If you haven't heard by now, then here's the news, Ubuntu is developing their own display server (Mir) to replace X. The fun part is that their already is a replacement been under development called Wayland.

The result of this has been a bit of drama. On one side there's the Free Software and Open Source community wondering what's the purpose of writing their own new display server when there's already a replacement under way. On the other side Ubuntu (or should I say Canonical LTD) explains why not Wayland. I'll admit I didn't really get the explanation but the fact they mentioned "user experience" (twice) as being half of the reason leaves me unconvinced. It sounds more like marketing talk rather than technical and/or practical explanations.

Regardless, Ubuntu and Canonical can do what they want, it's obviously their right to freely develop the software they desire. However work on Mir has been ongoing in secret for about a year, they have not communicated with those working on Wayland. Because the software is Free it's more productive to seek a more economic route, on a development time point of view as well as device support. Perhaps Canonical's idea of a display server is too deeply different to be able to share anything with Wayland, that's always possible.

Driving me 3D

Many suggest that Nvidia, AMD and others will develop proprietary drivers for only one display server. If so they would probably only do so for Mir because Ubuntu will use Mir and Steam runs on Ubuntu (mainly) and that's where the non-Windows gamers are most numerous. This could also impact other usages that may require proper graphic controller drivers.

This would be perfect for creating a divide between GNU/Linux and Ubuntu. If Mir actually works then GNU/Linux users may have to dual boot with Ubuntu to play games or use certain programs that will only work with the proprietary drivers (that may depend on how Ubuntu deals with Restricted Boot).

Total Control

It seems as if the primary goal of Mir is for Canonical to have total control over the display server, like with Unity. It can be easier to implement new cool things just like it's easier for Ubuntu to implement profit generating software for Canonical (the Isle of Man based company behind Ubuntu) like the Amazon desktop search.

Yes Mir and Unity are Free Software, however they are the only ones using it and the development isn't always done in the open. To really know we'll have to see where it goes, but for now I am suspicious about either hidden "features" or even non-free bits that may be needed to comply with Steam, Nvidia, Spotify and/or others willing to work with Ubuntu to get their proprietary and DRM'd products on "Linux". I wouldn't be surprised if Mir has been developed to conform to DRM, that would explain "why not Wayland" much better.

Ubuntu has seduced many advanced users who in turn have helped novices into operating a Free system on their computers. Even I have told friends who aren't computer proficient to try out Ubuntu, because it was easy. Then I read what Mark thinks the 'leet' think: ‘Linux is supposed to be hard so it’s exclusive’ is just the dumbest thing that a smart person could say. I've never heard anyone say such a thing, so yes it is a dumb thing to say. This feels like a way to divide the community into those who enjoy raw computing, making them appear as condescending, stubborn and elitist and those who want their computers to "just work". The truth is that the real '1337' wants GNU/Linux systems to be easy and adaptable to whoever the user may be. Gentoo is easy for those who want to compile everything all the time, they made even that kind of computing easy. I use Debian because it's easy, really it's the lazy admin's choice. I don't think there's a distro out there trying to make using GNU/Linux difficult.

Maybe the oversight that comes from the "leet" users is something that doesn't always help Ubuntu's image and perhaps it's time to shake off these drama loving idealistic hippies who helped make Ubuntu popular by bringing their non-geek friends to the club (and helping them find workarounds that were necessary to make Ubuntu work).

I feel that the Ubuntu Community is becoming less important to the Ubuntu project, now it's Canonical that counts most.

Community and Corporation

Further down in that that same blog post from Mark, which was originally about release frequency, he takes a little dump on "pure community": There are lots of pure community distro’s. And wow, they are full of politics, spite, frustration, venality and disappointment. Obvious response: doesn't that sum up Ubuntu ?

Mark then suggests that a GNU/Linux distribution needs a private company because without corporate leadership Free Software projects can't function properly. In fact, in most of the pure-community projects I’ve watched and participated in, the biggest meme is ‘if only we had someone that could do the heavy lifting’. Ubuntu has that in Canonical – and the combination of our joint efforts has become the most popular platform for Linux fans. It's funny because Ubuntu highly relies completely on a 100% community driven project (Debian), it's been stable enough to base their whole distribution on it. It's funny because Ubuntu runs almost entirely using software from non-Ubuntu projects, many of which are corporate-less.

And also, Saying that Ubuntu is the most popular platform for Linux fans is like saying the Toyota Camry is most popular car for automobile enthusiasts.

Even finding the word "Linux" on the Ubuntu website isn't easy, it's mostly reserved for the FAQs and help pages, it's even worse for the term "GNU". Ubuntu is not for "Linux fans", it's for people who want a Free-ish system to be made easy (nothing wrong with that).

Personally I really admire projects that have no corporate control, generally their software is user orientated and has no benefit in deceiving its users. You also get to avoid things like the MySQL fiasco... .. .

iUbuntu

Now that Ubuntu has gained sufficient momentum it is time for them to leave their core users, the "Think Different" users, and go for the mass. Canonical realises that if they want a phone company (device or service) to distribute their OS, they're going to have to make some dirty deals. Deals that will compromise the Freedom of the user.

Ubuntuzon by Emmanuel Revah is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

You know how when you search for something within a search engine and the first results are adverts (sponsored links) ?

Now, you can get that feature right in your desktop environment ! Indeed Ubuntu has now added this thing, when you search for a program through the "lens" you get software results and right below "More Suggestions" which are products from your local Amazon online store.

Ubuntu and its followers defend this stating that Ubuntu needs to be funded somehow. It's a strange point of view that users of free email might understand as they already accept to have advertisements on their personal email pages (webmail). However I think both are perverse, we already are subject to so much consumer propaganda in public spaces as it is.

If Ubuntu is really in lack of money, they could have easily obtained funds by asking their users to donate. They already do that I heard, but I couldn't find where. Just put the link near the download link, or on the home page, or at least in the main menu. Offer services, like support, I don't know, maybe they should start a kickstarter page. Instead it looks like they are going in the direction of ChromeOS. I'll even predict that the next Ubuntu will be a just boot loader with the whole OS on their cloud.

Oh, I almost forgot, this probably means that whatever you type in the "Lens" thing is sent to Amazon.com with your IP (see update below).

Update: There is even a bug report about this. It seems the user's queries are not sent to Amazon directly but are sent to Ubuntu, the Ubuntu user's computer then gets a JSON formatted reply. That reply contains links to product informations and remote images that the user's computer will then request directly from Amazon.

This what a search like "games" looks like.

Mark Shuttleworth's honest response should make any Ubuntu user worried:

Why are you telling Amazon what I am searching for?

We are not telling Amazon what you are searching for. Your anonymity is preserved because we handle the query on your behalf. Don’t trust us? Erm, we have root. You do trust us with your data already.

No mister Shuttleworth, I don't trust you with my data, and this is just one of the reasons why.

Update 2: And so the bug reports are coming in, here are just a few.

• "More suggestions" icons are bigger than installed icons
• Dash now suggests software that can not be used with Ubuntu
• Editor's pick: grep -R doesn't automatically search amazon

Update 3: A post from the Free Software Foundation on Ubuntu, by RMS: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?

Update 4: The Ubuntu/Amazon parody logo is now under CC-BY-NC CC-BY-SA license thanks to Richard Stallman.

It appears that it is becoming impossible for search queries to not have results. I regularly search for specific terms, I use quotes and plus signs, I always get results. However the results don't necessarily correspond to the search query I did, indeed plenty of the results will be without the less popular term included in my search, even if it is the only one I "plussed".

This is a tendency that I'm seeing more and more of, browsers are now set up to analyse what is typed in the address bar, also known as the "data sent to the default search engine of your browser" bar, to avoid having the user land on the dreaded "can't find the server at.." message.

Some ISPs will go further, if you type a domain name that does not exist (according to them at least), they will redirect hijack your query and send you to a page that has stuff on it.

Even operating systems are being designed to make sure that whatever you look for, even a file on your own computer, there's always a result. Like with the new Ubuntu/Amazon Lens thing.

The more time goes by, the more I find search results to have less and less relevance. I sometimes dream about the good old days where it was possible to see a "No results." message when the query indeed had no results. Now it's all just a pile of mess and finding things feels harder than before.

Lately there's been a lot of noise on Secure Boot, AKA Restricted Boot. The short version is that with "Secure Boot" enabled, computers can only boot to systems signed by a CA recognised by the hardware.

Ubuntu's approach is to use their own key to sign their kernel, however in order to assure they never have to release their private key they've decided to drop Grub2 (GPLv3) and use a non free boot loader. This will help Ubuntu user's run their operating system on Boot Restricted machines but this will not help users who modify their Ubuntu at boot level or anyone that does not use Ubuntu or Windows 8.

In short, this solves nothing for the end users and makes Ubuntu part of the problem in restricting users, indeed one of the issues is that hardware manufacturers may include Microsoft's certificate (and/or Ubuntu's) but they may leave out the "bios" (UEFI) option to disable "secure boot" and hence lock the users into using the shipped OS only.

Mark Shuttleworth argues that they need to drop Grub2 as he fears that the FSF could force them to disclose their private key as part of the source code in certain cases. The FSF says they would not have to do that.

Ubuntu has done a lot to bring more users to use Free Software, however they are quite lenient and will ship proprietary drivers and sell non-free commercial software where practical and/or beneficial. It has been debatable as to whether this is good or bad, I've understood the reasoning without accepting; Make a practical alternative to Windows for user's who do not care about anything unless its shiny.

Ubuntu/Canonical has gained much weight, if they really cared about user freedom they would use that to work towards a more open and sustainable solution (would this mean disposable computers too ?), instead it looks as if they are trying out the user lock-in technique in an attempt to rival Windows using Microsoft's methods mixed with some Apple juice.

Update: I need to also add that the Ubuntu team has been a bit sketchy regarding the Grub2 licensing concerns and their fear of having to release the private key used to sign Grub.

In the UEFI Secure Boot and Ubuntu - implementation thread on the Ubuntu mailing list I found an interesting conversation about this:

Matthew Garrett wrote: Have you talked to the FSF about their position on this? They're the sole copyright holder of grub 2, so any position they'd publicly take would be pretty relevant in terms of potential legal action.

Colin Watson (Ubuntu) replied: I haven't been privy to all the mails on this, but in the ones I saw, the responses were distinctly equivocal at best. They certainly didn't say that we were safe, rather the reverse.

Yet on the FSF's page on Secure Boot which provides many clarifications (should read) they claim otherwise: No representative from Canonical contacted the FSF about these issues prior to announcing the policy.

In a Q&A with Mark Shuttleworth on The Register Tom Dial asked: Based on the statement by FSF that the GPL v3 licence on GRUB 2 would not require disclosure of the Ubuntu private keys for Secure Boot, will Canonical reconsider its approach to that?

Mark Shuttleworth replied: As nice as it is that someone at the FSF says they would not, we have to plan for a world where leaders change and institutional priorities change.

Is Ubuntu lying ? Are they just super paranoid ? Somehow I just think this is a business strategy, which brings me back to the fact that Ubuntu is a corporate operating system and I've always been wary of that.

Ubuntu requires visitors to create an account and log in to view certain threads. I've read this thread (not blocked yet) and now I understand their reasoning: Anything they may have archived is to be considered old and should no longer be readable unless you have a ubuntuforums account.... . Whatever, basically they are trying to protect visitors from accessing archived and potentially outdated information.

The other thing I dislike is their use of vBulletin, it just goes to show how much they really don't care much about Free Software.

Is Ubuntu the new Apple ?