14 DAY TRIAL // In a recent interview, Mark Shuttleworth admits that replacing the traditional desktop environment of the Ubuntu operating system with the controversial Unity user interface was a mistake a few years ago, when Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) was introduced to users worldwide.
Back then, and many years later, lots of Ubuntu users were angry at Mark Shuttleworth and Canonical for changing their beloved desktop environment without justification. The Ubuntu desktop was based on GNOME 2 prior to the Ubuntu 11.04 release. Today, Unity is embraced and adored by more and more users, especially because of the convergence between desktop and mobile.
“The mistake that I made there, and other people should learn from it, was that it was absolutely clear to me that lining all of those things up was worth doing. The problem was, if you were an Ubuntu desktop guy, suddenly your desktop changed,” says Mark Shuttleworth in the interview. "Now when I think about it’s like ‘duh,’ change without justification for the change is going to piss people off. Now when people see this they’re like ‘holy [expletive] that’s wonderful,’ but that’s because they can see it.”
Ubuntu needs to evolve in order to stay in the personal computing game
Mark Shuttleworth also says in the notorious interview that Canonical is not pushing Ubuntu into the mobile market to attack Android or iOS, as the media suggested, but because personal computing and technology are evolving at a faster pace than ever in history, so if Canonical wants to be a player in the personal computing game, they will have to evolve with it.
The interview was taken during the recent Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2015 event, which took place between March 2 and 5 in Barcelona, Spain. Mark Shuttleworth talks with Ben Woods from The Next Web website about the past, present and future of the Ubuntu Linux operating system.
As you might know, Mark Shuttleworth is the founder of Canonical, the company behind the world’s most popular free operating system, Ubuntu. He is known as the first citizen of an independent African country to travel to space. Please read the entire interview with Mark Shuttleworth on the TNW website!