Ubuntu is my preferred flavor of desktop Linux by far. In fact, I consistently used it as my daily driver for over two years and only left because I was having trouble with Pulse Audio (who wasn’t back then) and I started to doing Apple development which required a Mac. Despite moving to OS X, I’ve kept a close eye on the development of Ubuntu and have run it on several machines and plenty of desktop VMs. Recently, however, it has been taken in a somewhat perplexing direction culminating in the absurd $32,000,000 Indie GoGo campaign for the Ubuntu Edge.
Before you get your knickers in a knot, no, I don’t have an issue with Unity or Mir; in fact, I think Canonical is doing the right thing by moving away from the aging and bloated X and it is haar to deny that the recent releases of the Ubuntu desktop have been the best looking ones they’ve had.
Usually, I’d be happy about a Linux-based operating system taking user experience seriously; after all, that’s pretty much the basis for Apple’s rise. Canonical, however, doesn’t seem to be acting in the interest of desktop Ubuntu and the gains in user experience feel like little more than side effects of the change in focus to mobile.
Not that I am against making a great mobile operating system! I’d love to see someone branch off the code and create Ubuntu Phone or something like that. My feelings regarding iOS conventions bleeding over into OS X apply here as well — basically, I believe that a desktop OS and a mobile OS should be two totally different products and, given the failure of the Surface, it seems the market agrees with me.
There may be an opportunity for Canonical in the mobile space and I could of course be wrong. In fact, given Canonical’s willingness to get in bed with the mobile operators and willingness to allow them to pervert and mar the system’s user experience, the carriers are somewhat likely to embrace Ubuntu on mobile.
Users, however, are likely to disagree. Sure a lot of people who don’t want to pay for a smartphone will take the carrier’s freebie and that’s great for Canonical if that freebie runs Ubuntu, assuming Canonical is getting some sort of financial remuneration per handset, but this group of people is pretty much worthless to developers, since, as the statistics on the low end Android phones show, these users are unlikely to even download many apps let alone pay for apps. These low value users are unlikely to warrant even passing attention from quality developers. If Canonical wants Ubuntu to be an app platform powerhouse, it ought to focus on the platform where it already has high value users — the desktop. The current state of the Software Center on Ubuntu is a disgrace and should never have been released to the public. Beyond being buggy, it is an insult to any developer that would publish any app on it.
