It's been more than a month and a half since Canonical released Ubuntu 21.10 Impish Indri. At that time, the editors of a blog like this had to be prepared to publish any related news, both about the launches themselves and other news that we were discovering. We had to talk about 7 (we do not usually count Kylin because it is intended for the Chinese public) official flavors, but also about unofficial ones, and this is where an absence was noticed: where is it? UbuntuDDE 21.10?
No this. On su twitter we do see that they retweeted to the official Ubuntu account when they announced the launch of Impish Indri, and even days before they asked us to give them wallpapers for the contest, but UbuntuDDE 21.10 has not been announced nor is it available for download at their official website. We could simply say that it is expected, but it is not. Or start to despair and think that it will not come.
UbuntuDDE 21.10 might never arrive
It is clear that we are talking about a project that includes the label "Remix" in its name, and this means that it has not entered the Ubuntu family and is a bit independent. The downside of this is that one is left with the feeling that, to play it safe, you have to use something officially supported by a larger company, in this case Canonical. And although they are not at fault, this also worries if what has caught our attention is Ubuntu Cinnamon, who has launched his Impish Indri versionBut we don't know what the future holds.
And this reminds me of an article I read on our sister blog about glimpse. The history of this project is a bit different: as "GIMP" is an insult in some areas, they decided to create their own fork, with a new name, icon and promising some changes that would make it different ... until they decided to abandon the project.
More recent is the story of Audacity, which was acquired by the Muse Group and they began collecting telemetry data. In the official repositories of all Linux distribution (that I know of) they were planted and have it out of date, and projects such as Tenacity or Audacium were born. For now, at least those two forks continue to receive support, but nothing assures us that they will not suffer the same fate as Glimpse.
Support the small yes, but keeping a wild card
In the article on Glimpse he does make it clear that starting something out of nonsense is not an option. Beyond a few initial laughs in a group of friends, I have not heard any sportscaster avoid saying the name of some athlete because it sounds bad in our language. At most, it explains where GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) comes from and the problem is over. But when we talk about an operating system, things are not that simple.
Or yes, it depends on each one. Me, on computers where I have a flavor of Ubuntu I usually format every six months, so I could have used UbuntuDDE 21.04 until Impish Indri was released and started from scratch again with another desktop. The bad thing is if we like something, we get used to it and it disappears.
Let no one misinterpret my words, please
At no point do I mean that there is no need to support the independent developer or small teams. This article is not an attack on them; he just wants us to play it safe or have an ace up our sleeve. For example, we can use mousai to find out what song is playing and if it doesn't work use SongRec which is an unofficial Shazam client. Although the problem is obvious: we could be left without knowing what was playing, so it may be worth using the second first.
Regarding Glimpse, you could have done a bit what I did with Photoshop: have both installed and get used to doing it all in GIMP until I no longer need (for my use) Adobe software. It is not that the team that develops GIMP is so small, but the example, the part of having both installed for what may happen, is valid. And well, if we are in production teams I think there is no debate: play it safe. Regarding this, I hope that UbuntuDDE 21.10 will arrive and eventually become part of the Ubuntu family.
I have always said it, the distros created by independent users are dangerous, as long as only one person "carries" or "maintains" it, although we are talking about several users, there is the possibility of not going well due to lack of motivation or lack of apollo for the community since they are generally distros, based on distros and perhaps this in turn based on the Matrix distro.
I love the variety, but I am prone to using strong distros, try yes !, The ones that are necessary, but if I lean towards one that is not sporadic, that has its stable trajectory.
House which with your opinion and respect that of others.
A greeting.