Zonker Goes Bonkers

I forget what stage the Linux desktop is in now, but it certainly seems to centre around Shuttleworth, the Urban Spaceman. Here’s Joe “Zonker” Brockmeier, of Gnome, on the topic of Ubuntu 11.04 and Unity.

It’s not a fork, but it does raise a number of issues about Canonical’s direction and the future of GNOME.

Actually, I’d have thought that Shuttleworth’s intended direction is perfectly obvious.

Somewhere between setting fire to his first $100 million and setting fire to the subsequent $100 million or so, it seems to have occurred to Mr Shuttleworth that he’s not getting enough glory for his money. Sure, there’s all that stuff about *buntu being the premier Linux desktop and the very bestest at marketing, but at base it’s pretty much either “Meh, I’ll stick with Debian” or “Wow, isn’t Mint cool?” That’s no way to treat a Benevolent Dictator.

Beginning with 10.04 he “introduced” Ayatana and lhs buttons and furry dice and stuff, in a pathetic attempt to look like OSX. Apparently the results disappointed him, although he was very enthusiastic at the time.

Well, obviously what the Linux desktop needs is a whole new video stack. Stop laughing, it’s true. Apple did that too, and look where they are now — the most hugest company in the world!

A complete inability to engineer anything whatsoever has never stopped Mark, however, and so we’re in for a good few months of laughable “it’s not cobbled together out of old pieces of string and driftwood, really” crap. And, for once, prominent members of the Linux community are beginning to voice their doubts.

Earlier this year Canonical addressed the “fork” issue and said “no, we’re not forking GNOME.” And they’re not, they’re diverging.

Excuse me, are you claiming that I just stuck a fork in your eyeball? I so didn’t. I merely stuck a diverge. Rub it all better and swallow an aspirin or two.

It’s not enough to be grossly incompetent and basically irrelevant. The Loons are now inventing their own taxonomy, for goodness’ sake. IT’S A DAMN FORK!

Canonical are leaving most of the GNOME platform untouched, and simply swapping out the desktop shell and some other bits.

IT’S A DAMN FORK!

Whichever stage this interesting psycho-drama is in at the moment, things are happening quite quickly. We’ll soon be on to the next stage, where the poor little lambs are forced to recognise what, to the rest of us, is blaringly obvious.

Shuttleworth is openly building something he can claim is “his own” operating system. It won’t be “Linux,” although it will borrow heavily. It won’t quite be as hilariously naughty as the Google or IBM or even the Oracle versions of Linux, but it will still be, effectively, proprietary, on a mushy little base of kernel plus GNU toolchain.

It will also be a worthless and unregarded piece of shit, but that’s hardly the point. This is where the rest of the Land of Loon are going to have to face cold, hard, reality.

People with large buckets of money just aren’t interested in your “philosophy.” They’re simply interested in ripping off whatever they can get away with.

——————————————————

(Edit) Oh, and for why Gnomistas don’t have a leg to stand on, consider the Gnome Usability Archives, as pointed to by PieStar.

It’s a wonder that people don’t just instinctively throw this crap away, rather than attempt to “devolve.”