Hi.
Today I decided to open this post to let off a little steam about some things that have happened and to better express what I currently think about how things are going within the Ubuntu family, along with what I hope to be doing in the future and seek a new point of view to improve every day as a person.
The Question Of Decisions That Were Made In The Past
Something that I always had trouble being able to accept was the fact that the main version of Ubuntu comes by default with the GNOME Shell customized to look like Unity. Accepting this was a bit tricky, as in my mind it was a confrontational attempt to discourage community members from using GNOME the way it comes by default and because I felt afraid that the main version would end up in the future trying to prevent Ubuntu Unity from succeeding and having room to grow within the Ubuntu community and the Linux community in general. Another reason I had difficulty accepting it was the fact that by using the same graphical interface as Fedora, Ubuntu no longer had a differential and it bothered me a lot to read many comments talking about this and other things that Ubuntu should abandon to be a better distro and be on the same level as the other distros used by general users.
After several requests for feedback and many conversations I had regarding this, today I realize that I am wrong to think this way and from a few days to here after almost 1 year and a half, I finally started to accept the main version as it is, let’s say I am in a process of acceptance about everything that happened and the decisions that were taken in 2017 and that rewrote the history of the distro. I know that Canonical now needs to sustain itself financially and that to do so all focus on the desktop needed to be dropped to allow Ubuntu to continue existing and bringing users the best solutions in the Linux world for everyday use. I also know that some initiatives are now coming back around it in and the community through Ubuntu On Air and some other places, so I don’t know how they will perform, but I now see them as welcome to reconnect the community with the core team behind the distro.
Ubuntu Unity and UBPorts
Being and being part of Ubuntu Unity is something special and motivating for me, since in the time that has elapsed since the first posts here at Ubuntu Discourse to the present we are, much has happened and in the midst of all this happening I could learn many new things with our small team. Being part of a project like Ubuntu Unity is to be in constant learning with other users and community members. We are going through good and bad times all the time, but this doesn’t stop us from finding the strength to continue and move forward. Many people were uncertain that our project could survive and walk a new path that would allow it to live and stand on its own. Today, even though we are still a small project, we have a very united community and a special motivation to be able to bring to it the spirit of togetherness and welcome new members to our Telegram group, local groups and our Discord server.
I really admire the work that UBPorts developers have been doing to improve and bring Ubuntu Touch to more people and devices, as it increasingly shows that it is possible to dream of smartphones that can run the system and it may gain future attention from some developers who want to bring to it new compatible applications and for everyday use. That is why over the past year I have stated that UBPorts and Ubuntu Unity could together combine efforts to make it possible to bring convergence to the two systems (smartphone and desktop). After some time and talking with some members of the community and with members of UBPorts itself, I realized that it was necessary to give time to time and that patience was needed to see how things will turn out from now on and whether or not this possibility of cooperation between the two projects will exist in the future.
What I Learned From the Failures of Ubucon America and Ubuntu Unity LA
Ubucon America in fact was the boldest attempt I had to be able to unite the Ubuntu community locally and allow for greater cooperation and sharing of joint efforts to achieve common annual goals to make Ubuntu again a protagonist in the desktop world within the Linux community. When I thought of the initial idea of being able to do this, I envisioned it as an Ubucon that had all the potential to succeed and be able to help the entire Ubuntu family overcome the bad reputation that exists in some media that cover the Linux world in general.
I made the mistake of not planning it beforehand and did many things improvisationally that would take a long time to consolidate. Everything was new to me in that regard, and I ended up feeling out of place as the days went by. There came a point when my mental health was not good and I needed to take a few days off Telegram to be able to rest and keep myself steady to face and deal with the new situations ahead. I ended up giving it up because it is a big challenge to be able to keep the dialogue going and provide means by which the people who are involved can resolve any doubts and misgivings they have with each other. I didn’t know how to keep all this under control, and I chose to quit. From this I learned that I needed to know that planning is something very important for events to take place and achieve the expected success.
Regarding Ubuntu Unity LA, I had intended to build a Twitter account that would generate content for 3 languages at the same time (Spanish, French and Portuguese) with the central goal of expanding the reach of the project to more people. Besides the Twitter account I also had the local groups in these 3 languages that I had opened on Telegram so that users could join them to get support and develop each local group. Without me realizing it, I ended up taking on myself a huge responsibility that over the months, ended up overloading me and making me lose the will to be doing it, along with the management problems I had with the Twitter account trying to be as welcoming as possible to be able to gather all the members that missed Unity and expand the reach of the project.
Because of the overload and the difficulty of generating content for 3 languages at the same time, I ended up taking the decision to deactivate the account and in its place, I created a new one from scratch, Ubuntu Unity in Portuguese. I created it to be a local account and be able to expand the reach of the project through my native language (Portuguese) and I hope with time to be able to expand the reach of the project through it and participate in common initiatives that can help it reach more people across Lusophony.
When this happened I learned the lesson that the language I speak matters and a lot, and that there are places where English will not always be able to reach, so I can say that I do recognize that English is a very important language on a global level, but at the same time I can also say that my language is also global and even if people say that it is useless or something like that, I learned to value it and all the everythings I have learned so from be here.
Ubuntu Friends and the Promotion and Divulgate of Ubuntu to General Users
I originally opened the Ubuntu Friends account to ensure that the Ubuntu community had a 100% content-focused account that promoted the use of Ubuntu on the desktop to all members and general users, due to the large amount of enterprises-focused content on the main Ubuntu account. I hope that together with other members of the community I can slowly improve it and expand its reach within Twitter. I can say that managing it together with other community members helps a lot in its development and in the quest to integrate users and establish a direct link between them and the distro’s main community. I hope over time to get more people to help make it dynamic, timely and more up to date within what is happening in the Ubuntu community and the Linux world in general. I also hope that the account can encourage the development of new initiatives that will add to the Ubuntu community and strengthen mutual cooperation between members and users.
What I Expect From Here On Out
One of the things that took me a while to realize is that I have often stopped doing things within the Ubuntu community because of the toxicity of some members so I will try to ignore those toxic members (whether it is Ubuntu, GUI, or other communities) and focus on the members that really care and those that want to help.
I would like to apologize to everyone for all the misunderstandings and for all the situations where I didn’t handle well and act effectively.
From now on I hope I can be a better person and when I am able and in a better situation in real life, I hope I can sign the code of conduct and become an official member of Ubuntu. There are still some things pending that I need to resolve, but I want to reinforce here that regardless of what happens from now on, I will try my best to bring more things for that can will add up for the whole Ubuntu family in general.
I also hope to be able to better deal with criticism and use it as feedback to improve and seek together with other members of the Ubuntu community joint solutions and ideas that can really work and be well applied.
To conclude, I really hope that the Ubuntu community can be strengthened and become again a place where there is more mutual cooperation, more closeness between the main version, official flavors and remixes, and also a receptive and welcoming place for new initiatives in order to come to add and help the distro to reposition itself as one of the distros closest and most open to general users.