Ubuntu Sees Massive Slide in Popularity

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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There’s a change-a-coming in the Linux world for first place in distro popularity. The once king of the hill Ubuntu, has been on the skids for over a year and is now being replaced by Mint as the most widely used of the Linux distributions. Mint has shown a 105% increase during the period of Ubuntu’s demise.

Canonical Ubuntu have tried too hard over the years to make Ubuntu mainstream and appeal to the masses, and by going down this road have alienated its hardcore users.
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Yeah, Ubuntu just got bloated.

And Natty Narwhal's jump to the new Unity GUI was just stupid. That thing was awful and they made it harder for new users to goto Gnome.
 
I love Linux Mint. I have Mint 11 on netbook and Mint 12 RC on my work laptop. I've tried to like Ubuntu but like Spare said, it's pretty bloated.

Also, Mint have made the Gnome 3 interface more usable-- they kept the Start-like menu.
 
MajorDomo said:
Canonical Ubuntu have tried too hard over the years to make Ubuntu mainstream and appeal to the masses, and by going down this road have alienated its hardcore users.
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This is exactly the problem. It's no longer an OS for power users. Mint FTW
 
IMHO, trying to push for the Unity interface I feel had a HUGE impact.

If they had just made it an option, and stuck with Gnome I don't think this would have happened.
 
Zarathustra[H];1038066692 said:
IMHO, trying to push for the Unity interface I feel had a HUGE impact.

If they had just made it an option, and stuck with Gnome I don't think this would have happened.
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For the record, that's why I switched.

I'm using Mint now, but I'm not 100% happy with it. Nothing could make me switch back to Ubuntu as long as the Unity interface is in place.

I would also never switch to Fedora. I despise RPM.
 
ZX679 said:
This is exactly the problem. It's no longer an OS for power users. Mint FTW
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I don't know that it ever was? :confused:
Debian and Slackware are more considered the distributions for "power users"... last time I checked, anyway.
 
Yossarian22 said:
I don't know that it ever was? :confused:
Debian and Slackware are more considered the distributions for "power users"... last time I checked, anyway.
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I never tried Slack.

Debian isn't bad, but I used to use Ubuntu due to the ease of install and driver setup. Ubuntu's contribution to the linux world was definitely in this regard.

If you want a distribution for "Power Users" maybe try Gentoo?

I used to run it a long time ago. Don't have the time anymore.
 
Zarathustra[H];1038066705 said:
I used to run it a long time ago. Don't have the time anymore.
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Yeah, I understand that. One too headache too many sometimes... :D
 
I got Ubuntu 11.04 in my laptop. Regretted it. Kills my battery fast. I don't like it. I wanna uninstall it but it's also a bitch to do it. Tried partitioning it and it's also a pain in the ass to do it. I guess I'll just have to put more effort. *sigh*
 
ir0nw0lf said:
May I ask why? Genuinely curious.
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Last time I used it I felt like I lacked good visibility of the dependency tree.

It was really difficult to keep track of everything.

That being said, the last time I used it was with Red Hat 7.3 (Valhalla) so it has been a while. There may have been improvements since :p
 
Let's keep in mind that the Linux desktop has been imploding for a while now. Witness the debacle that was KDE4 (getting better), then Gnome 3 (about where KDE4 was at the same maturity level, but considerably younger), then Unity (where's this going?), plus all of the problems around Compiz and other fancy effects engines. I for one was quite happy with Gnome 2. I don't need eye candy. I need a stable desktop that I can support.

Regarding Unity, it's going to prove difficult for Ubuntu to promote, considering the large number of Ubuntu/Linux advocates they're alienating with this move. When you gut your champions, who will be left to fly your flag?
 
Maximuss said:
I read somewhere that Mint was based on Ubu?
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There are different versions. At least one version is Ubuntu based, and at least one version is Debian based. I believe there are more versions, but I don't recall right now.

Just because it is based on Ubuntu doesn't mean it also has to use Unity.

Ubuntu - even with its Unity BS - actually isn't a bad distribution to base a new distribution off of. Their underlying hardware compatibility work has been second to none. I think most people's gripes with it have been it's recent UI choices, which Mint doesn't use :p
 
Zarathustra[H], RPM with yum has more or less caught up to where apt is now in terms of functionality. What makes the difference for me is the number of .rpm or .deb packages available. .deb wins hands down in this regard, even with the 3rd party repos for RPM such as EPEL (for Enterprise Linux, nee, RHEL and its clones) and RPMfusion.
 
I tried out quite a few distros, to find one I could use for rescue operations, some troubleshooting, and banking whenever I feel uncertain of my PCs security(aftering torrenting etc). Out of all of them Mint 11 was the only one which was not only easy to use but simple to get started, and installed.
 
Mint is essentially based off of Ubuntu - it uses most of Ubuntu's packages, plus a few of its own. Updates come from Ubuntu's repositories.

Mint Debian isn't so bad, but the difference, like Debian itself, is that it's not as out-of-the-box as Ubuntu was.


Unity is extraordinarily unpopular. I can't emphasize this enough. There are some numbers in Mint's development blogs about that. Probably the only reason Ubuntu is still in any kind of use right now is that Ubuntu 10.04 is the base with which the Android Open Source Package is intended to be built (ROM developers). Getting that working on other distributions is a massive pain because of the dependence on deprecated libraries that only Ubuntu still ships (libtermcap is the principal offender).
 
Ubuntu was trying to be the Windows of Linux , which is a good strategy IF you had actually gotten a lot of Windows users to use it or switch but as Linux distro for Linux users it doesn't look like a winning idea.
 
Zarathustra[H];1038066697 said:
For the record, that's why I switched.

I'm using Mint now, but I'm not 100% happy with it. Nothing could make me switch back to Ubuntu as long as the Unity interface is in place.

I would also never switch to Fedora. I despise RPM.
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Yep, same reason why I use Mint. Unity Interface made using my computer difficult. Though, when I say use my computer I mean my Linux test machine. I always have a computer just for testing Linux.

Btw, for those thinking that Windows 8 will be better off without the taskbar or start button, take a long careful look. Ubuntu has already done what Microsoft is about to do, and they're paying for it.

If it requires me to do extra clicks for the same thing, it's not an improvement. If I can't constantly see running tasks, it's not an improvement. You wanna make the tablets boys happy, then make that interface optional. There should be no reason to be able to switch between two interfaces.
 
Maximuss said:
I read somewhere that Mint was based on Ubu?
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They have multiple flavors. One is based on Debian, and one is based on Ubuntu. The better one is based on Ubuntu, and the one everyone is paying attention to. You even see Ubuntu mentioned from time to time in Mint.

Ubuntu is based on Debian, and Mint is based on Ubuntu.
 
nerds.jpg


:D
 
One thing I like about Ubuntu is that things "just work" so they did a good job with that. But the unity crap is a big turn off. I recently burned the latest copy of Ubuntu to CD as I like to use the live cd function if I just need to access the hard drive of a computer or w/e. I ended up just using the command line for everything because unity is just that bad. Could not get to anything without jumping through hoops, I never did end up finding basic things like viewing the system hard drive, mounting, etc. Gave up and did all my stuff in command line. If a UI is that bad where command like is more user friendly, they're doing it wrong.
 
Unity must be one of the stupidest moves ever made.

I can't even think of a properly analogy to how bad a decision that is. Take an operating system that users like and are accustomed to and then without announcement, replace it with something awful, clumsy, and horrible to use. Maybe it would be like Mac OS X 7 users upgrading to OS X 8 and it turns out to be Windows ME.
 
They tried pushing Unity in order to be able to scale down and get to netbooks/tablets, but where touch screens and hidden functionality and options are fine on those two it's inexcusable on the PC, particularly for a Linux distro where your user base isn't clueless. As others have said, it really is difficult to get used to Unity; often times people just quit and look elsewhere

The Ubuntu drivers were always great and I never had any issues. The one time I thought that my AMD card was giving me trouble it ended up being compiz failing to work correctly. IMO, the distro to package the most encompassing working drivers will always be #1. Really can't say enough about the importance of the Linux driver compatibility issues. If things don't work after installation and they require digging through forums or compiling then you've already lost.

You can still use 11.10 with Gnome 3.0, but lots of folks just jump ship to Lime instead or grab Kubuntu (KDE Ubuntu). They're all pretty similar and are all debian/.deb based, so the choice boils down to which one requires the least work to mold to your preference
 
Massive slide in popularity? What 3 people instead of 5 are using it now?
 
I like the Unity interface in 11.10. Guess I am the only one. :p

It is perfect for my netbook. I have not tried Unity on my desktop however and I bet its limitations would be much more apparent there.
 
dara said:
I like the Unity interface in 11.10. Guess I am the only one. :p

It is perfect for my netbook. I have not tried Unity on my desktop however and I bet its limitations would be much more apparent there.
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honestly its not that bad if you are not the type who wants to tie yourself only to a one and true normal way of doing things, but I find alot of things out of place in the interface still, this is coming from someone who likes to try new things. Im honestly much more at home with the shift from the traditional windows desktop to windows 8, but the shift from ubuntu's unity was a bit.. more lacking, its just me though,lol
 
Spare-Flair said:
Unity must be one of the stupidest moves ever made.

I can't even think of a properly analogy to how bad a decision that is. Take an operating system that users like and are accustomed to and then without announcement, replace it with something awful, clumsy, and horrible to use. Maybe it would be like Mac OS X 7 users upgrading to OS X 8 and it turns out to be Windows ME.
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The problem with Unity is that it's trying to appease to the tablets. The interface works really well, if you have a tablet. Problem is I have a mouse and keyboard, and it's totally crap.

#1 The Unity bar pops out when I use my mouse to the left side. Sometimes it pops out when I want it too, sometimes it doesn't. Browsing a web page and it can pop out when you don't.

#2 Task bar was replaced with Apples dock, pushed up against the left side of the screen. Since this is the only way to watch running applications, I find myself swinging my mouse towards that side of the scream just to see what's running.

#3 Not making good use of screen rel estate. My monitor tends to be a lot bigger then a tablet, so why do I need a huge bulking dock on the left side? The desktop looks blank, and is missing things. Things that used to make my life easier.

#4 Getting to applications is hard. Nothing is where you expect it to be. Terminal is even hidden, which is still an essential part of using Linux, even with Ubuntu. Using the search feature is the only practical way of doing things.
 
repoman0 said:
FYI you can force PCI-E ASPM by editing grub config - add to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT "pcie_aspm=force". I brought my T61 down to about 19-20 watts on battery with this so it lasts as long as Windows.

This is with Linux Mint 11 - switched from Ubuntu :p
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the grub config is /etc/default/grub by the way. Make sure you run grub-update after you change this
 
Unity is pretty awful. I use my MSI Wind as a test platform to keep up on Linux and it's to the point where that machine is getting unusable with it. 11.10 hasn't been as bad as some. 10.04 (I think that was it, regardless the one with the botched Ralink drivers) was an absolute pain to use on my particular hardware. I couldn't use any of my wireless adapters that had worked since 8.04 when I first put Ubuntu on my Wind. I think I'm going to jump to Mint, possibly this weekend as Unity really is a pain to use, especially with a rather shoddy trackpad.
 
Like others have mention it got super bloated :/
I'm currently running Ubuntu 11.10 as my file server/media center/backup on a raid 10 but headless (no monitor/keyboard/mouse). The few times that I did used Unity interface, it felted sluggish :(
 
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