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**woodsmoke** · Jan 20, 2012, 12:50 AM

One person's history of Gnome/unity and cinnamon

This is a nice little read for folks who don't know the general history of how Gnome 3 and Unity ended up on distros, why Mint is now "top dog" and how Cinnamon came to be....generally speaking.

It blatantly leaves out that Canonical developed Unity expressly to be scalable from the phone to the television, but it is still a breezy (pun INTENDED !

) little op-ed to be taken for what it is worth...an op-ed.

http://www.geekgumbo.com/2012/01/08/...1-1-3-desktop/

woodsmoke

**GreyGeek** · Jan 20, 2012, 12:11 PM

Re: One person's history of Gnome/unity and cinnamon

Originally posted by woodsmoke

....
It blatantly leaves out that Canonical developed Unity expressly to be scalable from the phone to the television, ....

Mark Shuttlesworth has been sinking around $10M/year into Ubuntu and is still in search of a business model that works. By shifting to Unity, primarily for small devices, even though making it backward compatible with laptops and desktops, he is saying that GNOME 2 and before on laptops and desktops did not generate a viable income. It did not get the market penetration he wanted. Even if Linux as a whole achieved 12% of the desktop market share by 2009, according to Ballmer, the PC OEMs would have risked their own existence had they marketed more than just a token share of their machines with Ubuntu preinstalled, thus maintaining Microsoft's monopoly. Microsoft would have cut off their ad rebates, and thus their major source of "profit" income if they had dared.

Microsoft has no monopoly grip on the smartphone or tablet market, In fact, it hardly has a presence at all. From 15% a few years ago, their market share in the phone market has dropped to below 2% and is still falling, despite the rosy prognostications of some journalists obviously paid to publish their fiction. So, Canonical has only to deal with Apple and Google, neither of which have monopolistic holds on their markets. They can and probably will influence hardware makers to sell phones and/or tablets with Unity preinstalled. Then it will be up to Mark's marketing power and the quality of Unity experience users have. Time will tell.

Last October Canonical made the following announcement:

London, October 21st, 2011: Canonical today announced it would be extending the support and maintenance period for its upcoming Long Term Support (LTS) release of Ubuntu for desktop users from three years to five years.
...

The claimed reason:

The move comes in response to increasing demand for Ubuntu desktops in corporate environments where longer maintenance periods are the norm. It brings the desktop product into line with Ubuntu Server which continues with five years of support for LTS releases.

That raises a question... is this corporate demand coming from corporate users doing what MOST Linux users do: installing from a LiveCD they created themselves, or are they buying a PC with Ubuntu preinstalled, which are offered by a Precious Few dealers? I don't know, and I doubt anyone else knows for sure either, including Canonical. In my experience most corporate and government agencies prefer preinstalled OS, or they install and configure an OS on one machine and then use something like Ghost, or dd, to overwrite HDs on other machines of identical hardware configurations en masse. IF they are "demanding" machines with Ubuntu preinstalled from one of the Linux vendors mentioned in the link above, that vendor would be showing something more than just a shoe-string operation, which none of them are.

I say all of that to make a prediction. Regardless if Unity on phones and tables succeeds or fails, I believe that Ubuntu on PCs will cease to exist at the end of the LTS for Precise, unless Shuttlesworth remains in a charitable mood, and charitable it would have to be to continue shelling out $10M/y or more. IF Unity on phones or tables fails by the end of that time period to turn a profit then Canonical itself will terminate business altogether.

P.S. -- From September of 1998 until Novell bought SuSE, I PURCHASED 22 boxed sets of SuSE, at prices that rose from $30 to $50 over that period, and didn't give it a second thought. I switched to Mandrake, then Mandriva, paying for them as well. I would GLADLY pay for Kubuntu. Sadly, a whole series of commercial distros have shown that only 3% of Linux users are willing to pay for the privilege of running an OS that has been more secure and stable than any other.

**woodsmoke** · Jan 20, 2012, 12:48 PM

Re: Oneric/Unity w cinnamon actually is human

Very nice commentary GG.

The thought that Ubu might not be around as a commercial operation is somwhat troubling to me.

I quite realize that there would still be "somebody" making Linuxs but having an even somewhat commercial operation would seem to be a somewhat good thing in the overall scheme of Linuxdom.

woodsmoke

**SteveRiley** · Jan 20, 2012, 05:28 PM

Re: One person's history of Gnome/unity and cinnamon

Originally posted by GreyGeek

Regardless if Unity on phones and tables succeeds or fails, I believe that Ubuntu on PCs will cease to exist at the end of the LTS for Precise

Expound on this one a bit more, if you don't mind.

* What's made you come to this conclusion?
* Why don't other distros face similar risk? --or--
* Do you think it would sound the death knell for desktop Linux in general?

**woodsmoke** · Jan 20, 2012, 06:21 PM

Re: Oneric/Unity w cinnamon actually is human

Even if there was no "Ubuntu" there would be Debian and any of it's derivatives and/or BSD.

woodsmoke

**GreyGeek** · Jan 20, 2012, 08:12 PM

Re: One person's history of Gnome/unity and cinnamon

Originally posted by SteveRiley

Originally posted by GreyGeek

Regardless if Unity on phones and tables succeeds or fails, I believe that Ubuntu on PCs will cease to exist at the end of the LTS for Precise

Expound on this one a bit more, if you don't mind.

* What's made you come to this conclusion?

1) Canonical shifted from Gnome, which they didn't write or control, to Unity, which they do.

2) Unity is designed primarily to run on small displays and devices. Gnome won't fit on small devices and run well without major modifications. It's better to modify what you control than that which you do not control.

3) Unity is targeted to the technically challenged, those who could never, or don't want to install Linux from an ISO and never will. That's smartphone territory.

4) Canonical couldn't get any PC OEMs to risk losing their ad rebates from Microsoft by offering any significant numbers or models of their hardware with Ubuntu preinstalled. The damage it would have caused to Microsoft was signaled by the sales of netbooks at Walmart with Linux preinstalled. They were selling off their shelves like hot cakes and Walmart couldn't restock them fast enough. What Microsoft planned to do about Walmart selling Linux boxes was detailed in the Comes vs Microsoft document PX09617.PDF Microsoft tried to mitigate the damages by spinning a bogus story about the rates of returns of Linux vs XP powered netbooks. When I went looking for Linux powered netbooks at Walmart I was told that they shifted their sales to on line only. The on line site sold out and had notices that they were having trouble getting machines from their vendors (Microtel, I believe it was). Then the website went stagnate and then disappeared.

5) Shuttleworth was never hesitant to state that his goal was/is to "turn the corner" and make Ubuntu profitable. He has put at lease $60M into Canonical & Ubuntu. The first sign things were not going as planned was when Canonical stopped sending out install CDS postage paid to anyone who asked for a copy. Being open source software there was no restriction on using a CD to install Ubuntu on as many machines as the recipient had. That Microsoft was able to keep PC OEMs from offering machines anyone would want (instead of what they did offer Linux on), combined with threatening major retailers with loss of access to WinBoxes to keep them from selling Linux boxes from minor OEMs, and Shuttleworth was/is between a rock and a hard place.

6) The consumer PC market is shrinking.

Shuttleworth has no choice about where to go. He may have gotten his inspiration and courage from this story. IF he stays with trying to get a significant piece of the PC consumer market he'll have to continue dumping $10M/y into Canonical. He's not going to do that. That leaves only the smartphone/tablet market where Microsoft does not have a monopoly, has no chance of acquiring a monopoly and isn't really even in the game. Apple has no grounds to stop Canonical and neither does Google. The only way Microsoft can try to stop Canonical from entering a Unity smartphone/tablet into the market is to sue them for supposed IP violations in Linux. Barnes & Nobel blew the lid on that gambit. Microsoft has already backed away from one of its six patent claims and B&N has enough prior art and proof of triviality, along with other charges that aren't relevant here, to ward off Microsoft's IP accusations and perhaps win a reverse lawsuit. Besides, if things don't go any faster with that lawsuit than they did with the SCO lawsuit, it will be another FIVE years before that lawsuit is decided. That is 1 and 1/2 computer life times. Look at what has happened in the last five years with smartphones and tablets. The market isn't going to wait for Microsoft to try and bully someone else. It will move on and no one can predict where it will be in five years. Personally, I am excited about the Raspberry board!

* Why don't other distros face similar risk? --or--
* Do you think it would sound the death knell for desktop Linux in general?

Commercial distros trying to support an infrastructure that uses paid employees are at risk. EVERY commercial Linux vendor has had problems for exactly the same reasons Shuttleworth had them. SuSE, SUSE, RedHat, Mandrake, Mandriva, Lindows, Corel and many others died against Microsoft's DOJ approved monopoly. Most people do not know how nor would they want to learn how to install an ISO file onto a PC. When they buy a PC they want it to come with the OS preinstalled and ready to use. IF the PC OEM market were OS neutral and consumers could ask the OEM to install what ever OS they wanted to use, Windows would never have risen to its present market share level because, quite frankly, it would have driven people to another OS, like Win95 drove me to Linux. In a free market where choices aren't forced upon the consumer, the consumer will not stay with an OS that is both expensive, unstable, and insecure, as Win95 was. Microsoft would have died before XP arrived. But, the PC market has never been on a level playing field from the moment Microsoft fielded a team of "Technical Evangelists". Probably even before that.

Will Canonical's failure with Ubuntu on the personal desktop mean the end of Linux on the desktop? Hardly. When DELL's failure to follow through with Linux pre-installed was revealed for its real purpose, which was to give Microsoft an excuse to claim that they were not a monopoly and that the PC OEM desktop was "open" to other OSs and people "just happened to prefer theirs", I believe that Shuttleworth shifted to focusing on enterprise servers, the way RH was doing. (Novell was just a tool Microsoft used to convert enterprise RedHat servers to Windows servers by first replacing them with SUSE boxes which were not installed as Master Browsers.) I believe that Matt Asay was in charge of that, and after a year or so of failure he left in Dec of 2010, about a month before the Vizio announcement appeared. What he ran into was probably an entrenchment of RH servers and other Linux distros installed by corporate sys admins who really don't need "vendor support". See below about Linux enterprise trends in 2012.

So, while Canonical continues to improve Unity I have no doubt that Shuttleworth is working behind the scenes to set up a hardware vendor who will announce a Unity powered smartphone and/or tablet sometime later this year or by June of 2013.

Meanwhile reports had been surfacing over the last year that the Linux desktop enterprise market share was rising! Even Microsoft's sock puppet, Net Applications (a seller of re-branded EXE programs), is begrudgingly approaching the 2% mark. When Ballmer was saying 12% Net Applications was claiming 1/10th of that. IF the Linux desktop market share were that low Microsoft would have had NO incentive to throw any bones to the Linux kernel developers or make any offerings of code, even under their own "open source" license. So, I believe that the Linux desktop share has grown since Ballmer threw out the 12% figure and is somewhere around 15% or perhaps more. In fact, as Windows continues to demonstrate that most of its admins can't keep it secure, military and governmenst around the world are switching to it in increasing numbers. The reason why you don't hear more about it in American based mags and web pages is that their accounts receivables, hence payrolls, aren't funded by ads from Linux distro makers.

http://www.h-online.com/open/news/it...t-1397238.html
Even the OEMs are starting to see the light as Microsoft's power wanes: http://h20195.www2.hp.com/v2/GetPDF....A3-4775ENW.pdf
The cloud is driving business to Linux: http://www.fiercecio.com/techwatch/s...way/2012-01-19 and they are putting out job notices for Linux savvy people.
(Which means that with your combined knowledge of both Windows and Linux security and being familiar with both OSs, you could not be more perfectly situated, Steve!)

National Security Agency ports SE Linux to mobile platform, as it gains ground in enterprises and government, from just three days ago.

http://www.examiner.com/technology-i...ple-linux-jobs

http://defensesystems.com/articles/2...t-systems.aspx
Why?
http://www.internet-security.ca/inte...f-windows.html

http://www.techi.com/2010/12/putin-l...o-open-source/

While consumer use of the PC desktop is declining for both Windows and Linux, and enterprise use of Windows is not growing as it did in the past, the enterprise use of Linux is exploding.

...
Eighty-four percent of respondents report that their organizations have expanded Linux usage
in the last 12 months, with 82% planning on continuing that expansion into the year ahead. The
5-year outlook indicates an even longer-term commitment to the platform among 79.8% of Linux
users surveyed, who say the use of Linux in their company or organization will increase relative to
other operating systems during this time period.
...
Only 21.7% of respondents are planning an increase in Windows servers during this time period
and, in fact, more than 25% are planning to decrease the number of Windows servers.

Guys like me will continue to use Linux as long as Kubuntu, or Linux Mint, or PCLOS, or Fedora, or OpenSUSE exist, and they will probably be around for a long time. In fact, Unity may get some non-geeks enthused about Linux and they could end up here, learning how to improve their geekness!

**woodsmoke** · Jan 20, 2012, 08:53 PM

Re: Oneric/Unity w cinnamon actually is human

Outstanding post GG! And I thought I knew a lot of history!

This

netbooks at Walmart with Linux preinstalled. They were selling off their shelves like hot cakes and Walmart couldn't restock them fast enough. What Microsoft planned to do about Walmart selling Linux boxes was detailed in the Comes vs Microsoft document PX09617.PDF

went completely past me, but I do have a microtel tower and the PCLOS cd that came with it. One had to install the OS one's self and it was returned so i grabbed it.

The problem really wasn't the OS it was the oddball sound hardware, mention of it was made here at the forum a few days ago, can't remember the name...

anyway...GREAT POST!

woodsmoke

**SteveRiley** · Jan 20, 2012, 10:41 PM

Re: Oneric/Unity w cinnamon actually is human

Originally posted by woodsmoke

This...

netbooks at Walmart with Linux preinstalled

went completely past me

Could be the $200 Everex gPC from 2008, perhaps? Not a netbook, but a desktop. And even though it sold out quickly, apparently "middle America" rejected them. Who ya gonna believe?

Anyway, wonderful post as usual, Jerry. Must digest those links.

**woodsmoke** · Jan 20, 2012, 11:01 PM

Re: Oneric/Unity w cinnamon actually is human

This is the tower that I picked up for a hundred and twenty as I remember.

http://www.retrevo.com/s/Microtel-SY...00ci265/t/1-2/

woodsmoke

**SteveRiley** · Jan 20, 2012, 11:06 PM

Re: One person's history of Gnome/unity and cinnamon

Coming back after a bit of light reading...

Originally posted by GreyGeek

a hardware vendor who will announce a Unity powered smartphone and/or tablet

If it's a phone, I hope they put a hardware keyboard on it. I cling to my G2 not because it's the latest and greatest but because few decent Android phones have keyboards anymore. Eventually this thing will be too powerless to run updated Android; devs are struggling to get Ice Cream Sandwich on it, what happens when Kiwi Cheese Cake comes out?

Originally posted by GreyGeek

The reason why you don't hear more about it in American based mags and web pages is that their accounts receivables, hence payrolls, aren't funded by ads from Linux distro makers.

Perhaps it's time to warm up my credit card and purchase a subscription to LWN.net.

Originally posted by GreyGeek

(Which means that with your combined knowledge of both Windows and Linux security and being familiar with both OSs, you could not be more perfectly situated, Steve!)

*Blush* ... You know, a few months ago I was exploring how we implemented the secure vault (the crypto key storage mechanism) on our Steelhead WAN accelerators. It felt rather rewarding to be able to navigate the file system, talk with the devs, and explain it to customers. Two years ago, I would have not been able to explain anything. "/var/opt"? "symlink"? "in-memory file system object"? All once foreign, all now comfortable.

Originally posted by GreyGeek

Guys like me will...be around for a long time.

Me too.

**woodsmoke** · Jan 20, 2012, 11:29 PM

Re: Oneric/Unity w cinnamon actually is human

There is a "Linux installer" for the Android phone it is in the marketplace.

One can put "as much" or "as little" on the phone as one wishes, and can put it in the SIM card so that one can remove and replace it with the SIM card to store pictures.

APPARENTLY, according to the market discussion it only puts a little data actually on the phone itself, the rest goes in the SIM card.

I would almost be tempted to try this.

It will install "almost any Legacy Debian" or Ubuntu and some examples are given.

Here is the site for the thing and there is also, in one of the pages, one of those boxy UPC codes that will install it using barcode scanner.

This has had 50,000 plus downloads.

http://android.galoula.com/en/LinuxInstall/

Here is a big review with comments and images:

https://market.android.com/details?i...xInstall&hl=en

There is also a Ubuntu installer for Android which has had a 1000 plus downloads but the website for the thing is not working, here it is in case it opens later:

IT SHOWS UNITY on the phone.

http://www.linuxforandroid.com/

woodsmoke

**SteveRiley** · Jan 20, 2012, 11:43 PM

Re: Oneric/Unity w cinnamon actually is human

I knew about the first one, but not the second. Thanks for that. The Nook Color forum on XDA Developers has had a thread about booting Ubuntu, also.

And since we're discussing Android and the market, check out this GO Launcher EX theme:

**woodsmoke** · Jan 21, 2012, 12:19 AM

Re: Oneric/Unity w cinnamon actually is human

Thanks SR
here is a how to about how to "just install ubuntu" and it gives the full OS, which was LXDE and wifi

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d_di...eature=related

woodsmoke

**woodsmoke** · Jan 21, 2012, 12:29 PM

recommended Unity setup for classical interface

This will probably be my last post in this thread for a while because I like the Plasma interface better but I really do think that the Cinnamon desktop is going to be the way to go for a lot of people who like a crisp, nimble, Gnome 2, classical type interface which is very tweakable.

By way of introduction to the tweakable idea, if one tries to put something like Cairodock on the normal Unity dekstop, it works but there are problems like "ghost" pieces of stuff in the panel, and the left dock interfering with the Cairodock etc. It is workable, and takes some doing, but the whole Cairodock thing just doesn't "look right" with Unity.

Cinnamon give a very minimal desktop, one can default to hide the panel and one can then go with what one wants, like Conky, Cairodock etc.

Here is my final setup and it works very smoothly, crisply, etc. just what a "production" person usually says that that he or she wants.

a) installed the latest Ubu with Unity and updated.
b) installed SuperOS over that and updated.

The above two operations can take some time and I recommend HIGHLY that one uses AT LEAST a fifteen gig hard drive because of the Remastersys step.

c) installed Cinnamon over the above two, and again, this takes some time.

But, the end of all that is that one has a VERY nice classic desktop and also the option of booting into Unity. (There are also the other boot options provided).

d) Since the above take quite a bit of time, I then made a Remastersys of the setup. This was VERY TIGHT because I used a ten gig hard drive, so I recommend at least a 15 gig so as to have some room for the operation to be done cleanly and not have to be swapping stuff around which takes longer.

One can go to Fragadelic's site to the repos for Remastersys and it then appears in Synaptic, or one can do it from CLI, but running a Remastersys will save having to set up the three things above over and over as time goes on.

The basic setup comes with LibreOffice, and also Thunderbird mail scan etc. are there so one can do all the normal office work.

I added Thundecal, which just pulls the whole Google Calendar in and things work nicely.

The update manager is there but no MUON or Synaptic or "applications manager" one has to use the terminal, but not even Konsole is provided, it has instead uxterm and xterm. However, for what little I do with CLI I like Konsole so I added it through terminal and also then added synaptic through terminal.

There is also Empathy which now completely works with Yahoo, (not working with Yahoo was a major downside for me previously) but Empathy works fine now).

Curiously there are some games like Mines and some card games. I wonder if those are not just place holders for the menu item.

Extra drivers installer is there for video.

There is no screensaver option at all, one will need to add the app of choice, but.....

and this is curious, since there was no screensaver, I decided to go with the stock setup of what is done when one is away, and what one gets is a kind of "lock" where one gets to see the background of the main desktop and at the top is a black panel with the time displayed.

Actually, I have never used that kind of option before and it is ok.

A MAJOR downside for folks who lke the whole compiz setup is that there is no way to "add desktops".

There are a lot of complaints about this around the web, and it is irritating, but...I can see "the point" if one is on a smartphone or on a tablet running Unity.

When one adds and application, such as a music player, then another desktop is "added automatically" to the right and one can then right click the app and one can move the app "one desktop right" and it goes there and a new desktop is added.

In the stock setup there is no "cube" or anything and hitting the little icon for the desktop to the right is a pain, but it does work and again, I can "see the point". One can get an extra desktop on a tablet and one can slide to them with the finger(when it is enabled) and one has a "desktopped" version of the Win7 sliding desktop.

I, personally, think that this is just a matter of taste and that the default way of Unity gives the SAME IMPRESSION to the novice user as when the user is sliding the whole desktop back and forth in Win7.

Basically, I THINK that Win7 uses the "cylinder". However MS does not let the user see the cylinder. I think that MS thinks that being able to slide the desktop is a major advance and about as much as their normal user can handle at this time. Also they can then add other options in the next iterations of Windblows and ballyhoo about how advanced their desktop is. Don't know, just my conjecture.

So, to finish up:

All in all, a nicely rounded classic setup for folks to tweak as they wish.

woodsmoke

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