Given how buggy Mandriva has always been, at least in my experience, if you want a good solid reliable desktop that’s a lot like Mandriva, I would suggest PCLinuxOS instead, which is based on Mandriva, but is much more stable than Mandriva. I had that on my computer for quite a while until I saw for myself what KDE4 was like via a live CD of another distro (don’t remember what distro that was).

I liked PCLinuxOS real well and was a big fan of KDE3, but I absolutely felt completely lost in KDE4. To me, it sucked so bad that I switched to GNOME — and Ubuntu — and that’s where I am today. Like Adam and others like him, I used to think that Ubuntu was little more than overhyped. Now that I use Ubuntu, I’ve come to the conclusion that I was wrong in that assessment. To me, Ubuntu mopping up the floor with Microsoft can only be a good thing, and I believe that all Linux distros will ultimately benefit as a result.

Overall i like Ubuntu and what Ubuntu did when it entered the market was important, it was a needed Wake-Up Call vor Desktop-Linux, but… When all’s said and done, Adam Williamson has a point and You (Mr. Bacon) know it und try to dismiss it as “a vitriol filled rant”. I’m sure you know he has a point, the alternative would be (no offense) you being to small-minded to see past his mildly vitriolic statements. An yet this isn’t a viable alternative, because throughout your whole blogpost you bend his arguments by citation and omission, how only a highly intelligent person could do it.

To give this babble of mine some meaning: I have to ask you, Why?

You start out calling Mr. Williamson “a friend” of yours, but then pick his arguments apart by part-citation and delibarate omission, like one (me at least) would only do to friends in private and then only to tease. Doing this in public, seems to imply your out to ridicule him. If you are (out of good reason) convinced that he’s truly wrong with his opinion about Canonical, you should have countered his arguments with sound reasoning. Best regards, me.

“I am not entirely sure how exactly the impact of Ubuntu has been destructive to distributions. Red Hat is profitable, Novell is so too.”

Red Hat was profitable before Ubuntu ever showed up, and makes its profits in a market where Ubuntu doesn’t basically exist. I talk about Red Hat at length in all the various comments on the original article. Novell, if it’s actually making any money on Linux (the figures aren’t sufficiently split out to be entirely sure), makes them in the same place as Red Hat – the enterprise. The only company making money off desktop Linux at the moment is Xandros, and I’d be very surprised if that lasts.

“Strange, if Ubuntu was so destructive, surely Mandriva would be making more losses instead of fewer?”

I would posit that we’d have been making a profit for a couple of years by this point. But that’s basically pulling what-if’s out of your ass, it’s a pointless game.

“With his focus clearly on Canonical as the poisoned challis,”

nitpick: chalice.

“Friends, I can assure you that our business team does not have “vague aspirations“. Quite the opposite – they are a pretty determined bunch with a nose for where we can monetise Ubuntu, and they live and breath the goal of getting Canonical profitable with a passion; they are not exactly sat around playing Frozen Bubble and twiddling their thumbs.”

…a great introduction to a follow-up paragraph that doesn’t happen…the one where you explain what it is your business team does, rather than sitting around playing Frozen Bubble. (fact fans – FB was written by a Mandriva employee. :>). You “can assure us” of this – oh, goody. I’d prefer not to be assured, I’d prefer for your or Mark to just TELL US WHAT THE FRICKING PLAN IS ALREADY! Is it that hard? Is it really?

“How is this a bad thing?”

I explained that perfectly clearly in the post. You don’t really seem to engage with any of my points, so I don’t see the value in re-hashing them.

“There is no reason why Canonical can’t have a strong commitment to Free Software and build a profitable business around Ubuntu to not only help further the development of Ubuntu and Free Software, but to bring it to new and exciting markets, such as laptops, netbooks and more. To do this, our senior management team have invested extensively in business operations across the company, touching every aspect of what we are working on. And this has reaped rewards including deals with Dell, netbooks, custom engineering, ISV and OEM relations”

More baffling with bullshit. Indeed you have ‘reaped rewards’, but apparently these aren’t making any money yet. Are they going to? How?

“Every Linux distributor has a desktop, server, mobile and netbook products”

No, they don’t. That’s just plain wrong.

“I fail to see how we are throwing money at the problem – I see us producing products that compete.”

…backed by gigantic piles of money no-one but Red Hat or Novell can match. That’s my point. It’s a lot easier to ‘compete’ when you have a giant money spigot.

“Astonishing. Not because Mark is my friend and the founder of Canonical, but I find that perspective astonishing when applied to anyone who has invested so much time or money into Free Software and to accuse them of being selfish.”

..aaaaand there goes the Thou Shalt Not Criticise Saint Mark approach again.

A lot of us invest our time and money into free software, including myself and you. I get criticized all the time. Frankly, this is the kind of argument that really bugs me. It’s like saying you can’t criticise some rich nobody, ever, because they once gave 0.1% of their total wealth (phrased as “several million dollars!”) to a charity. If investing our time and money into free software was a free pass against criticism, then you and I should receive nothing but fawning praise for the rest of our lives. I don’t expect that, why should you expect it for Mark?

“Many of those companies invest hugely – Red Hat do excellent work in many areas of the stack, Novell hire people like Miguel and Bockover to work on Free Software, Intel do extensive driver and stack work, Collabora work on multimedia technology. I didn’t see Adam complaining when IBM invested $1bn in Linux back in 2001.”

Yes, exactly. Everyone contributes. IBM invested $1bn in supporting existing development projects; it didn’t say “screw you guys, we’re going to do the exact same thing you’ve been doing all along, only with more money”.

“and that there is healthy competition with Red Hat, Novell, Mandriva and Xandros”

I don’t consider that healthy competition. Red Hat and Novell are not in the same market (no, Jono, you are not in the server market. There’s less significant use of Ubuntu Server than there is of Mandriva Corporate Server, and we wouldn’t register as a ripple on Red Hat’s radar). Mandriva and Xandros are pretty thin pickings on the competition scale: Xandros are only even significant because they got the Eee deal which turned out to be a rabid success. I doubt they’ll keep it a lot longer. Who else is competing in the desktop Linux market? That’s the problem.

Okay, I’m done. This is pointless. You’re not engaging with any of my points, just going on and on about how spending lots of money on developing a distribution is a valuable contribution to free software development. I don’t really think it is, and I explained why. If you want to have a constructive discussion, answer the points I raised, don’t just grandstand.

And commenters – for people who are accusing me of sour grapes, you sound pretty freaking bitter yourselves.