shot, no matter how far superior it is to Microsoft Windows, just as Apple's OSX has failed to gain significant market share despite its long history of being easier to use and maintain than Windows, and despite Apple's inability to show ability to dominate in other prominent markets and translate that to sales of the computers.
By putting focus on markets that still have many possible futures, and building technologies that make moving from the Ubuntu desktop OS to other integrated system, as the ones I mentioned, they have a better chance of gaining mainstream use and generating real revenue. This is why they have declared they won't take the iOS route and build a seperate OS for the mobile space, but instead the other platforms will only be an apt-get install away from turning any device into running as desired.
Again, just more speculation on my part.
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| That is a good point. In any case while we may not always agree with their innovations, at least they are innovating and they got more than a few thins right in the past. All we can do is cross our fingers, wait and see.. As for a desktop distro, those of us who like the WIMP paradigm have other options.
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markofmayhemI can haz competition?Premium
join:2004-04-08
Pittsburgh, PA
kudos:4 | said by FiReSTaRT:That is a good point. In any case while we may not always agree with their innovations, at least they are innovating and they got more than a few thins right in the past. All we can do is cross our fingers, wait and see.. As for a desktop distro, those of us who like the WIMP paradigm have other options.
Exactly, and to add: be mindful of your markets. Ubuntu has a very heavy foothold in Indo-China, Middle East, South Africa, Eastern Europe, etc; to include government and education as well as "beginning tech" devices. In these markets, the "desktop" is more of an institutional device while the small form factor "netbook" is more of the "household" device. In the last few years, this push has not only been accelerating, but actually holding market shares. Ubuntu's efforts in these markets, without fragmenting the world just to compete against the giants in North America and NATO Europe with little hope of revenue; is shaping up very nicely. We compare Ubuntu with other Linux distro's, iOS, Android, WebOS, OSX and Windows XP/Vista/7. In many markets, where population numbers obliterates those in North America, Unity's interface is compared to an abacus...
I don't see Ubuntu completely abandoning the North America/Europe base yet, close, but not yet... it is still an "alternative" and the small-to-middle form factor fit can be opined as "clumsy" on a desktop just like every other effort along these lines. That said, defunding Kubuntu is a sad day. The develop/monetary impact is quite sad when qt has been struggling of late to gain more momentum in the "professional" development sense. OpenSuSE has always been a very strong influence here and it appears more money is leaving rather than joining. Fortunately, it has quite the following and volunteer-ism will keep it strong in the near term. I hope it is enough to push it even further as qt is no slouch and a joy to work in.
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firephotoKDEPremium
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A good take on the situation here from Will Stephenson who understands the situation with being employed by SUSE Linux GmbH.
»blogs.kde.org/node/4533
said by Will Stephenson :If we look back at the Ubuntu game plan as history neatly lays it out for us, we have
1) Establish the Ubuntu brand amongst early adopters (check, by about 2005)
2) Expand it to the wider Linux user base (check, by about 2007)
3) Make Ubuntu the default Linux for non-technical users (2009)
4) Tie up a paying market. Initial targets have been enterprise desktop Linux (maybe next year  ) or consumers in the massmarket netbook segment (but that was squashed by tablets and Microsoft rounding up the manufacturer back to the XP prison), and now they are aiming at embedding into consumer electronics (TVs) and will probably snare a tablet OEM as a cloud OS (hell, if KDE can do it...) or a bookseller or someone who wants a platform to digitally sell something else off of.
5) Profit
6) Buy more spaceflight (Probably. For some, 5) is enough)
There's a lot more at the link.
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MaxoYour tax dollars at work.Premium,VIP
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Tallahassee, FL | reply to markofmayhem
said by markofmayhem: That said, defunding Kubuntu is a sad day. The develop/monetary impact is quite sad when qt has been struggling of late to gain more momentum in the "professional" development sense. OpenSuSE has always been a very strong influence here and it appears more money is leaving rather than joining. Fortunately, it has quite the following and volunteer-ism will keep it strong in the near term. I hope it is enough to push it even further as qt is no slouch and a joy to work in. For the mobile push, Ubuntu will be using QT technologies, so there will be some support by them on the QT front.
It is my understanding that GTK is missing a lot of needed features for it to work well in the mobile space. Since Nokia already did the needed work on QT for its Linux-on-mobile offerings, QT is the only real choice there.
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markofmayhemI can haz competition?Premium
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kudos:4 | Embedded push is Ubuntu-Core, which is "toolkit" agnostic. As for the interface layer, Unity uses Nux, neither Qt nor GTK+. Ubuntu on Arm dev team is currently using Unity, not Unity2D. The UDS 2011 plan was to hit a 2014 target date; the OpenGL UNE requirements will be met for embedded devices by then (actually, they are hit now) and the QML Unity2D "compatibility/fallback mode" will not be needed. While QML is a subset of Qt, Unity2D is not a Qt project, it simply uses QML and Gnome's Metacity WM while still coded in C++ and Vala, same as Unity.
Kubuntu-mobile used Qt, is it not defunded along with Kubuntu? If not, then that is very interesting... perhaps a fork in Unity is occurring and Plasma-on-Core may be a reality?
Ubuntu-mobile defunct back in 10.10.
I don't think "embedded" should be assumed with "mobile", not real sure I've seen nor heard any movement towards phones; more towards automobiles, TV sets and TV navigation devices, netbooks, and tablets (with "laptops" being clumped with dekstop).
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MaxoYour tax dollars at work.Premium,VIP
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Tallahassee, FL | In the talks I was in about Ubuntu on phones (yes that is a real project, its just on the back-burner right now) QT was the technology to be used for development. I presume the tablets will be doing the same. |
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firephotoKDEPremium
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said by markofmayhem:Kubuntu-mobile used Qt, is it not defunded along with Kubuntu? If not, then that is very interesting... perhaps a fork in Unity is occurring and Plasma-on-Core may be a reality?
It's all of Kubuntu that is out of "main" and this point you raised might be part of it. Kubuntu continuing along will have easy drop in access to an embedded desktop for ARM devices so it could be that Canonical sees this as an internal threat to their own plans.
Kubuntu has to step up and go their own way, get closer to upstream KDE, separate themselves from all the little things that are done in an Ubuntu way. If you're a Kubuntu user you shouldn't care how a GNOME, XFCE or Unity user sees pop up menus or system notifications, the KDE system can handle all the events from the other desktop toolkits and notify the user in their own system method. You should never cater to the non-user of your product, it's dumb and it's why standards are created to interact between different systems.
This change has the potential to make Kubuntu better but only if they can show a change and not be the same old Kubuntu with the same restrictions imposed on them.
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