Ubuntu: Problems with not so benevolent dictators
The other day, I read about fewt leaving Ubuntu, and yesterday I saw this about Jeremy being done with Ubuntu. Their issues are similar, and striking, and also good examples of why I stopped using Gnome and, eventually, Ubuntu. Certain players are making decisions to remove some of the choice from users, or at least make it harder for novices. To keep it easy by keeping it stupid.
The first problem I ever had with a choice made by a free software programmer was when Gnome completely and totally neutered their screensaver. They made it nearly impossible to select which screensavers to have come on in random mode (so, for example, you couldn’t disable webcollage, which has a nasty habit of putting hardcore pornography on your screen), and they also took away configuration options (so, for example again, you couldn’t select which directory to use for pictures, or which font size some screensavers should use). The argument was that any screensaver requiring configuration is broken.
This is simply not the case: In many cases this is a feature. I want phosphor, for example, to display stuff I’ve written at random, and I want the text to be smaller than a billboard. I think it’s funny to randomly see my computer “typing” what I’ve written on the few occasions I have a screensaver on. (I typically just turn the monitor off, and use the screensaver to lock the screen). Or I want to only use pictures from a trip Bendy and I took to Florida, or Christmas pictures. I don’t want to keep my pictures in Gnome’s “home/username/pictures” folder any more than I want to keep them in My Documents\My Pictures.
I am more technically savvy than many, so my solution to this was to eradicate gnome-screensaver on every Ubuntu install/upgrade and then install the unmolested xscreensaver. Further issues with configuration being hidden from me or outright complicated led me to the stop using Gnome all together in favor of fluxbox. If I’m going to have to dick around with text files, I might as well have the full options fluxbox provides me. I also put William Jon McCann on my eternal shitlist for his general attitude about screensavers.
Shuttleworth is, apparently, just as bad. But that kind of figures. He’s made great strides for Linux and F/OSS. It looks like he’s lost sight of the core principles of Ubuntu — humanity to others. Telling people, especially many people, that they can’t second-guess someone is a bunch of crap. The community is all about having discussions, and no one is higher up the chain than anyone else. We don’t have room for elitists.
I’ve used Macs enough to be irritated with the placement of the title bar buttons. I don’t think we want to clone Macs. Fortunately, at this point, I’m using Debian on all but one computer in the house (haven’t seen cause for replacing Bendy’s Ubuntu with Debian — yet), so it’s a non-issue for me. My next machine will probably run Debian, as well, with perhaps some Slackware or Arch as a secondary, testing operating system (though I may just install them in KVM or get VMWare).
The big problem is that this sort of attitude drives away people who are drawn to the Linux community for reasons similar to my own. I like the control it allows me to have over my system. When people take that control, or try to, I don’t like it. Especially for arbitrary reasons. We seek logic; don’t move a button just because and call it an unquestionable design decision. Don’t say screensavers shouldn’t need configuration and then offer up some half-ass, back way around when the original configuration screen was more than adequate. Above all, don’t pretend we’re idiots. We left Windows behind because of that.
I changed to Ubuntu when, inexplicably, my printer stopped working in Slackware and nothing I could do would make it work. I tried everything and spent about four hours on it one Sunday. Google, reading documentation, reinstalling, nothing worked. I finally had enough — it had taken a long time to get the thing running in the first place, and I hadn’t changed any settings. Ubuntu was supposed to be easy. This was just after the release of Dapper Drake. I was there right up to Gutsy. I had problems with every single upgrade, though. Not once did I follow the instructions for upgrading and not have a huge problem. Most of them broke and I ended up just installing over the old OS. Finally, when I had an issue with screen resolution, and my Debian laptop did not with the same monitor, I said a few expletives (“Expletive it, I’ll expletive-ing install expletive-ing Debian then!”) and installed over the old OS.
Debian isn’t perfect, either. No distribution is. Fluxbox isn’t perfect, xscreensaver isn’t perfect. These are all tools made by flawed humans and therefore flawed themselves. The problems come when we allow more of our flaws to influence decisions, even against the voices of people who may well know better. Perhaps Mr. Shuttleworth should take a step back and wonder why the peasants are revolting.
