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Comment by jiggy2011 | Hacker News Reader

jiggy2011

I'm not sure of Shuttleworth's credentials as the benevolent dictator/UI designer.

He made his money selling SSL certificates in large quantities, I don't really think he is a Bill Gates or Steve Jobs.

He reminds me more of the type of entrepreneur who makes his money then decides to buy an English Football club and run it into the ground.

That's possibly unkind though, there was enough good work going into Ubuntu providing good support and sorting out allot of the common Linux Desktop issues to award him some credit, but I don't really see Ubuntu as any kind of creative juggernaut.

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Something weird happened. Ubuntu used to be amazing: hr easy to install and use district, the world-changing help forums and wiki. Then Unity seemed to upendded everything. But look: MacOS is getting phased out by iOS. Google is converting all their apps to a touch-optimized UI that makes no sense on a desktop or laptop. Windows 8 is doing the same, and MS's TV ads trying to convince people to buy a touhscreen 27" monitor.

Maybe they are right, and the future of mass computing is in entertainment consumption and not productive work. Maybe the dream of a popular powerful OS is dead. Maybe it's time for power users to return to being a.nich

The Bill Gates comparison was meant to illustrate the perception people had of him. Originally, (after his rant about people stealing his Basic for the... IMSI? Name escapes me) he was perceived as trying to do the things that the common man wanted. Remember the "Information at your fingertips" marketing crap?

Shuttleworth started out the same way, except with Linux instead of DOS/Windows, and now he's insisting on making unpopular changes because he thinks he can see the future. Remember when Gates believed there was no future in the Internet?

Anyway, I'm rambling so I'll stop here.

Something weird happened. Ubuntu used to be amazing: hr easy to install and use district, the world-changing help forums and wiki. Then Unity seemed to upendded everything. But look: MacOS is getting phased out by iOS. Google is converting all their apps to a touch-optimized UI that makes no sense on a desktop or laptop. Windows 8 is doing the same, and trying to convince people to buy a touhscreen 27" monitor.

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