On Wed, 21 Feb 2018 10:18:10 +1100 Basil Chupin <blchupin@iinet.net.au> wrote:
Ubuntu didn't "outsource" anything: SABDFL simply decided that he wanted to only go with Gnome, dropped the others and told them to go and play by themselves and not to come back to his sandbox.
If I may say so, that is not fair or representative. From its first version, Ubuntu only came with GNOME. There is no choice of desktop in the installer and never has been. The media *only* included GNOME. After GNOME 3, it switched to its own home-grown desktop, Unity. Then it only included Unity. Now, it has abandoned Unity and switched back to GNOME, i.e. GNOME 3. However, in the repositories were multiple other desktops. If users wanted, they could install a command-line system and then on that install whatever desktop they wished. KDE was included from the very early days, but there were no images available with KDE instead of GNOME. Outside of Canonical, volunteers assembled a version of Ubuntu with KDE instead of GNOME, which installed a KDE system instead. This is called Kubuntu. It was the first "remix". Others followed. I think -- I have not checked this -- first came Ubuntu with XFCE, "Xubuntu". Then Ubuntu with LXDE, "Lubuntu" -- I was _very_ peripherally involved with that project. After Unity, there was Ubuntu with GNOME 3, which never had a nickname -- it was just "Ubuntu GNOME". It is now the official primary version. Most recently, there have also been Ubuntu MATE, which restores the GNOME 2 desktop that Ubuntu originally came with, and Ubuntu Budgie. But although these are all built from packages in the standard repositories, and are thus officially sanctioned, mentioned on the website, offered as alternative downloads, etc., they are not the mainstream product. The *only* OS produced by Canonical staff was original GNOME 2 based, later Unity based, and is now GNOME 3 based. At one time, there was a single Canonical employee working on the KDE packages and assisting with Kubuntu, but that position was closed and the person was redeployed or let go, I do not remember. (This ignores the short-lived Netbook Remix, but that was intended for a particular type of hardware. It also ignores the various forms of function-specific Ubuntu remixes such as Ubuntu Studio, because we're discussing desktops here.) -- Liam Proven - Technical Writer, SUSE Linux s.r.o. Corso II, Křižíkova 148/34, 186-00 Praha 8 - Karlín, Czechia Email: lproven@suse.com - Office telephone: +420 284 241 084 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org