Are Ubuntu's Glory Days Over?

Has Ubuntu Had Its Day?

 

The article raised good points, but nothing new. Unity on a traditional keyboard/mouse desktop is kinda pointless. I get better results in Ubuntu tweaking Gnome panels. Maybe I'd see it differently using a touchscreen tablet.

Unless I'm missing something, the DistroWatch popularity rankings are bogus. They're based on unique daily hits on DistroWatch's distro pages. Are those visitors representative of Linux users overall? Not me. I've used Ubuntu since Hardy Heron, yet I'd never visited DistroWatch until today.

 

On desktops maybe, as soon as Lucid becomes unsupported.

 

Perhaps... you can't alienate half your user base and expect to continue on as if nothing has happened....

 

I think Linux and Ubuntu are going to face a new and very tough challenge in recent years. MS is going to launch real touch friendly OS windows 8 next year and I expect that we will see a mass influx of touch screen laptops, tablets, slates etc. Markets will go along with MS due to obvious reasons( usability and hardware/ software compatibility).

They might become almost out of the business in home users if they did not adopt to these changes. IMHO Ubuntu need to overhaul its GUI altogether to make it touch friendly like MS or Apple. They might have two versions of Ubuntu or one version with two different GUI options. There is challenge of hardware support as well, like ARM processors that windows is going to support.

If I buy a touch screen laptop/ tablet tomorrow, I will love to have Ubuntu on it with a real touch oriented GUI.

One more thing that they will have to adopt fully is an Application Store with lot of applications.

Lastly I think on smart phone level, there is already no place for Ubuntu or other distros due to success of Android, iOS and Windows. Still if they become a sort of hardware company as well like Apple or become partner with one( like MS and Nokia), we can see a different scenario.

I am too excited about the recent developments in OS world. It,s very interesting to see the competition between Apple, MS and Google. Also it,s a healthy competition for customers, with more options available to choose from.