In Defense of the Ubuntu MATE Derivative

By now I’m sure many of you have heard that the Ubuntu project is considering creating an Ubuntu derivative featuring the MATE desktop environment.  The MATE desktop environment is a fork of the once-popular GNOME 2 desktop environment.  GNOME was at one time the default Ubuntu desktop environment before they made the move to Unity.  I’ll go ahead and clear any bias out of the way, I do miss GNOME 2, so using MATE has been an awesome experience.  I love the simplicity, low resource requirements, and stability of MATE.   I should also mention that I like Unity as well.  It’s still the default on one of my laptops and it works great on that machine.  However, when I’m doing a lot of work, having the more traditional menus and status bar are something I appreciate on my desktop.

Enough about my preferences, however.  That would just be an opinion!  On to the arguments in support of a MATE derivative of Ubuntu.

Lately there have been some articles such as this one which, like many of my posts here, is an opinion with varying concerns about spreading the project too thin or placing an additional financial burden on the project.  My first point should alleviate most of those fears.

1)  A MATE derivative of Ubuntu would be a community project

The Ubuntu project is large, and even far larger now than when I used to volunteer for the distribution several years ago.  There are many different sub-projects including the derivatives of Xubuntu, Edubuntu, and Kubuntu.  All three of those derivatives are purely community projects.  They have the benefit of being “official” derivatives with direct access to Ubuntu servers, updates, and the like.  However, their development, promotion, and maintenance are all handled by the community.  Canonical, beyond the community manager position, must put forth little effort to keep those projects running.

This is not new, and in fact Canonical, the parent company of Ubuntu, removed the Kubuntu derivative from an official status to a community project.  For years, Kubuntu held nearly the same development priority and support from Canonical as did Ubuntu.  With Canonical’s change in focus to placing Ubuntu on all manner of devices, Canonical made a sensible move and placed the management of the Kubuntu project under the control of the community.  The Ubuntu project and its derivatives have a vibrant community and Kubuntu has done well over the past couple of years in their hands.  An Ubuntu MATE derivative (Mubuntu?  Hopefully not.)  would similarly do well as a community project, especially given the rising popularity of the desktop environment.

2)  MATE caters to those who still enjoy the classic desktop

In a world devoted to “convergence” even when it doesn’t always make sense, the MATE desktop environment provides a sensible, traditional desktop.  To be competitive in the modern desktop environment, there is definitely a place for a mobile-enhanced interface that will work well in promoting the innovative ability of the Linux community.  However, I’m one who disagrees with the need for convergence.  Take a look at how Microsoft is now going to bring back the Start menu.  They realized that a full on mobile interface is not only what customers didn’t want, but also that sometimes the traditional way of finding and opening applications is easier than scrolling through a grid of applications, especially if you’re using a traditional desktop.  Scaling-up a mobile interface to work on a 27″ screen just doesn’t make sense.  I like using my screen space as a canvas to work from, not as an over-sized tablet or smart phone.

In opposition to this world of convergence is an interface that has been around since I started using Linux in 2005.  It’s based on an old concept to be sure, but not only does it work and work well, but it also looks good while doing it.  MATE has the traditional setup that includes the basic three menus:  Applications, Places, and System.  There is a clean notification section that is unobtrusive.  The layout provides for a clean, big desktop with enough customization options to make a power user happy.  It’s also stable and solid.  Practically every application can integrate with it without awkward menu display issues or ugly, out of focus icons sitting in the task bar (fellow Unity users know what I’m talking about).  MATE is a good solution for someone who desires a stable, easy to use, get-out-of-your-way desktop.  There are other good options out there too, such as LXDE, which incidentally has it’s own community project known as Lubuntu.  This brings me to my third point.

3)  An Ubuntu MATE derivative is good for the community

As previously mentioned, the Ubuntu project is rather large.  Not only is it large but it is also very active which is great news for software projects that become involved with the Ubuntu community.  MATE can benefit by having many people who enjoy using Ubuntu — the way it handles software, security, and updates — who would love to have MATE be their default desktop.  The community can do great things when it’s passionate about something and there is no doubt in my mind that MATE would benefit from being a part of the Ubuntu family.  First there’s the dedicated community searching for bugs and ways to improve the desktop environment.  Secondly, MATE would certainly benefit from the amount of attention the project would receive.  Being a first-tier Ubuntu derivative brings with it a lot of value for a project.  For a humble project like MATE, this provides an effective, safe way to grow their user base.

An Ubuntu MATE derivative would be an excellent addition to the Ubuntu community, and I believe a likewise benefit to the MATE project itself.  It’s a win-win for the Linux community and helps round out the Ubuntu family.  I know that if the Ubuntu MATE derivative happens, then I will be one of the first to start using it as my primary desktop.

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Linux Contributors Deserve a Voice

There is something special about the open source community that makes it different from the rest of information technology projects.  No, I’m not talking about the ability to freely modify and pass on software:  I’m talking about volunteers who make open source projects happen.  If you take a look at any of the major Linux-centric corporations — Red Hat, Novell, Canonical, and others — you will find that behind the board meetings, paid employees and major contracts that there are thousands of volunteers improving upon the software that helps form the Linux systems that we know and love to use.  Volunteers are an incredibly valuable asset as they help manage the tens of thousands of software packages, patches, and features that are included with modern distributions.  These contributors provide their time, effort, and devotion to projects that interest them.  It would seem fitting that they have an outlet to voice their opinions on the directions that their projects are heading.

Blogs, comments, and forums comprise the majority of methods that contributors may express their feelings about decisions being made by their host companies.  In spite of the variety of ways to speak out, contributors are often drowned out by the collective noise of the internet.  Why spend time and energy screaming into the wind?  Recently Benjamin Kerensa wrote a blog post — an idea, about a foundation for Ubuntu contributors where the voices of the community could be heard and valued by Canonical.  His concerns of Ubuntu contributors leaving are not alone.  In the past several months there has been some shedding of contributors in the Ubuntu community.  Even looking back to areas in the Ubuntu project in which I contributed years ago there’s been a saddening reduction in activity and progress.  I’d love to see the idea of an Ubuntu contributor foundation come to fruition.

The idea of a foundation to promote the views of the community extends itself far beyond Ubuntu.  Many distributions that are large projects or are run by means other than a community board could all benefit from a contributor foundation.  The benefits of a volunteer community that feels valued beyond a simple “thank you” are innumerable.  As I’m sure those Ubuntu contributors who have left the project understand, words alone don’t matter, but rather the actions that follow.

However, a contributor foundation can be a double-edged sword.  While contributors can voice their opinions, there can be dissension and even singling-out if there isn’t some level of anonymity or contributor protection.  There is also a potential for a contributor foundation to cause worker union-like strikes and hardball negotiating with the parent company/organization.  Indeed, development could come to a halt should a community decide to collectively reject a decision by a parent company.  Therefore, it seems that contributor foundations and the parent companies need to have some sort of voting process that ensures that contributors voices are heard but are not the final word in a decision.  Any project that does not have a leader or formalized decision making process is almost certainly doomed to fail.  Including a contributor foundation in the decision-making process would at least show whether or not the contributors support the the decisions being made at the top, and may likely influence the final decisions being made.

Implemented correctly, a contributor foundation could provide a safe space for contributors to voice their opinions and offer a powerful voice in the open source community.  In a place where collaboration is encouraged, perhaps it’s time that Linux contributors have a safe space in which to have their voices heard, bringing meaningful discussion to the decisions being made by the project to which they give their time and effort.

Shuttleworth’s Prediction: Apple Will Converge OS’s, Follow Ubuntu’s Lead

Recently the UK-based PC Pro conducted an interview with Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of the Ubuntu project.  During the interview, Mr. Shuttleworth discussed in detail about his disappointment with the failure of the Ubuntu Edge.  Asserting the positive side of the product’s failure, Mark insisted that others would follow Ubuntu’s lead in converging mobile and desktop operating systems into one.

A couple thoughts…

First, it’s true, the Ubuntu Edge fell far short of it’s needed crowd-funded goal of 30 million or so, picking up not even half that by the time the crowd-funding event was over.  However, I tend to lean more in the direction of Mark’s comments and optimism about the support the Edge received from a major corporation such as Bloomberg and thousands of others.  I too was interested in the product but didn’t feel like throwing down a cool $700 for a product I have never put my hands on before.  In spite of the financial shortcomings, it was clear that the product did receive a lot of attention and praise.  It’s no doubt that what the Edge was attempting to accomplish will be a future device, if not the future of computing.

Honestly, I’m not sure how I feel about that.  Practically speaking, you lose your phone or it breaks?  Congratulations, you’re now without a phone OR computer.  I also don’t like the touch-friendly interface when I’m using a regular desktop or laptop without a touch screen, and it doesn’t seem like anybody else really likes that idea either.  And yes, Microsoft, even when you put the deceptive “start button” back on the task bar, that doesn’t really help.

I can’t help but chuckle when hearing about the processor specs of phones starting to match those of computers.  After shopping for my (hopefully) last laptop I’ll use for school, I noticed the incredible number of laptops that had absolutely terrible specifications.  I can’t recall how many times I saw 1.8 GHz processors being advertised.  My laptop from 2006 had a faster processor than that!  It’s almost as though computer companies were reluctant about Windows 8 and decided to go cheap just to save themselves if the OS was a flop (and it kind of was…).  That might just be my conspiracy theory, but I digress.

The Streamlined Bandwagon

First of all, I’m still alive.  I haven’t posted here in quite some time, mainly because of school but since I have some time to come up for air, I thought I’d write a quick post.  Even though I haven’t been actively updating this blog, I have been watching the industry and I believe that a trend is forming, and it is a trend I actually like.

For a while now, software companies including Apple have been designing new devices and investing in new opportunities, mainly the tablet market.  The tablet market, which Microsoft attempted to create some years ago was just a bit too early for its time.  It took the portability of the iPad and the Apple juggernaut to bring tablet computing into it’s present frenzy.  What was really interesting about this is that the iPad was not a full-blown computer like the old Windows tablets which were really laptops with a touchscreen instead of a clamshell design.  Simple led to something new…

To illustrate that history does actually repeat itself, I have been reading a book called Piloting Palm which is about the founding of Palm Computing, the makers of the popular handheld PDAs.  An interesting thing about the handheld computing market was that it was actually set to begin in the very early 90’s.  During that time, many large companies tried their best to create devices that would essentially be a computer in your pocket, including Apple.  However, they were slow, bulky, limited devices that ultimately failed.  What made Palm different is that they recognized that simple might be better so they stopped trying to cram all the features of a PC into a pocket-sized device.  That was the strategy they took, and their strategy paid off.  Well, it paid off at least from ’96-’07 or so, but that’s a story for another day.

So that’s the first aspect of this trend, that simple is better.  And we’re seeing this.  Apple is being.. well, Apple.  Microsoft has moved away from the standard desktop appearance and is using whatever used to be called MetroUI before they got sued for the name.  Now even Ubuntu is growing their already tailored-for-mobile interface and has announced systems for phones and tablets based off the popular open source operating system.  Beyond simply changing designs for a more mobile-focused world, all of the major players in the market are streamlining their interfaces and systems to create what I call a streamlined environmental universe.  All their devices will connect, Apple with iTunes, Microsoft with SkyDrive, and Ubuntu with Ubuntu One.

And that’s the second aspect of this trend — everyone is getting on board with a mobile experience that is streamlined, wherever you are, whether it be on your laptop, tablet or phone.  Each company is providing a full universe of products.  What is possibly more interesting is how this trend manifests itself.  All these products are causing companies to change.  Microsoft has created their first device in-house that is aimed at the computing market, the Surface.  If they’ve ever produced another computing device in-house, I certainly can’t remember it.  It’s easy to see why, too.  Microsoft needed to make the device themselves so that it works flawlessly with their other products.  The experience has come to the forefront, it’s no longer about making one device do something the others can’t in order to compete.  No, it’s making sure devices work well together within your product universe by providing a streamlined experience.  That’s the trend I’m seeing, and I like it.

Have any thoughts to share?… Seeing this trend, or seeing something totally different?  Leave a comment in the section below!