Re:Ubuntu 18.04 with Unity8
by pjmlp on Saturday February 24, 2018 @05:59AM
(#16452733)
For me, Ubuntu was the best successor to Mandrake, regarding the focus on desktop users and out of the box hardware support, even it required closed source binary blobs.
If Shuttleworth is indeed trying to Canonical, it wouldn't surprise me, the reality is that there isn't any big money to be earned on Desktop Linux.
Regular desktop users aren't going to pay for enough books, videos, on-site trainings or support, to make FOSS desktop development a viable longterm business.
As seen by the netbook failure (yes Microsoft also helped there) and the Android fragmentation, OEMs rather pick a distribution and change it to create "product differentiation" than actually just plain stick to the hardware part.
The two most successful Linux based desktop environments, ChromeOS and Android, hide the Linux parts so deep, that it could be changed by another POSIX like kernel and almost no one would notice.
Even Tizen is now more of a brand than anything else (Tizen RT is TinyAra not Linux).
If Shuttleworth is indeed trying to Canonical, it wouldn't surprise me, the reality is that there isn't any big money to be earned on Desktop Linux.
Regular desktop users aren't going to pay for enough books, videos, on-site trainings or support, to make FOSS desktop development a viable longterm business.
As seen by the netbook failure (yes Microsoft also helped there) and the Android fragmentation, OEMs rather pick a distribution and change it to create "product differentiation" than actually just plain stick to the hardware part.
The two most successful Linux based desktop environments, ChromeOS and Android, hide the Linux parts so deep, that it could be changed by another POSIX like kernel and almost no one would notice.
Even Tizen is now more of a brand than anything else (Tizen RT is TinyAra not Linux).