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It's been a rough year for Linux on the desktop. More specifically, it's been a rough year for GNOME-based Linux on the desktop.
KDE, XFCE and other Linux desktops spent 2012 soldiering on in their quiet, stolid, but blissfully reliable ways while GNOME 3, Gnome Shell and Ubuntu's GNOME-derived Unity tried and largely succeeded (though perhaps not in the way they intended) to turn the Linux world upside down.
This year marks the first time many GNOME users were forced to face up to the unpleasant realization that the community is not in charge. GNOME is in charge. Canonical is in charge.
To be a GNOME or Unity user today is to be a pawn in a larger fight for market share, mind share and the future of computing. This year's GNOME is no place for someone who just wants to get some work done.
The GNOME Shell interface has been nearly universally panned since it launched and that didn't change in 2012. The difference is that this year, as GNOME Shell matured to version 3.4 and beyond, the criticisms feel sharper, the shortcomings less forgivable. Even those willing to cut GNOME 3's Shell interface some slack for the first few iterations seem to be running out of patience. Linux creator Linus Torvalds famously dismissed it earlier this year as an "unholy mess" and decamped for first XFCE and then KDE.
Whisper GNOME Shell anywhere on the web and a host of angry former GNOME users will show up decrying the lack of features and why, for the love of all things usable, is there still no button to minimize windows? It turns out those features, those things we all used to get things done -- like minimizing windows, alt-tab switching or god forbid, changing the theme -- are, in the view of GNOME developers, only things power users really want.
GNOME, as the developers would have you know, is not designed for nerds that want to customize things. The GNOME project knows what you need and don't need. It shouldn't come as a huge surprise, GNOME developers have been saying this for years, but this year it seems to be finally sinking in.
"Software isn't designed by committee where you have to rationalise every decision before you take it," wrotes one GNOME developer clear back in 2009 in a <a href="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=485846">bug report</a> questioning why GNOME 3's power manager is less functional than its predecessor. "Software is a vision," he continues, "I'm writing g-p-m to that grand plan. If you don't like it that's fine."
In other words, it's our way or the highway.
Apparently the developers at GNOME still believe that, with just a few less options to confuse them, the masses will really embrace Linux and we can all go dancing into the night as the mythical year of the Linux desktop finally arrives. This kind of hubris would be funny if it hadn't all but destroyed a once well-liked piece of software.
Ubuntu's Unity maybe slightly less reviled than GNOME 3, but the poorly thought out decision to bring irrelevant, often NSFW shopping content to the desktop angered many users and earned the company a public rebuke from the ordinarily Linux-friendly Electronic Frontier Foundation.
As if the move to the Unity desktop weren't contentious enough, Canonical head Mark Shuttleworth and crew decided to throw in a new Amazon Search Lens for the Unity Dash. The new Lens, which is enabled by default in Ubuntu 12.10, adds Amazon shopping results to your desktop searches.
Ubuntu apologists argue that Canonical's Amazon features are no different than what Mozilla does with the Firefox browser -- taking a few pennies each time you search Google from Firefox. But with Firefox the user is choosing to search Google. With the Amazon Lens often the user is just looking for a local file, not going shopping. Having Amazon shopping results come back when you're looking for a file on your desktop is not only surprising, it's next to useless. It can even be even offensive. Thanks to Unity's find-as-you-type feature seemingly benign searches with words like "analyze" or "assets" can bring up some NSFW Amazon results for slow typists.
It gets worse. As the EFF <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/privacy-ubuntu-1210-amazon-ads-and-data-leaks">points out</a>, your searches are sent to Amazon over a secure connection, but what Amazon sends back is not. That means that, because images are loaded directly from Amazon's servers instead of from Canonical's, "Amazon has the ability to correlate search queries with IP addresses."
Free software advocate Richard Stallman jumped into the fray <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/07/stallman_on_ubuntu_spyware/">calling the Amazon Lens "spyware"</a> and "surveillance code". Stallman went on to suggest that the free software community "tell people that Ubuntu is shunned for spying." Ubuntu's Jono Bacon called Stallman's statements "<a href="http://www.jonobacon.org/2012/12/07/on-richard-stallman-and-ubuntu/">childish</a>" (which he <a href="http://www.jonobacon.org/2012/12/10/on-being-childish-an-apology/">later apologized for</a>), but failed to refute anything Stallman actually wrote. Indeed, if the over 300 comments on Bacon's post are any indicator, for once the vast, vast majority of Linux users appear to agree with Stallman.
So why go out on a limb to turn on a feature that's largely useless, potentially offensive, may violate user privacy and is insecure to boot? Critics say Canonical is desperate for revenue. Shuttleworth says he just wants to make Unity more useful. Either way, despite the backlash and public criticisms over privacy Canonical did not back down. Ubuntu 12.10 shipped with the Amazon Lens enabled by default.
In other words, it's our way or the highway. Again.
Of course while GNOME and Ubuntu may be turning a deaf ear to the community and forging off on their own separate paths, one Linux distro does seem to be listening to users and gaining converts for it -- Mint Linux.
Not only does Mint seem to be listening to users, it's solving real problems and putting its money where its mouth is with not one, but two alternatives to the GNOME Shell -- the temporary fix that is the MATE desktop and the longer-term alternative Cinnamon.
MATE, which was originally forked from GNOME 2 by an Arch Linux developer, offers those who'd like to stick with the tried and true familiarity of GNOME 2 a way to do that. Cinnamon on the other hand takes GNOME 3's guts, rips out the GNOME Shell and replaces it with a user interface for those who prefer to "get things done," as the Cinnamon site puts it. Cinnamon isn't perfect. In fact it can be quite buggy at times, but at least it's heading a direction roughly opposite GNOME and Unity.
Both Mint sponsored desktops have proved popular enough that they're now part of Fedora's default repositories as well. Ubuntu, once the darling of desktop Linux and the overwhelmingly popular choice for newcomers, may soon lose that role to Mint. Indeed, 2012 may well mark the changing of the guard.
[1]: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=485846
[2]: Https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/privacy-ubuntu-1210-amazon-ads-and-data-leaks
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