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If you want to see smoke and mirrors at its best, read the pdf article from Canonical that explains Introduction to Cloud Computing. It is all consuming, ever present and the holy grail but what it actually does, we don't know... The summary is the most laughable part..

From https://help.ubuntu.com/community/VMware/Player

Installing VMware Player on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS and Ubuntu 8.10

1. Install required packages build-essential, linux-kernel-headers and linux-kernel-devel

   sudo aptitude install build-essential linux-kernel-headers linux-kernel-devel

2. Download the latest VMware player e.g. VMware-Player-2.5.1-126130.i386.bundle (download the bundle version, not the rpm one) and run it as root using gksudo. You'll get a graphical installer that installs VMware player for you.

Sure it is x.org and not the video driver? When you leave it on console-only, is it using the nomodeset switch for the kernel?

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1311112&page=8
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/474930

There are also some intel video related information here:

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/904

At the risk of being just another "me too", this is L-T-fucking-S. Hmm, what might justify postponing the release date except, oh, something that completely brings the system to its knees? So why isn't Canonical making sure this actually working before shipment, instead of guessing? (I know the install can be updated, that's not the point.)

Oh jeez, that's not even close to being true. You want the old Gnome way of doing notifications? Then install gnome-stracciatella-session and read this page https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopTeam/Specs/Jaunty/StracciatellaSession

9.04 was not a LTS version; 8.04 and 10.04 are. However, had you said "8.04 is still of bugs that nobody gives a damn about", then the rest of your comments would be correct. The biggest question in my mind is why in the world they don't use the LTS versions to at least put on a facade of stabilization focus for. As an example of the ridiculous changes introduced into the last LTS, 8.04 introduced PulseAudio in a very buggy form, making that LTS unsuitable to use for anyone who needed sound during its entire lifetime. It shipped unstable, and the necessary bug fixes to make it stable I ran into were all "fixed in next release" and not backported. I rolled forward into 8.10 and 9.04 while they were in beta, because they were still better than 8.04 "stable". Now we get this LTS with Canonical worrying about worthless crap like the MeMenu as a major feature.

9.04 was not a LTS version; 8.04 and 10.04 are. However, had you said "8.04 is still of bugs that nobody gives a damn about", then the rest of your comments would be correct. The biggest question in my mind is why in the world they don't use the LTS versions to at least put on a facade of stabilization focus for. As an example of the ridiculous changes introduced into the last LTS, 8.04 introduced PulseAudio in a very buggy form, making that LTS unsuitable to use for anyone who needed sound during its entire lifetime. It shipped unstable, and the necessary bug fixes to make it stable I ran into were all "fixed in next release" and not backported. I rolled forward into 8.10 and 9.04 while they were in beta, because they were still better than 8.04 "stable". Now we get this LTS with Canonical worrying about worthless crap like the MeMenu as a major feature.

9.04 was not a LTS version; 8.04 and 10.04 are. However, had you said "8.04 is still of bugs that nobody gives a damn about", then the rest of your comments would be correct. The biggest question in my mind is why in the world they don't use the LTS versions to at least put on a facade of stabilization focus for. As an example of the ridiculous changes introduced into the last LTS, 8.04 introduced PulseAudio in a very buggy form, making that LTS unsuitable to use for anyone who needed sound during its entire lifetime. It shipped unstable, and the necessary bug fixes to make it stable I ran into were all "fixed in next release" and not backported. I rolled forward into 8.10 and 9.04 while they were in beta, because they were still better than 8.04 "stable". Now we get this LTS with Canonical worrying about worthless crap like the MeMenu as a major feature.

I had the same problem and discovered a number of others having the same problem. I think there are bug reports but don't recall for sure.

In any event, I fixed the problems by installing the 2.6.33 kernel from http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/ . No more freezes. I did this by downloading and using apt-get to install:

linux-headers-2.6.33-020633-generic_2.6.33-020633_i386.deb
linux-headers-2.6.33-020633_2.6.33-020633_all.deb
linux-image-2.6.33-020633-generic_2.6.33-020633_i386.deb

I'm running 9.10 (32-bit) on a Lenovo x200s. The recent Lenovos seem to have a lot of problems with ubuntu, but 2.6.33 has made hibernation more stable as well. I'm sure there are downsides to this strategy (probably things like security updates), but so far so good.

According to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Testing/GEMLeak , then you ARE SAFE!!

If you read the wiki page referenced carefully, it would seem that the general consensus is that the bug is fixed in the testing packages. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Testing/GEMLeak Seems a bit blown out of proportion to me.

The Ubuntu Wiki has details on this issue at the GEMLeak entry. It provides instructions on how to upgrade to (and remove) the candidate packages in the PPA. This comment is worthy of note for those already on Lucid:

This does not affect cards using proprietary drivers or not using DRI2. Intel will always be affected since DRI2 is used with and without KMS, ATI uses DRI1 without KMS.

Try Ubuntu Live USB.

More options at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LiveUsbPendrivePersistent.

Just be careful when doing system updates or anything involving Grub and the boot sector.

This type of thing happened to a friend of mine. At 1 in the morning I got an e-mail from him advertising Viagra. After some decent analysis we concluded that his illegal copy of Windows 7 was probably to blame. My belief is that the ISO came with a rootkit gratis.

I'm writing this half as a "me-too" and half as a note of caution ... illegal operating system downloads are probably the easiest way someone can infect you. If you're running under such a configuration, I'd re-evaluate the cost ... or consider a better option :)

This is why you rely on package management software. There are actual maintainers out there who keep up-to-date on issues like this, that affect their packages.

For instance, if you're running any version of Ubuntu, you are on v0.95.3 or v0.96 right now, so you would not have even known about this EOL had it not been on slashdot. Every time you log into Ubuntu, it will warn you if you need to do some updates.

If you are not a professional system administrator (neither am I, by the way, so I feel for you), you should not bother trying to subscribe to all of the mailing lists for all of the packages you use. You should instead rely on the hard, thankless work put in by the package maintainers to keep you out of trouble.

Make sure you do the security updates for your distro of choice. Choose a stable release of your distro if you don't enjoy constant upgrades.

[fluffman@moria:~]$ s bejeweled
kdiamond - three-in-a-row game for KDE
gweled - A "Diamond Mine" puzzle game
monsterz - arcade puzzle game
monsterz-data - graphics and audio data for monsterz
[fluffman@moria:~]$ i gweled
[sudo] password for fluffman:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
    gweled
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 87 not upgraded.
Need to get 163kB of archives.
After this operation, 479kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid/universe gweled 0.7-2ubuntu6 [163kB]
Fetched 163kB in 2s (76.8kB/s)
Selecting previously deselected package gweled.
(Reading database ... 231023 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking gweled (from .../gweled_0.7-2ubuntu6_amd64.deb) ...
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils ...
Processing triggers for python-gmenu ...
Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/desktop.en_US.utf8.cache...
Processing triggers for menu ...
Processing triggers for python-support ...
Setting up gweled (0.7-2ubuntu6) ...

Processing triggers for menu ...
[fluffman@moria:~]$ gweled

Actual time spend searching for and installing bejeweled clone: 10 seconds. And it's actually pretty good, with music too!

Oh hey. A fully patched default installation of Ubuntu stood up next to Mac OS X and Windows Vista.

Doesn't say anything about using it as a server.

Possibly not, but I'm pretty sure the server edition is a little different than the desktop.

The link speaks for itself

If Joe cares that little about his purchases, Linux is probably not for him anyway. He'd be better off buying a Mac, where everything (generally) Just Works. I'm not going to claim that adopting Linux is effortless. If Joe isn't willing to put in that bit of effort, he should stick with whatever he's given.

hundreds of other sources

Personally, I'd rather get my instant downloads from a single source, through hundreds of mirrors. One system to learn, one catalog, and one place to look for everything.

Speaking of which, you might want to try looking around a bit. Repository contents are available for browsing. Other distros offer their repositories, too, but I didn't feel like looking them up. Google's pretty good for that.

If crapware won't install on your computer, don't install the crapware. I'm sure there's plenty of other choices out there.

You would need to download Ubuntu, whose bundling availability via the book is not mentioned in the summary or the Amazon page linked.

Or you can get a copy from a friend if you know of someone who has Internet access and a 2 cent CD.

Or your local library can probably download one for you and you buy a 5-pack of blank CDs and give them the other four.

Or you can buy a 5-pack of them from Canonical for 5 pounds plus shipping and split the cost between a few people.

Or Amazon would be happy to sell you one in pretty packaging with a reference card and other materials for $25.
http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-video-DVD-Training-Reference-commands/dp/B0018KUB6Y/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1271106869&sr=8-4

Or, if you're seriously cash-strapped, you can have Canonical mail you one for free (this option requires a bit of patience - they delay the shipments to prevent massive abuse of their largess). https://shipit.ubuntu.com/

I'm not saying they are totally ubiquitous, or that you can always find one for free, but in most places in the US you can probably find someone within twenty miles of you who would be willing to burn a CD for you at little or no cost. I've given about a half dozen of them to coworkers.

Even if you have to spend $25 to get it, that's still $75 less than the cheapest legal version of Windows Seven available in the US (Home Premium).

View client computer status, On/off, sleeping etc.; Deny internet access, not LAN, just the web; Schedule time usage of computer, ex. 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. on school nights etc.; Force log-out and/or shutdown of clients, for grounding purposes; and Apply some kind of firewall filter for blocking undesired web content. And as the administrator for this network I would like the following options: Remote virus scanning of client machines, or scheduled task; Some kind of hardware monitor, high temp / fan speed low etc.; and Email alerts for various log files / alarms. Given the lists above I am thinking about a Linux based router/server machine and running Windows on the clients for game compatibility. I also know that a server and network boot client is possible but not sure where to start on that one."

If you used an Edubuntu Server with

I think you should be able to handle this stuff manually, but if you are not, then these are the technical controls I see as being most useful in terms of being able to administer them easily. Building the LTSP client environment was the last thing I found difficult; There is help out there. Hell, I'd help you. I hope that it's easier than the last time I did it by now, anyway. After that you get a cute and easy to use GUI for administration of client machines. The latest LTSP is supposed to make it easy to designate programs to be run on the client machines so that the server doesn't have to do heavy lifting.

From your link: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ZFS

Due to CDDL incompatibility with GPL, and the fact that all Linux kernel drivers must be GPL compatible, ZFS remains outside the Linux kernel.

Because of this and how its integrated - the performance advantage of ZFS on Solaris (or BSD) is lost.

We may soon need similar lessons here in the UK when we want to access those filtered sites suspected of potentially hosting copyrighted material. Damn, that sounds sad.

Hate to break it to you but most web sites you could ever even think of accessing will be hosting copyrighted material. That's right not just potentially hosting copyrighted material but actually hanging up copyrighted material for anyone to download.

To avoid getting copyrighted material, you'd have to find a country that did not sign the Berne Convention treaty, but even then the material might be under copyright. Alternately, even the countries in the Berne Convention treaty might have material online that has been made Public Domain either because the copyright expire or the rights holder (not the creator) put it into the public domain. Even then you'll have to download (and read) pages of copyrighted information to get at the PD stuff.

Alternately you can just download as much copyrighted material as you want. Try starting from these sites:

• SourceForge
• CreativeCommons
• Linux Kernel Archives
• arXiv
• Ubuntu
• Fedora
• NetBSD
• Oracle
• Sun
• Haiku
• Internet Archive
• and so on

And remember, there's more where that came from.

No, Ubuntu ships with AppArmor rather than SELinux:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AppArmor

I'm almost certain that it defaults to "no", you have to click the "yes" button to participate.

This page says that the package is already installed on the system, but is disabled by default:

This means that all you need to do is enable it.

Simple solution. Encrypt your files locally before you save them to the Ubuntu One folder that syncs to the cloud. This is all explained (and recommended) in the info on Ubuntu One provided by Canonical (see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOne/Security). They state right out front that while the data stream is encrypted as the files are transferred, the files on Ubuntu One are not encrypted by default and the end user is responsible for encrypting his/her own data, bearing in mind that some features of Ubuntu One will not work with encrypted files (e.g., sharing files with others).

When you find a better way for a company to make money than by having people pay them for a product, let me know. (And counterfeiting does not count.) Besides, they've already promised that "Ubuntu will always be free of charge," so I don't know what you're concerned about.

1 - Ever hear of support? Product for free, support for $. Lots of companies solely thrive on this concept of support ( of others products ). They often call it 'professional services'. I suggest you look it up sometime. There is no reason it cant work if you support your own products that you give away.

2 - Promises from companies have been broken before. Quite often actually. You might want to trust some corporate entity who's directors can change and thus the direction of the company, but i dont.

When you find a better way for a company to make money than by having people pay them for a product, let me know. (And counterfeiting does not count.) Besides, they've already promised that "Ubuntu will always be free of charge," so I don't know what you're concerned about.

https://shipit.ubuntu.com/login

I've used Ubuntu exclusively on my desktops for several years now. It's nice to know that I can always switch to another distro when they do something BAT SHIT INSANE like this: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UnitsPolicy

Change the GUI window buttons from right to left? Meh. Change the way file sizes are read so that User X and User Y see different file sizes using the same filesystem, even potentially the same remotely mounted disk?

Now I have to draft a letter to our research department telling them to stay the hell away from Ubuntu because their data will potentially be wrong (unless they take pains to remember the kilo=/=kibi switch).

Well now it logs in. Just in case you have replies from ACs disabled, community supported ports are here: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ports/releases/9.10/release/

Congratulations!!!

Your name has been picked. You have just won millions of dollars worth of software. You are also granted the permission to give this software to all of your friends and family.

  Click on this link to claim your prize...

CLICK HERE TO GET FREE SOFTWARE!

Sound (ALSA) dropping out randomly and continually

Yup, I feel your pain. Right now ALSA is working with PulseAudio - after much monkeying around with sinks and mixers and modules (foot bone connected to the hip bone), which produced lots of variously ill advice in forums, turns out it was a bug in alsa-plugins, and it's fixed in the Lucid package. Now I can run FlightGear and hear my engine loop ;)

Gnome being hard-welded to the rest of the system

Is switching supposed to be straightforward? I've heard stories, but still it seems daunting.

Then there's the horrid mess that is upstart

Is it? From my user perspective, I wouldn't have noticed the change I hadn't read about it somewhere. I just read a bit about it, and this kinda gave me the willies:

Note that the job file format is not stable yet, so if you upgrade upstart later, you may need to fix existing files.

There's the usual Debian tendency to change absolutely everything they can, purely for the hell of it

Maybe the omelette+eggs saying applies to OS'es too. Are other distros this daring/merry?

even basic things like setting up an fstab for the most part doesn't work

WFM

I honestly felt that the overall design was seriously less transparent than Windows

If you mean GNOME, yes. s/regedt32/gconftool/g.

Are people really so superficial, that a nice shiny Gnome theme (for the first few minutes before the system dies, at least) is the only thing that is considered important?

Perhaps this is what the stereotypical home user can understand and appreciate. Remember what you heard in casual chats when Vista came out - all was about the new start menu, the Aero flippy thing, window chrome and maybe UAC; I remember trying to read some long articles detailing the new stuff beneath the shiny stuff but I couldn't really finish them.

I'm sure this applies to the casual Linux user too (someone who only opens a terminal to run specific commands). Let them be I say, and we who dwell in black screens will look at other news outlets for what's changed under the makeup.

Now, the spotlight on "social applications" is downright silly ;)

After Redhat mismanaged the discontinuation of RedHat Linux in favor of an enterprise focus, many people started fishing around for a replacement default Linux. (Yes, I know Redhat still has a desktop product, but the impression people got was that Redhat was going totally corporate.)

Add to that the legendary (even promised) instability of Fedora, which is explicitly and without apology presented as a testing vehicle.

In comes Ubuntu with the Circle of Friends imagery, the Ubuntu code of conduct, the word ubuntu itself ("open and available to others"), and the promise of "Linux for Human Beings".

The rapid growth of Ubuntu to #1 on Distrowatch was propelled by evangelism done by the same power users whose opinions are apparently not worth being listened to anymore.

9.10 is the last release I could find with sparc support. It also happens to be the current release.

Sparc32, on the other hand...

As I tried to say in the grandparent of this post, you can find examples in favor of almost every operating system by selecting specific programs.

One other thing to consider is how hard is it going to be to keep all the programs on the machine updated.

Windows, and some windows programs are very easy to keep updated. Some windows programs are a nightmare, as you have to visit a website, or write a screen scraper, to find out if you have to update, and then you have to manually do the update.

Debian, if you don't need to venture outside of the repositories, and there is a reasonable chance that this is true, as Debian has tens of thousands of packages in the official repositories, is trivial to keep updated, even if you have a few thousand packages installed on your computer.

I have a hard time believing that it takes days to install opera on ubuntu, but this page does seem to make it seem like there are issues with opera on linux, something one would think that opera would be interested in fixing, you might contact them. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/OperaBrowser

Um ... who cares?

I'm writing this on Lucid beta1, and my window controls are in the upper right where I want them. As usual, my first download post-install was Ubuntu-Tweak, which has a handy configuration section that lets you order and position the window controls to your liking.

Open Source isn't a democracy, it's Open Source. That's kind of the point. With the source, you can write an app like Ubuntu-Tweak to overcome anything that you think is a deficit.

The ubuntu version of sandboxie is apparmor. You can install apparmor-profiles that include profiles for a lot of apps.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AppArmor?action=fullsearch&context=180&value=linkto%3A%22AppArmor%22

Since Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic), AppArmor ships with a profile for Firefox which is disabled by default.

You can enable it using the following command:

sudo aa-enforce /etc/apparmor.d/usr.bin.firefox-3.5

Either way while you're still waiting for your 300 Megs of bloat to finish downloading I would have already downloaded the what I needed, burned it to the disk and be finished.

Most programs don't have a huge list of dependencies.

Too bad that the list is not published anywhere (at least some Windows program says that it needs .NET).

And while you are trying to find out exactly which 5 libs at 2 to 5 Meg each are needed, I would have already installed both .NET and DirectX from a CD I made some time ago and use on every PC that does not have them. If I am installing software from a CD, like a game, it most likely will already have .NET and/or DirectX on the same disc, so I won't even need the separate one.

If I could get all Linux dependency libs on one CD or DVD, I could just use that disc if I needed to, no more hunting.

Also, both DirectX and .NET are updated trough Windows Update.

Also there is nothing stopping you from going to some place like http://packages.ubuntu.com/ and finding out which packages you need to download.

let's see...

search: "dash" (one thing I was looking for recently).

Depends on: libc6, debianutils (I don't know what packages are already on that PC).
libc6 depends on: findutils, libc-bin, libgcc1, tzdata
findutils depends on: libc6 (which one I install first?)
libgcc depends on: gcc-4.4-base, libc6
and so on...

Why can't I download the full program? You know, aside from .NET and DirectX, all programs ship with all of their parts, I don't need to hunt every .dll file to install the program. Sometimes linux programs are provided as -static, which I assume includes all of their parts, I always grab this if it is available. But not everyone provides this option. Why?

.NET and similar frameworks on Windows are few enough that I could download them and write them to a CD before going to the PC without connection.

There's nothing stopping you from doing the same with Linux either. Most programs don't have a huge list of dependencies.

I can't download and install every single lib on Linux, also, I won't know that lib12 needs lib13 until I install it.

You don't need to install every package on linux. Also there is nothing stopping you from going to some place like http://packages.ubuntu.com/ and finding out which packages you need to download.

If it's not in the main repo you can just double click on the file and look at the list there.

If Linux only had 50 optional libs, I could download them all and write them to a CD so I could use them.

If linux only had 50 optional libs it would be as bad as the train wreak that windows is in. Downloading DirectX (104.0 MB) and .NET (another 235 MB according to the full install on the bottom of this page) just to run your program. Are you kidding me?!

It is MUCH better to just download the 5 dependency libs at 2 to 5 Meg each all of which track updates through one update manager.

Either way while you're still waiting for your 300 Megs of bloat to finish downloading I would have already downloaded the what I needed, burned it to the disk and be finished.

Unless you count the "GPL is the General Public Virus" misconception, then these torrents should be well known as virus-free.

Adding a new codec on Linux is far easier than attempting the same thing for Windows or MacOS.

With Unix package managers, it becomes rediculously easy to automate.

Package managers under GNU/Linux and FreeBSD do a good job of managing notable free software. But which common package manager on these platforms supports billing? For example, I can install the "ugly" gstreamer plugins from Ubuntu's multiverse repository, but then I would become guilty/liable of patent infringement.

I couldn't find that package, so I decided to sudo aptitude install everything in subsection cli-mono instead.

Would that work?

I've been loudly clammoring for Canonical to ditch the brown for the better part of a decade.

Ubuntu has been out for just over 5 years, calling that "the better part of a decade" is really stretching it.

For all but the past couple of years, Ubuntu has looked "better" (my opinion) by default than most other Linux distros and that's no mean feat. I'm with you that the brown motif has largely been a negative point, but Ubuntu's priorities hasn't been the color scheme, it's been ease of use, something that Linux lacked most.

That said, this new theme is nearly as bad. Great, getting rid of the brown for.... PURPLE?!?!

Purple and Orange look god damned atrocious.

From the preview screenshots, the purple was entirely from the wallpaper and orange from certain user interface highlights. The main color for the widgets and interface seems to be beige. I think it looks quite nice, although I can see where they're going to draw a lot of criticism for copying OS X.

Why not just take a cue from Linux Mint? They actually have a very decent and PLEASING default look that is even original and different compared to Win and OSX.

Mint is beautiful, but not suitable for a wide audience. It's too rich, too dark, and reminds me of something an overclocker or gamer would install. Most of us just want to use the computer and get on with our day. Ubuntu could certainly take cues from Mint, but most of it is just eye-candy. A good UI should be subtle, not flashy or distracting.

In fact, other than Open Office, most of the Ubuntu default apps are right crap.

There are often more powerful tools for a job, but Ubuntu is trying to pick the best ones for their user base. All of the applications you mentioned are good, but they don't integrate as nicely into the Gnome desktop as nicely the default Ubuntu ones.

It wouldn't be hard to make 2010 the year of Linux on the desktop. All the tools are here now.

Sadly, all the distros I've seen are still too bulky, too ugly, and have all the worst default apps. Ubuntu is definitely a good example of that.

Nothing stopping you from rolling your own if it's that important to you. That's the beauty of open source.

Or you could participate in any of the many ways that Canonical helps the community participate in the direction and development of Ubuntu.

I've been loudly clammoring for Canonical to ditch the brown for the better part of a decade.

Ubuntu has been out for just over 5 years, calling that "the better part of a decade" is really stretching it.

For all but the past couple of years, Ubuntu has looked "better" (my opinion) by default than most other Linux distros and that's no mean feat. I'm with you that the brown motif has largely been a negative point, but Ubuntu's priorities hasn't been the color scheme, it's been ease of use, something that Linux lacked most.

That said, this new theme is nearly as bad. Great, getting rid of the brown for.... PURPLE?!?!

Purple and Orange look god damned atrocious.

From the preview screenshots, the purple was entirely from the wallpaper and orange from certain user interface highlights. The main color for the widgets and interface seems to be beige. I think it looks quite nice, although I can see where they're going to draw a lot of criticism for copying OS X.

Why not just take a cue from Linux Mint? They actually have a very decent and PLEASING default look that is even original and different compared to Win and OSX.

Mint is beautiful, but not suitable for a wide audience. It's too rich, too dark, and reminds me of something an overclocker or gamer would install. Most of us just want to use the computer and get on with our day. Ubuntu could certainly take cues from Mint, but most of it is just eye-candy. A good UI should be subtle, not flashy or distracting.

In fact, other than Open Office, most of the Ubuntu default apps are right crap.

There are often more powerful tools for a job, but Ubuntu is trying to pick the best ones for their user base. All of the applications you mentioned are good, but they don't integrate as nicely into the Gnome desktop as nicely the default Ubuntu ones.

It wouldn't be hard to make 2010 the year of Linux on the desktop. All the tools are here now.

Sadly, all the distros I've seen are still too bulky, too ugly, and have all the worst default apps. Ubuntu is definitely a good example of that.

Nothing stopping you from rolling your own if it's that important to you. That's the beauty of open source.

Or you could participate in any of the many ways that Canonical helps the community participate in the direction and development of Ubuntu.

The new branding looks very, very good. Purists may complain that this has nothing to do with Linux or its popularity, but the truth of the matter is that branding matters. Very much.

The new website, CD cover design, store and goodies and the new smoother lighter themes are part of the things that will attract people to Ubuntu. I love the new design and think its much clearer and simpler and above all more consistent than either Windows 7, Microsoft's site (which is chaotic on a good day) and Mac OSX (and I say that typing this on a Mac Pro). People like shiny, and it will make a difference, even to corporate IT where the PHBs will be attracted to (or at least not put off by) the design, even if they know nothing about the technicalities of Linux.

Now, if only they could provide some input into better IDEs for developers, then I think it will be on a much better track.

Or you can go direct to the actual Ubuntu Brand page and see the new screenshots as they were meant to be viewed, i.e. larger.

All they've done is change a few of the Appearance->Theme->Color choices, and added a minimal mauve background.

This barely rates a press release, let alone an arstechnica regurgitation and a slashdot post. Oh, no pressrelease http://www.ubuntu.com/news/pressreleasearchive.

It appears to be an edited rip of Aakash Soneri's Sone. (A comparison: Sone is teal, the new logo face is wine, where it overlaps is cobalt blue.) The changes appear to be as insubstantial as adding a slant to ascenders and shifting the baselines of some of the glyphs.

If Canonical modified Sone, didn't license it, and they start freely distributing it ("our global community will still maintain access to the resources needed to construct logos that use the branding" - so either the modified glyphs for the logo as svg, or the modified font itself), that's a dick move.

And if they did license it, then why is an open-source project licensing commercial fonts and calling it a reflection of the project?

Maybe it's a placeholder - who knows? Canonical doesn't say anything about the font's origin or license in the linked documentation, nor does Canonical's Jono Bacon in his nearly identical announcement.

But it is disappointing to see an open source project - whose community already made LGPL-licensed typefaces for their current logo - make and publicize such a half-assed effort, even in a preliminary stage, without any explanation on the decision.

When you say, as an organization based on community contribution:

"We wanted Ubuntu to reflect the precision and engineering that sits at the heart of the product. The new logo reflects this but not at the expense of the immediately recognisable circle of friends."

And you follow that with a logo that's based on a commercial typeface, you're reneging on that intent in at least one of two ways:

• You're disrespecting the designer of the commercial font by modifying it and refusing to give credit - if it's licensed correctly at all;
• You're disrespecting the open-source community, which includes professional designers who've went to bat for you in the past.

Even if Sone was correctly licensed, and Canonical got permission to modify it for their logo and future redistribution, why not get it from the community?

And if it wasn't licensed correctly, then is Ubuntu following the lead of Arial and just ripping things off in a legal but unethical manner when they can't find what they want in a convenient license?

(And maybe it's a coincidence - a really bad coincidence that still should be fixed. Without any explanation, nobody can tell.)