Bernard Devlin wrote:
I was so appalled by the latest Ubuntu, I switched to Mint. Ubuntu
had become as slow as using Windows Vista.
Is that with 11.10 or 11.04?
When I first tried 11.04 it was slow, and I wound up staying with 10.10
until 11.10 came out. But since I upgraded to 11.10 last month, on my
Core2 Duo laptop it runs very well.
In terms of design, it's almost as big a departure from earlier versions
as OS X is from Mac OS 9. And as with my Mac experience, the transition
was a bit jarring at first, and I initially complained about not being
as productive. But with both OS X and Unity, the more time I spend with
the new system the more I like it.
It seems a matter of taste, though. I know more than a few Mac users
who still prefer the design of OS 9, and it seems there are quite a few
Ubuntu users who prefer 10 over 11.
But unlike the Mac world, at least us Linux users can choose which
environment we want to work in. :)
No wonder Mint has taken off. Whilst the main charts in the link below
are based on DistroWatch (arguably a sign of what cutting-edge linux
users are up to), the chart further down the page showing Google search
data indicates that the claim that Ubuntu is losing out to Mint has some
basis.
http://royal.pingdom.com/2011/11/23/ubuntu-linux-losing-popularity-fast-new-unity-interface-to-blame/
Respectfully, DistroWatch stats aren't a good measure of general
interest, for the reasons I detailed in this post in the Ubuntu forum:
<http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=11480329#post11480329>
In that post I also include Alexa site rankings, which show many times
more interest in Ubuntu than Mint, similar to the Google stats in the
article you linked to which also shows Ubuntu ranking much higher than Mint.
Mint's a great system, but in terms of overall popularity the factor
that affects the Linux world the most is that the average person doesn't
think of operating systems as something they can choose, but simply uses
whatever came with their computer.
In 2011 the number of OEMs shipping computers with Ubuntu preinstalled
continued to grow. In addition to Dell, Asus, and others, there are
Linux-exclusive vendors like System 76 which offer only Ubuntu. Even
ZaReason, which offers Mint and others as options, has Ubuntu as their
default choice. My friend Aviv who runs LinuCity here in SoCal offers a
few systems with Mint preinstalled, but most of his line is Ubuntu.
Being Ubuntu-based, Mint provides a great option for those who want most
of what Ubuntu offers but with the more traditional UI.
But the Gnome Project killed Gnome 2 for a reason, and sooner or later
we can expect most distros to be using either Gnome 3/Shell or a variant
like Unity.
This transition from a Windows-like task bar to a Mac-like dock isn't
perfect in either the Gnome Shell or Unity implementations, but I feel
such evolution is inevitable for the continued growth of the platform.
And best of all, it's Linux: we have plenty of choices to use any
distro, desktop environment, and tweaks we want to get exactly what we
most prefer.
I used to lament the number of distros out there, but the more I spend
time with the Linux community the more I've come to appreciate the
strengths of such diversity.
PS: If anyone here is going to SCaLE 10x next month let's meet up there
- I'll be there all three days:
<http://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale10x>
--
Richard Gaskin
Fourth World
LiveCode training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
Webzine for LiveCode developers: http://www.LiveCodeJournal.com
LiveCode Journal blog: http://LiveCodejournal.com/blog.irv
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