The year in Linux.
	Forget the Winter of Discontent, for Linux desktop users 2012's winter of discontent stretched through the Spring distro releases, bring with them more of GNOME 3's limitations ever more sharply into view
	the dog days of summer when those upgrading the opneSUSE and Fedora started to come
	to terms with GNOME 3's shortcomings, well into the Fall when Ubuntu managed to piss
	off just about everyone from fedora to is own, privacy conconscious user base.
	GNOME 3
		remains a desktop in search of love. And features. 
			Everything Mint has done is largely a reaction to GNOME 3
			Mint Cinnamon as the sleeper hit of the season
	Ubuntu
		No Second Fedora release put more focus on Ubuntu which...
	Ubuntu's year of living dangerously. 
		Amazon fiasco
		Developing features less in the open
			-so what shuttleworth did was invite the community to participate in the development of features that would previously
			been kept under wraps until reveal time
				did he do that because of the Amazon lens backlash
					more community involvement means less likely to piss people off
		Willingness to attack Fedora
	The year of the imploding Linux desktop
		Feels like being a mac user when OS 9 was released
		If the end of the Desktop is nigh (and tablet sales certainly make that seem
		likely) and the primary province of Linux remains servers, then GNOME, KDE and 
		the rest will be footnotes in the history of Linux. 
		Like the end is nigh. For the desktop that is, 



It's not surprising when tech companies imitate Apple, but it is surprising to see Linux distros imitating what even diehard Apple fans would likely admit is the least appealing aspect of the company. 


The Amazon Lens is a bit more serious than just a few shopping results popping up in Unity, serious enough that Unity now has a privacy agreement. Which is where the EFF comes into the story.


Check the lower left corner of the Dash in Quetzal to find a new link to a "legal notice" which outlines how your personal data is used with the new online results. The short story is that Canonical collects your search terms and IP address and shares them with "third parties including: Facebook, Twitter, BBC and Amazon." That means that you're no longer dealing with just Canonical's privacy policy, but also those of the third-parties.



Forget the Winter of Discontent, for desktop Linux fans what started as 2012's Winter of Discontent stretched out through the Spring distro releases, with them more of GNOME 3's limitations, into the Dog Days of summer when openSUSE produced a ray of hope that quickly faded as Fedora failed to even ship a update in Autumn and Ubuntu's Unity seemed to sell its soul for a few Amazon dollars.


Disappointment can be palpable even when you feel it from a missing config file.

Stepping back a bit it starts to look like desktop Linux is imploding. 

There was, for a short while a way to get back to the old highway -- good old fallback mode. But now that's gone. Or is being rebuilt as a GNOME Shell plugin because, presumably, only nerds want to use it. Silly nerds, wanting to actually get things done.






KDE, the old warhorse, 



Fortunately there was a ray of hope.

GNOME 






GNOME 3 remains a desktop in search of someone to love it and Unity just wants to go shopping apparently. This may well be the OS 9 moment of desktop Linux -- this is what we've got for the future? This is what we've got for the future.