| News | Features | Interviews |
| Blog | Contact | Editorials |
| Ubuntu 12.10 to ship with Amazon advertisements |
| By Thom Holwerda on 2012-09-22 22:07:47 |
| Ubuntu 12.10 will include advertisements for products on Amazon. It will look like this - if you search, product suggestions will pop up. This seems like a rather slippery slope to me, and I certainly wouldn't want this on my desktop, laptop, smartphone, tablet, or anywhere else. On the web - fine, I'm on your site, not mine - but my desktop is mine, and mine alone. Not that it matters - open source, someone will disable them. Biggest concern: does this mean my search queries get sent across the web? |
|
| RE[5]: It's just a lens |
| By UltraZelda64 on 2012-09-23 04:48:09 |
|
I don't see how adding another proprietary operating system to the mix will help anything. As you said, the license is the real problem for most proprietary software including both Microsoft's and Apple's, and not just for operating systems. The problem is, the licenses are practically always a problem and I don't imagine that magically changing out of nowhere. Companies know people don't care, they'll just buy the software anyway, not even reading the license. The companies know they have their customers by the balls because they don't even get to *read* the license until after they tear away the shrink-wrap and put the disc in the drive, and by that time it's too late: the store won't take it back for a refund, because you've already opened it, and they suspect you to have copied the disc and registration key, you dirty thief! I would be surprised if any company would ever come up with a license for their proprietary software product that I could truly agree with, and actually mean it when I am forced to click "I agree" to proceed with the installation. Sorry, but I just don't see it happening. |
 - Score: 3 |
| RE[5]: It's just a lens |
| By TM99 on 2012-09-23 04:54:25 |
|
> > Freedom is removed from Ubuntu Exactly how does this remove any freedom from Ubuntu? > they could learn a thing or two from the market segment leaders like IBM, Red Hat Ah, so they should create an enterprise product that is partly closed source and relies on Windows? So you admit that you too are confused when it comes to Open Source, Linux, and FSF? Not surprising as many are. Relies on Window? In what universe does RHEL rely on Windows? They are interoperable in the Enterprise space but dependent and reliant? Where does IBM rely on Microsoft? Again, the Power Series with AIX & GNU/Linux are interoperable with Windows, but reliant and dependent? WTF are you smoking?! Closed source? AIX is Unix not Linux but the Linux portion of IBM's services is Open Source. I run Scientific Linux which is from RHEL - in other words, Open Source. IBM & Red Hat know how to sell services and keep their divisions apart, make changes much more conservatively as any large business should, and are not run by 'personalities'. Facts be damned eh, if it goes against your 'world-view' or chosen tech religion? |
| - Score: 0 |
| RE[2]: It's just a lens |
| By fengshaun on 2012-09-23 05:01:05 |
| Don't install the lens. It's not embedded in Ubuntu itself. |
| - Score: 1 |
| RE[6]: It's just a lens |
| By Soulbender on 2012-09-23 05:08:45 |
|
> In what universe does RHEL rely on Windows? No, I am not confused at all. RHEV-M, a core component of RHEV, only recently became Open Source and freed from it's dependence on Windows Server. Edited 2012-09-23 05:09 UTC |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[4]: What... the... f***... :| |
| By UltraZelda64 on 2012-09-23 05:36:18 |
|
> Who cares? Why does the default install have to come with a bitmap editor? Well then, why has Windows come with Paint practically since its inception? Did it really hurt anyone when Microsoft included a bitmap editor as a standard feature of their operating system? While on the topic, let's go back a bit further. What about MacPaint? Surely that wasn't needed as a feature of the original Macintosh, was it? Even if you don't need it, a bitmap editor should be like a text editor; it should just be there, in case you do need it. I would consider it basic expected functionality. Even at an early stage stage of someone's life (ie. kids) its availability and accessibility makes it valuable as a teaching tool. And in today's GUI-driven computing world, isn't there even the slightest bit of importance in knowing the basics of how to use a bitmap editor? Images are used everywhere, from web and product design to advertising. An early introduction surely can't hurt anyone. And yet, Ubuntu basically did away with it completely in their base install/live environment. > Besides, considering GIMP's godawful UI pretty much ANYTHING is better for the average use case. You know, there are other actual image editors that they could have replaced it with and I would see no problem then. There are bitmap editors that are faster, that take up less space, and are easier to use/learn. Which goes back to my point that F-Spot--despite what Canonical claimed--is NOT a replacement image editor. Yet, they acted as if it were a drop-in replacement. An image organizer with no real image editing functionality is not a replacement. > Good job insulting everyone, which happen to be a large part of the non-western world, who like different colors. You talk as if brown is the only color there is and that everyone in non-western cultures just loves it. Either way, I'm done arguing colors and bitmap editors... no longer an Ubuntu user myself so the horrible themes don't really phase me, and I've said enough about Ubuntu's lack of a bitmap editor. Edited 2012-09-23 05:44 UTC |
| - Score: -1 |
| RE: Ubuntu's future doesn't look too bright to me... |
| By woegjiub on 2012-09-23 06:25:06 |
|
If you hate the mouse like I do, unity is great. I can launch anything by hitting Meta, typing two or three letters, then hitting enter. likewise with things like connecting VPNs, and launching menu items, from he HUD. Unity is designed around searching and the keyboard, which is why I love it. I'll be using it, and just removing this lens. I don't live in the US, so Amazon sucks for me. The eyecandy is annoying, but I didn't buy a powerful computer only to have it idle the whole time. I think canonical make their money from support, and from leeching off of Shuttleworth's other company. Edited 2012-09-23 06:27 UTC |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE: Ubuntu's future doesn't look too bright to me... |
| By UltraZelda64 on 2012-09-23 06:27:41 |
|
> "Unnecessary 3D rubbish on the desktop, plus transparency and blur effects ad nauseum, despite the fact that Linux graphics drivers suck moose. Doing fancy stuff without the framework to support it is a recipe for failure, people." QFT. Hate to say it, but you nailed it right there. GNOME is also guilty. Maybe before fully working and fully capable open-source drivers are available for nVidia and ATI cards on Linux, Unity and GNOME will have their 2D capability and feature sets up to par with their 3D counterparts. Why they chose to go 3D first and 2D later never made any sense to me, for the same reason you mentioned. It makes sense with Apple and Microsoft since they've got all the hardware companies in their pockets and can basically do what they want and the companies will agree, but Linux or any other open source OS? What the hell? |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[2]: Ubuntu's future doesn't look too bright to me... |
| By Soulbender on 2012-09-23 06:54:48 |
|
> If you hate the mouse like I do, unity is great. I can launch anything by hitting Meta, typing two or three letters, then hitting enter. likewise with things like connecting VPNs, and launching menu items, from he HUD. Unity is designed around searching and the keyboard, which is why I love it. I agree. The keyboard and search focus of Unity is one of the reasons I too love it. If just the SSH lens would get fixed to understand ecdsa. > The eyecandy is annoying, but I didn't buy a powerful computer only to have it idle the whole time. I don't really know why eyecandy people are complaining about. I don't see any useless effects and the default ones are useful to me. At least there are no wobbly windows and crap like that. Besides, if you don't want the effects you can use Unity 2d which is functionally equivalent to Unity 3d. |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE[3]: It's just a lens |
| By a2d23 on 2012-09-23 07:04:51 |
|
Yes and nobody would have buy it. And you forget that the community is helping a lot in the bug finding fixing and quality control which you have to do yourself in a proprietary system. Everybody seems to forget that apple was struggling before 5-6 years ago before they came up with the iphone. I am not saying you can make money on the desktop but it's not the model problem. And no search on my desktop lens not seem so disruptive. I can live with that. |
| - Score: 1 |
| Another proof that Linux has failed in the desktop |
| By moondevil on 2012-09-23 07:17:15 |
|
Canonical is only trying this, because as all the dead companies before Canonical (Linspire, Mandrake/Mandriva, Xandros,...) prove, there is no money to be made from desktop users. The only Linux based distributions that managed to make money out of Linux based software are targeting the enterprise with contracts at the same level as closed source support contracts. The only successful distribution is Android, and even then it is thanks to the people buying hardware, which happen to have Android as operating system. Selling hardware systems with Linux pre-installed won't help, because as the netbooks have shown, most OEM have their own crapware based distribution. On top of that many people bought Linux based netbooks just to get the cheaper version and install a pirate version of Windows later on. As I mentioned in another threads, if you need to make people pay for free software, while keeping a standard influx of money per month, it is not easy. Sadly this won't work for Canonical, because everyone will just change distribution, thanks to the choice available in the open source world. And with time Ubuntu will be another victim in the deskop. |
| - Score: 2 |
| News | Features | Interviews |
| Blog | Contact | Editorials |