First, I must say that all that follows
here is my own demented view. But blog thingy already implies that,
and about the 'demented'... well, going against the flow might always
be demented, no? Our topic here is Linux Mint. It is very popular
right now, but does it really deserve that much popularity?
I don't think Linux Mint is really
important enough to give that much attention. Most of they have, they
have because of Ubuntu. And all they contributed to the FOSS is some
shiny panels and menus together with some non-crucial tools for package management, hardly worth mentioning in the greater scheme
of the things. Cinnamon is still in the works but more on it later.
Ubuntu greatly changed their Debian base and started projects like
Upstart (which I am fond of), they made great leaps in desktop
hardware recognition and use; Mint made some panels and menus. Comparison here is
quite clear that I don't think my intelligent readers (let me butter
you up a bit) might need more clarification.
Now, I know that those panels and menus
are the face of Linux for the uneducated user, but those menus and the such do not really
matter that much now, do they? I used their Gnome Shell menu(only the menu) in
my Arch setup and I admit it was nice. But this goes on to show that it was
just an extension. I am not sure how an extension can be claim to
fame like we are seeing right now.
Usual argument here is “but Mint did
what users wanted”. As an anarchist myself, I thing democracy is a
bad, bad thing and seeing this mob rule working here is actually has
quite bad implications. A FOSS project does not belong to the
community, community only uses it for free and if they like it, they
report bugs and do all the other assorted things they can do. A FOSS project belongs to those who wrote it and if you don't like how they do it, you can do it yourself if you are capable of. Cinnamon project is a
respectable thing from this point of view and may claim some fame but as it came much later from this the fame I am talking
about here, it is not really relevant to our discussion. Proprietary
software needs to listen to the customers because of their own
virtues and and thus conforms to their wishes, but FOSS
has no such compulsions. Beauty of the FOSS, for me, is the
underlying anarchy.
“The
Customer Is Always Right” writes Swapnil Bhartiya of Muktware, I
don't understand this: What customer? Those who donated to Mint? As
far as I know the laws, donation is a one sided transaction. Strength
of FOSS is how it brings change and innovation without the great
sword of customers floating on the top of its head. There is a
strength in whims and in dreams of nerds. If you bring that sword into
the fold, we have infinitely more to lose than we have to gain,
foremost of them of the losing side is the freedom that seems so important to FOSS.
Linux
Mint got their recent fame from this customer idea. While giving people what they want, thus making them happy is a good thing; it is
really disturbing me how people on the forums and the blogs are starting to say
that everyone should act like Linux Mint and cater to the wishes of 'the customers'.
PS:
As a unrelated sidenotey question, Do you know any old anime that is
similar to Full Metal Panic?
You got there a valid point, but I think that it isn't right to dismiss Mint as a project that "all they contributed to the FOSS is some shiny panels and menus together with some non-crucial tools for package management". After all, while revamping the face of Ubuntu, Mint helps newcomers to Linux to adapt themselves to this new world. If we want FOSS to prosper, the casual user (and the users that want something that 'just works') need to be able to find a distro that offers the kind of experience that they are looking for. And clearly, Linux Mint is doing that, so kudos to them!
ReplyDeleteCan't help with the anime question, though :/
Linux Mint is not enjoying "recent fame". It has been building in popularity for several years now. It just seems as though it spilled over with Ubuntu's miss-steps with unity. The small Mint team consistently delivers an excellent, usable distro, incorporating ideas and suggestions from the community.
ReplyDeleteTell me again how this is a bad thing.
And don't forget Linux Mint Debian Edition (not based on Ubuntu).
- 3dbeef
It's all about perspective. You are a hacker by nature. I am a user by nature. My guess is you love the terminal and think it is the only way to use Linux. I love the GUI and avoid the terminal when possible. From a USER perspective, Mint has contributed greatly to the greater good of Linux by making it less technical and more friendly to the masses. You are not the masses, you are a hacker. You hack for you. Others hack for the user base. Different perspectives.
ReplyDelete@Muratcan, It's nice to see someone besides myself put forward a sound and logical argument that goes against the grain of the Linux community. I am often ridiculed and belittled for my ideas, but hey, that's life. Good read. Thank you.
ReplyDelete@BobK54, This isn't a matter of perspective at all. There is actually very little difference between Mint and Ubuntu. You can easily transform any Ubuntu install into a Mint install with the installation of a few packages-- VERY FEW. The key there isn't making Linux easier; it's making Linux lazier. Mint has not really done much of anything. It's a nice respin of Ubuntu and nothing more. To that extent, Bodhi Linux is more impressive.
I would argue that Mint is merely a political offshoot of Ubuntu. It's like the fork between Sorcerer, Source Mage, and Lunar Linux.
I think you are totally wrong. In this case mint is an open source community. Do you really think that Clem "loves" Gnome Shell 3 and Unity? That he is busting his butt to make Gnome Shell extensions and now Cinnamon just because the great unwashed democratic masses want it?
ReplyDeleteMaybe as far as Canonical and Gnome are concerned, it is just some vocal minority of ungrateful users who contribute nothing the to their projects that don't like Unity and Gnome 3 Shell. Mint is just what Ubuntu is. Ubuntu believes itself to be a more usable version of Debian. Mint believes itself to be a more usable version of Ubuntu. Mint is now getting one of the most important thing an open source project can receive, mindshare. Both users who do nothing more than tell others about what they run, and contributors who answer questions, write documentation, submit bug reports and contribute code are now giving Mint a look. Why? Because that 5% of work that Mint is getting credit for is what they spend 90% of their time interacting with.
For touch screen devices iOS, Windows 8, Unity and Gnome 3 Shell may all be on the right track for useability. For people who are already entrenched on the classic WIMPy (Windows Icons Menu Panels) interface, these other desktop paradigms slow down their workflow. Instead of dealing with it, hoping that they become more productive later, they are looking for that last 5% that Gnome 3 and Ubuntu are not offering but Mint is offering.
Ubuntu is much less than Debian, they have not done *that* much to the Debian base to deserve all the fanfare they get, or so many Debian folks say. You are saying the same thing about Mint. Mint has contributed and created so much less than Ubuntu and that they don't deserve all the fanfare they are getting.
Don't knock the 5%. Mint may only have their recent fame due to the screw ups of Gnome/Canonical making such radical changes and ignoring users who did not like it. Do not forget. Mint has been in the top 5 on Distrowatch for quite some time. This has only moved them up one notch, from "less attention on distrowatch than Ubuntu" to "more attention on distrowatch than Ubuntu".
All the hubris from developers who feel that if you don't contribute code you are worthless is getting tiring. Ubuntu is part of Canonical, Mark Shuttleworth sets the direction. It does not matter if I can present code that is better than what Ubuntu is doing, they don't want it. The same with the Gnome folks. Once upon a time Linus Torvalds wanted an option on the Gnome 2 print dialog and did not just ask for it. He presented the code to do it. They just looked at it and said the user needs fewer options not more, patch denied. These projects are just *begging* for forks. Once someone does fork them, it should not be a surprise that all of the users who felt marginalized and unlisted to flock to these projects.
Rule 1 may be that open source coders are scratching their own itch
Rul2 2 would be that popular products have a nitch because a users itch gets scratched as well.
Maybe I need to clarify after all: Ubuntu did great many contributions to the FOSS; and they are not even strictly Debian anymore, they are incompatible with each other to an extent. Considering from Upstart to their work on AppArmor, I don't believe anyone can honestly say that Ubuntu didn't do its share.
ReplyDeleteMint, on the other hand, is built upon Ubuntu. They do almost no work on Ubuntu repositories, their repositories are even interchangeable with Ubuntu's. Just because a menu, an update manager and installed codecs with unclear legality; word of the month is Mint is better than Ubuntu. This is wrong, very wrong. It is like Mint users are biting the hand that feed them. Without Ubuntu there can be no Mint as it exist now. Their Debian edition is much better with that bundles they have and deserves recognition, but Ubuntu one does not. It is like giving credit to CentOS instead of Red Hat, it is wrong.
To be fair, the codecs legality are only unclear in SOME countries.
ReplyDeletePre 11.04 Mint was better. If you met a stranger on the street and they wanted to try Linux what would you recommend? I would have recommended Mint because the desktop layout was more like windows with a panel on the bottom with a start button, no top panel and flash working in their browser. After 11.04 you have the "install codecs" check off box which puts KDE in the running but Unity takes it right back out. So now it is KDE or Mint if I only have 3 seconds to tell someone what they should try.
I think agree that Mint on Debian has done an outstanding job.
But that is the point right there. Ubuntu should really be Ubuntu on top of the Debian repos. Generally speaking Ubuntu makes no attempt at being compatible with Debian. They also give almost no credit to their parent distro, Debian. If you run ubuntu as a new user, it could be months before you discover it is based on Debian.
Mint makes sure they maintain compatibility with their parent distribution. All work done on Mint can immediately be taken advantage of by Ubuntu. Also they are very good at giving credit. As soon as you start working on Mint you find out it is based on Debian.
Since you have mentioned some of Ubuntu's outstanding work in involving open source, I will mention the dark side. Ubuntu has a bad habit of not completing things. The put a lot of work into Pulse Audio for 3 cycles then boom, it is 90% there but not perfect. The decided to do a nice looking graphical boot. Well after 3 cycles they stopped working on improving it and it is only 90% there. Then they were going to give us 10 second boot times. 3 cycles of work on it and it is 90% there. I wish they would just finish one of their initiatives before starting a new one.
Disclosure: I am an OS junkee. I have used most Windows versions since 1.03, DOS, Color Computer BASIC, OS/9, Geos, and most of the major package and desktop varieties of Linux since 2005, "living" with PCLinuxOS, elive and Bodhi, Kubuntu and Ubuntu and finally Mint, and with Mint for four years.
ReplyDeleteI don't begrudge Canonical/Ubuntu choosing its desktop metaphor... I see where they are going in the future... tablets and TV. The Unity desktop will work nicely there.
But I don't use a tablet, and I don't own an Ubuntu TV. I use a laptop.
And, even though I have worked through a lot of change in my computer past, I find the Unity and Gnome3 desktop experiences to be, well, not what I need right now. I didn't go looking for them, after all, they happened to me. Although I could have retreated back to Bodhi or sought out an XFCE distro, I appreciated what Mint was doing and stuck it out to really enjoy its new Cinnamon “almost like Gnome2” experience.
I would hope that you would please stop your derogatory remarks. It makes you look extremely overbearing over little; almost like a Window's fanboy insisting that Android “really isn't Linux.”
Mint has never hidden its precursor foundations in Debian and Ubuntu. It has never claimed to be more than it is, dependent, yet different.
Linux is about freedom and choosing what works for you. Clem (the head developer of Mint) has decided for himself what kind of style his Linux should have. Are you really that upset that others have decided to agree with him?
You're lashing out a Mint for doing just what Ubuntu did for years? After all, Ubuntu was nothing more than ugly brown spit shine on Debian Unstable... What they have, mostly, they have because of Debian, and so does every other Debian based distro out there. And Ubuntu has yet to add anything to any project upstream that is of use or even substantial. So, they've created their own in-house UI that no one wants to use. This is progress? This is doing something more than Mint, who as given use MATE, MGSE, and now Cinnamon? All of which have other distros looking hard at them? Give me a break! Linux Mint is doing a fine job. Keep it up, Clem! And Linux Mint is doing all of this on a tiny budget - without millions wasted on nothing but promotion.
ReplyDeleteI could list many things Ubuntu did in open source without checking wiki: Upstart (this is great), Bazaar (not that good, I agree), Launchpad (Think Rosetta and Mint also largely dependent on it), their work with Linaro and AppArmor...
ReplyDeleteMint is not doing what Ubuntu did for years. Ubuntu is a real derivative from Debian while Mint is just a makeover of Ubuntu, almost purely cosmetic. Cinnamon is right step to change this. As already commented here, Bodhi is what a derivative should be or Linux Mint Debian Edition.
Anyway, MATE is a project that was born in Arch Linux, give credit where it is due.
Ubuntu is a real derivative? It's binary incompatible, but it still relies on Debian and recompiles many Debian packages. Ubuntu, for years, completely relied on Debian. They weren't always at the point they are now. Hardly anyone uses Upstart outside Google, Fedora, and Ubuntu. Some gift to OSS... Launchpad, I might give you that one. It's been documented that Ubuntu has done little for Gnome, just about nothing for the kernel, and nothing for just about every other project that is widely use in FOSS. Ubuntu's development is largely targeted for itself. Take MATE away all you want, little bitty Linux Mint is developing Cinnamon, and that is being looked at by every distro out there, except maybe Ubuntu, because everyone is disappointed in Gnome. Linux Mint simply rings a bell with users that Ubuntu has long stopped doing.
ReplyDelete