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Is this What Canonical/Mark Wants Us to "Choose"?

Have a look at the below screenshot and don't think, just try to feel it! :P.


If you think that this is actually the newly introduced Ubuntu 11.04 Natty, actually it is not. This is KDE4 plasma desktop that was showed-off in the Ubuntu developer's summit (still happening as I'm writing). I may sound stupid and perhaps I maybe wrong, but this shows us how close Unity and KDE (Qt to be precise) actually is. I think this is the end that Canonical (actually Mark Shuttleworth) tries to drag the users into.

As a start they've create an exact replica of Unity's 3D shell that is called Unity 2D and it does not use Compiz but interestingly, it's written in Qt!. Although I'm not quite sure how the default Unity-Shell is designed (C++ of that I know, GTK?? perhaps), but when considering few things, I think at the end/future we'll/maybe see Ubuntu drifting towards KDE-Qt rather than GTK based OS.

Earlier this year Mark Shuttleworth said that Ubuntu will be supporting Qt toolkit more by giving his reason (quoting his own words)
"...it’s the values which are important, and the toolkit is only a means to that end. We should evaluate apps on the basis of how well they meet the requirement, not prejudice them on the basis of technical choices made by the developer."
We'll Gnome is the exact opposite (including the whole GNU philosophy, I'd say). And to be honest, I don't have the mental capacity to say who's right or whose wrong but letting go of the "weight" that means "hold" for their end... well, as long as you/we can see past beyond our choices, that's just fine. But as the history tells us, these types of mental attitudes are a breading ground for tyranny (excellent "title" for another post, :P). 

Anyway, Canonical would've done this with the beginning of Unity by designing the default 3D Unity-Shell using the Qt which they did not. But I think anyone could see the apparent difficulty in that "path. Unity is so new and it will be huge mistake to do something that naughty, 'cause it's too early. 

Initially, slowly Canonical will be moving towards Qt and if they do so, they could easily use the Unity-Shell as the means to their end. For instance, now very little "customizations" are "available" in Unity. Canonical would easily come up with a "story" that would suggest that if they were to give users a better computing experience, then their better off with Qt rather than GTK. Because if they aren't cunning, this could easily destroy a lot of their faithful users (we're already seeing few developers "taking off" from Canonical). 

Anyhow, personally, I don't feel comfortable of being around people who has the believe that Mark seems to quite fond of, I don't like it not because I don't see any value in it, it has its uses. But in a very subtle sense, those types of words "define" a mind that is drifted towards negativity (highly relative though) which leads to chaos because ultimately a mind which operates in those type of states, the only way it "knows" how to calm or satisfy itself (if it's ever going to happen) is through the idea of superiority/power which is like fire...

...as long as we keep the proper distance, it's just fine, but things can just go wrong pretty easily, after all we're all just scared human beings, one way or the other (or is it just me... shi* :P).

3 comments:

Ivan said...

What this shows is how flexible and powerful the KDE Plasma shell is. You can emulate almost any other desktop with it or create something completely your way. Canonical should just take KDE Plasma as the basis and develop Unity with Plasma technology. Instead they just created another highly inflexible desktop. I dislike it so much that it pushed me so far that I tried KDE and plan to stay with it (not on Kubuntu though, openSUSE has better implementation). Bye Ubuntu, it was nice to get me into Linux but now I'm moving on.

Gayan said...

@ Ivan,

yes Ivan, KDE was always like that thanks to the developers and the Qt. And yes, although I haven't used OpenSuse for a long time now, but if anyone needs an OS which rely on KDE, yes, OpenSuse is excellent... good luck to you as well :)

Gayan said...

@Ivan,

Yes, when it comes to powerful features, KDE/Qt rocks and if you want one of the best KDE powered distributions, OpenSuse and Mandriva, etc are really good ones.

Thanks for the "thought", appreciate it.

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