A couple years ago Shuttlesworth made it very clear about his views on the now "orphaned" Ubuntu derivatives. He cut off most of his support. Were it not for BlueSystems Kubuntu would be dead by now. As Ubuntu's path focuses more tightly on Unity and Shuttlesworth's dream of Ubuntu becoming profitable (not just Canonical's server and support business), it will be increasingly more difficult for Kububtu's now masceated dev team to pound Ubuntu into Kubuntu's KDE mold.
The question is not IF it will become too much work, but WHEN, forced by increasing difficulties, Kubuntu will choose another base for its own survival. The longer the delay in taking that course the more the user base will diminish as users doubts increase.
And that assumes that Shuttlesworth won't decide, for his own financial health, to further reducing or eliminating all support for Kubuntu, or even Ubuntu itself. Three years ago, when Shuttlesworth kicked the step kids out and established a 5 year LTS release I predicted that 2017 would be the deadline year he set for for Ubuntu to become profitable, fulfilling Shuttlesworth's hopes, or he would pull the plug on everything. I still hold to that view. I don't expect to see 17.04. If, to my surprise, it appears then I will remain with 14.04 till 2019. If, not I will rebase myself on either Debian KDE or Arch's version, as things now stand. With that in mind I continue to search for another Distro that gives KDE its due. IMO, this forum is more about KDE than the underlying Ubuntu framework, which is becoming increasingly hostile to KDE as it focuses on Unity. So, while I will remain connected to this forum I probably won't remain connected to Kubuntu if its trajectory continues along its current path. After all, it wasn't raining when Noah built the ark, and I am not going to wait for Kubuntu to collapse before I start looking around for a different boat.
The question is not IF it will become too much work, but WHEN, forced by increasing difficulties, Kubuntu will choose another base for its own survival. The longer the delay in taking that course the more the user base will diminish as users doubts increase.
And that assumes that Shuttlesworth won't decide, for his own financial health, to further reducing or eliminating all support for Kubuntu, or even Ubuntu itself. Three years ago, when Shuttlesworth kicked the step kids out and established a 5 year LTS release I predicted that 2017 would be the deadline year he set for for Ubuntu to become profitable, fulfilling Shuttlesworth's hopes, or he would pull the plug on everything. I still hold to that view. I don't expect to see 17.04. If, to my surprise, it appears then I will remain with 14.04 till 2019. If, not I will rebase myself on either Debian KDE or Arch's version, as things now stand. With that in mind I continue to search for another Distro that gives KDE its due. IMO, this forum is more about KDE than the underlying Ubuntu framework, which is becoming increasingly hostile to KDE as it focuses on Unity. So, while I will remain connected to this forum I probably won't remain connected to Kubuntu if its trajectory continues along its current path. After all, it wasn't raining when Noah built the ark, and I am not going to wait for Kubuntu to collapse before I start looking around for a different boat.
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