Mark Shuttleworth Answers At Length

A long, long time ago, you asked questions of Mark Shuttleworth -- astronaut, entrepreneur, activist, and now chief of Debian-and-GNOME based distribution Ubuntu Linux. Mark's been understandably busy running the world of Ubuntu, especially considering the imminent release of the group's newest version, Hoary Hedgehog. He's answered below questions on everything from what makes it worth paying for a trip to space to how software offered with source, for free, and under a liberal license (aka Free software) can sustain itself and its creators. Read on for his answers.

Ubuntu target is... ?
by ewanrg (446949)

I'm curious who you see as the Ubuntu target user/audience. It seems that from the ease of use, and "price", that you are trying to target the audience that doesn't care for Microsoft, or that is trying to do things and can't afford Microsoft.

With that, I'm a little curious as to why Ubuntu has chosen Gnome as the desktop? On older machines (such as my HP Kayak), Ubuntu runs passingly well, but simply having an option that probes the machine and then picks a desktop like XFCE or IceWM using a similar theme to the Gnome one would help refurbished/recycled machines really shine.

Similarly, it would seem that there are some software choices that could be tuned as well. As much as I like to use Open Office on my newer machines, selecting a more modest office offering for lower specification machines seems like a reasonable option.

Interested in your thoughts on this...

Mark Shuttleworth: The Ubuntu project is all about creating a free, high quality OS for everybody -- home, office and data center. So we've tried to choose the best mix of desktop apps in terms of functionality and compatibility rather than optimising for low-end hardware. So, off the single install CD, you get a Gnome desktop with Firefox, OpenOffice, Gstreamer for multimedia and other well-known favourites. We include some other favourites on the ISO, like Thunderbird, as well as the most popular server apps (Apache, Samba etc) so that they are all available without having to go to the network during the install.

Pretty much everything else in the known universe is available off the network archives, so you can apt-get anything that would also be in Debian or an many of the other independent repositories that have .deb packages, we bring them all together in our network repository so it's easy to find and install almost anything that won't send you to jail.

It's hard to pick favourites, but as Thom May blogged this week, it's not something one can avoid. One of the nice consequences of working in the open source world is that people have taken matters into their own hands, have picked their own favourites and are working on Kubuntu (Ubuntu but with a KDE desktop default install). It should be released with KDE 3.4 on April 6, the same day we release Ubuntu with Gnome 2.10, and will rock.

I'm keen to see an XFCE-buntu too, so come along to #ubuntu-devel or #kubuntu on irc.freenode.net if you'd like to work on that. I'm also keen to see flavours of Ubuntu that are tuned for LTSP or embedded environments. And some folks were talking about Enlightenment E17 on Ubuntu too, so we may see a bunch of these flavours emerge for our next release, its up to the Ubuntu community. Ubuntu is, and always will be, entirely FREE in every sense, so it's a perfect playground for people to build on and innovate with.

What's so special about Ubuntu?
by Fished (574624)

This is a question that's sure to come up in many different ways, but I'd really like to know what is so special about Ubuntu that its purposes could not be as well served by contributing to the Debian tree? I'm assuming you have your reasons -- is it about having control of the packaging, more frequent releases, what? Do you see Ubunutu supplanting Debian someday, or will it just be a branded form of the more open Debian (akin to Fedora/Redhat)?

Also, becoming aware of your financial resources, I can't help but wonder whether Ubuntu is intended to be a money maker, or it seen as a gift to the community?

(My new Athlon 64 system is coming any day now, and I've decided to try Ubuntu first. So far, it looks very nice from afar.)

MS: Well, I hope your Ubuntu amd64 system has been working very well since you posed the question, and you're ready to update to Hoary Hedgehog after it releases [this] month :-)

Ubuntu won't replace Debian. If people love it's Ubuntu, it's because it's built on such great engineering. Debian/sid is an awesome asset to the world of free software, even if it is the boy that breaks your toys.

The Ubuntu team takes Sid, every six months, and makes a secure, tested, and supported release of it. Hopefully many of the patches (published continuously at http://people.ubuntu.com/~scott/patches/ but don't let Scott tell you he personally made all of those patches :-) we make in the process are adopted by the Debian maintainers, so Sid gets better as a result of Ubuntu, it is designed to be a two-way street.

Then, hopefully, people take that regular, predictable release and do awesome things like Kubuntu and GuadaLinex with it.

Over time there may be some ongoing areas where we take a different route to Debian because of different priorities and scheduling, like X.org, Gnome 2.10 and possibly OpenOffice.org2 in Hoary, and that's why we are investing in Bazaar and baz-ng, the free/libre revision control system that I hope will make it easy for us to share code with upstream and other distros in a sane fashion.

Debian packages
by renelicious (450403)

I read that you guys are rebuilding your own version of all the debian packages you use instead of using vanilla debian. Apparently this means that Ubuntu will not work with general debian apt repositories. Is this true? If so, what is the reasoning behind this and will you in the future be considering changing this policy?

MS: Yes, we import every package from Debian as well as .deb packages from a lot of other sources that you can find on apt-get.org. So if you enable the "universe" and "multiverse" repositories in your /etc/apt/sources.list file on an Ubuntu system you immediately see everything that you would find in Sid, and most anything else in deb format too, in one shot.

This allows us to reduce the time people spend looking for backports and packages, and to ensure that they actually all build from source at release time. it also allows us, if we get time, to create some sanity in library version dependencies across all 16,000 packages.

Our core team focuses its attention on the server and core desktop apps (in "main"), and then a separate team called the Masters of the Universe (an inside joke) manages everything in universe and multiverse. That team's work on KDE packages resulted in KDE being moved into main, and the creation of Kubuntu for our next release in April. If you're interested in bringing even more packages into universe or multiverse, join #ubuntu-motu.

Modifications
by Daengbo (523424)

After I installed your distro recently, I was impressed by the attention to graphical detail. The gdm login screen, the default theme and the wallpapers chosen for the desktop were all very nice.

One thing that stood out was the choice to eliminate desktop icons and change the required trash icon into a panel applet. Why was this choice made?

MS: Because I'm the SABDFL -- and a Virgo? It just seemed like the Right Thing to do, in keeping with the Ubuntu philosophy of keeping it simple and making it Just Work. A user is free to clutter up her own desktop as much as she likes, we shouldn't be doing that for her :-)

That doesn't mean it wasn't quite a debate at our Oxford conference last year... and I guess we'll be having similar debates at our Sydney community conf in late April, where we'll be laying out the roadmap for Breezy Badger, our October release.

Making the desktop efficient and great to use is a lot of fun. If you have stong thoughts on the subject, come along to Sydney or another Ubuntu conf and join the debate.

Corporate Usage
by TheFlu (213162)

I've been a Red Hat/Fedora user for years now, but I decided to give Ubuntu a try, as it had some of the most recent packages included (Gnome 2.8 and Evolution 2.0) by default. Needless to say, I was very impressed by the polish of a pre-release version, and I have switched my workstations at work, and my Linux boxes at home over to Ubuntu.

I was, however, disappointed by the lack of "corporate" tools currently included with Ubuntu. All of our client machines here are currently running Fedora with a customized install script written using kickstart, so when a machine dies,I can pop in the custom install CD and have a blank machine back on the network in 5 or 10 minutes. Are there are plans to include kickstart-like features and NIS support inside of Ubuntu's installation routines? I would switch our entire company over to Ubuntu in a flash if that were the case. I'm sure other companies would enjoy seeing the addition of such features as well.

MS: Hoary Hedgehog, due April 6th, will have kickstart support thanks to the great work of Colin Watson. I can't speak to NIS, if it's something we could integrate cleanly and elegantly then put a specification together on the Ubuntu wiki at http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/ and link to it from the BOF planning page at http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/UbuntuDownUnderBOFs -- then we'll discuss implementing it for Breezy Badger.

Ubuntu should be great in a corporate environment. We will never include proprietary tools like CodeWeavers, but it's just a matter of time before someone creates an Ubuntu derivative that includes those too.

How do you get support for the less popular work?
by cheros (223479)

Hi Mark, as with any (F)OSS project you're almost entirely depending on volunteers. That's OK for popular projects, but to work on, say, an admin or accounting back-end someone still needs to do the heavy lifting without the promise of the kind of glamour and street cred that the likes of Firefox offer.

Have you found a way to get support for the less sexy projects and if so, how?

MS: I wish there was a good answer to this. There are so many wonderful things that open source could achieve in the world if we could draw talent to less sexy projects.

For example, I've been funding work on SchoolTool for two years now, and we're only JUST starting to see a community forming around it. I think the answer is that open source depends on having some core working product to work with in the first place -- it's very difficult to sustain a community unless the tool is already in widespread production use.

To get from the concept to that point requires either an individual with the skills and passion and energy and time to build it, singlehandedly, or funding from philanthropy or commercial interests.

Another thing I'd like to see are open source administration systems for government -- local councils all around the world have the same problems, they should be using the same tools and sharing them freely. Then Kinshasa and Paris could both benefit from open source. But YOU try motivate someone to hack on a sewerage management system in their spare time.

What do you think of this idea?
by xutopia (469129)

I switch from distro to distro whenever I find one that is better than the current one. I just moved from Slackware (with dropline gnome) to Ubuntu because of the latest gnome and kernel. My brother is so impressed with Ubuntu that he's switching from Windows. Well he's also partly unimpressed with Windows security. He's currently backing everything up and the transfer of files and all is rather tedious. We thought of an idea to make the process faster and would like your opinion on it.

Would it be possible to have an Ubuntu install CD which checks a Windows or Linux installation, migrates its users/files and "converts" their system to Ubuntu? I realize there are some hurdles to overcome this in the Windows world but it seems feasible from one distro to the next. What do you think of the idea?

Thanks in advance.

MS: I think that's a great idea! With Gnu Parted reaching the point where I might trust it to resize my Grandma's NTFS partition and create a new ext3 partition for Ubuntu, the next step will be to move as much of her data into the new Linux partition in a sane way, as possible.

There's low-hanging fruit that you could pick, like desktop backgrounds, fonts, home directories and other useful stuff which could be moved across to preserve her working environment and keep it as familiar as possible.

Good luck!

Everything free -- what's the business plan?
by HoserHead (599)

How does Canonical plan on making money? Ubuntu seems to be completely and utterly free, in both senses of the word. In my mind at least, the 'services will pay for development' business plan for Free Software went out of style when the dot-com bubble burst. How will your company be different?

MS: You're right that the "services pay for development" model is unlikely to work very well for single applications. An entire distribution, though, is slightly different, because the number of users is potentially much, much greater than the number of users for, say, a web server or database app.

Canonical provides support for Ubuntu, but more importantly we provide support for companies that provide support for Ubuntu. The idea is to create an ecosystem of people who collaborate on the free software. You can see the beginnings of that ecosystem on this page of Ubuntu service providers, and I hope it will continue grow as fast as it has since Warty hit the streets.

Part of being sustainable is keeping the costs down, so we focus resources on development and support, not marketing or office waste. The guys will tell you I'm a cheap bastard when it comes to the frills (Canonical One doesn't *actually* belong to Canonical :-).

I'd very much like to make the distro project sustainable, because I've never had the privilege to work with such talented guys who work as hard as this team, and they deserve to be rewarded and to know that people appreciate the value they add every day. If it doesn't work utthat way, though, I'm honoured to consider it a gift back to the open source world, which played such a critical role in helping me build Thawte. So I hope it's commerce, though it may turn out to be philanthropy. Either way, it's still cheaper than going back to space, or hooking up with fast planes/boats/women, which I supposed would be Plan B.

my question for Mark
by Recovery1 (217499)\

I'm curious to know how business and individuals have responded to the open source campaign you started. Has there been any interesting success or failures that have encouraged/discouraged your campaign?

I'd also be curious to hear from fellow slashdotters who may be from South Africa. How has his push for open source made inroads in the computer community?

I am interested because I recently find myself in a situation where I will be promoting open source in my own community.

MS: The Go Open Source campaign, which the Shuttleworth Foundation funds together with HP, the CSIR and Canonical, has had a great response in South Africa. I hope it's gone some way towards helping put South Africa at the front of the open source revolution, in terms of getting everyday computer users interested in open source.

Perhaps other countries will run their own Go Open Source campaigns -- they would be welcome to use the TV show we put together, or any of the other ideas like the Freedom League and the Freedom Toaster, or maybe they'll make a bigger deal of Software Freedom Day in September.

I get tons of people stopping me in the street in Cape Town again, but instead of asking "what's weightlessness like" they want to know about Open Source. The answer to both questions? "Liberating" :-)

Was it worth it?
by jmichaelg (148257)

Two questions:

1) Asking you "was it worth it?" is going to get an affirmative answer regardless of how you really feel so let me ask you, what happened on the flight that made the trip worth $20 million?

2) How much would you pay to go up a second time?

MS: I don't know how much space and spaceflight interest you, but for me they've always been areas of great fascination and imagination. Even if you're a believer in reincarnation you have to admit that it makes sense to make the most of this life, and for me that means tackling the biggest and scariest and most audacious projects I can.

Space was like that.

I remember flying into Russia for the first time, into a stunning sunset, and wondering why on earth anyone would want to spend months on a Russian military base fighting bureaucracy and physics to get into orbit. It seemed silly to take a life of certain luxury and put it at risk. But at the same time, I knew that if I didn't make a real effort to do it, I would spend the rest of my life wondering what it's like to feel the power of an orbital launch, see the exquisite beauty of the earth floating in space, and experience the violence of capsule re-entry.

Looking back I can't believe how lucky I've been. That hard year in Russia, with it's on-again off-again negotiations, taught me a lot about patience and strategy. The physical demands of training, together with having to learn conversational and operational Russian as well as the job of being a cosmonaut are unique things for a geek like me to have experienced. I can't imagine another project that would have been as daunting and ultimately as rewarding. I was lucky to be in Star City at the same time as a great crop of cosmonauts and NASA/ESA astronauts were preparing for their own missions, making friends with people who's lives I would otherwise have envied for eternity. I still envy them, but that's because they get to go back regularly :-) I was lucky to get there in time to catch the last Soyuz TM, because the next generation Soyuz, the TMA, has very little hands on requirements from the guy in the right-hand seat. Flying the TM meant I had more opportunity to work with the crew and could take on more responsibility in-flight.

The actual flight itself is such a gift I can well imagine that people will be queuing for sub-orbital flights when they really come onto the market. The sight of the earth from space is breathtaking, and life changing. 3 minutes in space will change your perspective, I guarantee, on the way we treat one another and the world. So imagine ten days in orbit, the first few on the tiny Soyuz, which rotates end-over-end to maintain solar attitude thus giving you the entertaining experience of being both weightless and inside a tumble dryer on slow-motion. Imagine learning to live and work in an environment that is at once dangerous and peaceful. Imagine using a VOIP connection to call your best friends from orbit in between science experiments and time conducting earth observations. It was ten days, but it passed in a blur.

From a shake-your-bones point of view, the re-entry in a Soyuz can't really be beaten. You are coming in at mach 25 when the atmosphere first sucks you in. You see the blackness of space turning a dull red as the heat builds up around your vehicle. The Soyuz is designed to orient itself correctly for re-entry even if it's a dead craft with no attitude control, so you feel the craft swinging around to ensure that the heatshield will take the brunt of it. Then you watch your spacecraft disintegrate and burn up around you, and the G forces build up till you are in the middle of an inferno with the spare hard drives you brought back on your chest weighting a ton, and the Soyuz spinning like a top to try and spread the heat load out evenly on the shield. You watch bolts and other pieces of metal on the outside melt and run liquid across your window before it blisters and blackens. It's an unbelievable display of forces entirely outside of your control wil you, an ant, in the middle of the fireworks display. You know that your survival is totally dependent on the people who put this machine together, that there is nothing you personally can do if it comes apart. It's a hell of a ride.

How much would I pay to fly again? First, I wouldn't simply repeat what I've done before. I would want to take on new challenges, perhaps flying in a different vehicle or with different responsibilities in a Soyuz. And I'd likely want to take the vehicle through a different mission profile -- which would mean that it wouldn't be the sort of trip you can book on Expedia. Like everything, I'd negotiate the best price I could for the project, and deal with the best people for the job, whether that's Burt Rutan or RosAviaKosmos and Energia.

Is $20m affordable? It depends on what you can afford, and what your alternatives are.

Going to space or fixing Earth?
by gspr (602968)\

As an astronaut, you must been drawn to the mysteries of the universe outside our own planet. But as a South African, you must also feel drawn to the problems facing your home continent (I KNOW this sounds very ignorant and Western, and I'm not trying to say "Africa is a place full of problems", I'm just referring to the huge problems that exist for a large portion of the continent).

Do you think space exploration can be justified when so many people here on Earth suffer? And why? This is an important question to me, as I dream of space, and definitely think Mankind should explore all we can. However, I am having a moral problem (which I'm just ignoring at the moment, for the sake of continued dreaming) justifying spending huge amounts of resources when billions of people right here on Earth lack access to clean water, and millions are infected with HIV.

MS: I love Africa much as I think an American loves America -- despite her problems. And yes, there are plenty of problems, they are easier to see than those that face developed countries. But there's more to Africa than Darfur and Zimbabwe, much as there's more to America than McDonalds and Shock-and-Awe. And I can heartily recommend that you take the time to travel to Cape Town, or Zanzibar, or the Ruwenzori or Ethiopian Highlands, and find out for yourself.

What's interesting about Africa is that it presents tremendous opportunity. In 50 years time the 2 billion inhabitants of the continent will, I believe, be in a strong economic position, and geographical position. The continent has everything it needs to survive and thrive, given good leadership, fair treatment by the rest of the trading world, and time. So I'm pretty confident that we will see Africa shed it's image of tragedy and travesty in our lifetime, and replace it with an enviable mix of prosperity and soul.

You ask whether we can justify spaceflight when the world still faces basic problems feeding and educating and employing billions of its people, and when we're busily destroying the homes of thousands of other species with which we share the planet. That's a tough question. The standard answer speaks to the way space exploration has changed our world for the better, in every field from materials engineering to food science and geography. But I think the more important answer lies in the fact that much of what's holding the world back is willpower, not resources.

I've seen schools in South Africa that have nothing, yet manage to turn out first class graduates year after year while the school down the road, which is equally poorly funded, doesn't get a single pass. It's the willpower of those staff members that makes the difference. And a big part of willpower is having something to aspire to, something to live for. Space, and man's exploration of the solar system and universe, are extraordinarily powerful motivators. I learned this first hand before I flew, when an old man who had experienced the worst of apartheid through his life hugged me and begged me to take him to space with me, then told me his kids were working extra hard on maths and science so that they too might one day have this opportunity. I hope they do, too.

Common Efforts?
by meggito (516763)

How are the nations of Africa working together to promote technological growth? Are there any common intiatives in place or will there be or are the nations still working independantly instead of building a common infrastructure? Are the current methods succeeding or do you beleive there should be change to the way the continent is approaching their technological challenges whether they are seperate or cooperative.

MS: Unfortunately, there is not enough being done within Africa to make the most of the extraordinary technological changes we've seen over the past few years. Nepad showed some promise, but that appears lost to bureaucracy. I think it will be up to the smaller countries to innovate and lead the way in regulation to attract investment in telecomms and innovation, especially with regard to VOIP, Wi-Max and other breakthrough technologies. I wish I had a more upbeat answer.

The Digital Divide
by Rico_za (702279)

Ubuntu, SchoolTool,Translate.org.za, are some of the projects you support that seem to tackle the digital-divide head-on. Do you have any views or ideas on how to make Internet access cheaper so more people in developing countries can have access to it? More specific, any plans on convincing the South African government that not over-regulating the telecoms industry will be good for everyone?

MS: Whenever there is substantial change in an industry there are opportunities for new leaders to emerge. The global shift to open source is just such an opportunity. I'm really hopeful that South Africa will grab the chance to lead the in the open source revolution. There will be a big shift in IT skills requirements, and any country that takes the initiative now will benefit significantly, from investment, outsourcing and internal efficiencies.

I'll answer the telecoms part of your question along with the next one.

Internet Access in South Africa
by kobus (544780)

Hi Mark,

This is a question combo suggestion.

I'm a programmer from South Africa, working in the Bay Area.

I had dialup Internet in South Africa already in 1994. However since then not much has changed. In fact Internet access is appalling. Its very expensive compared to the average income of middle class, and ISDN or ADSL is just too expensive and at the same time pathetically slow.

Internet access is really holding our country back! I believe it is critical to schools and families to have access to better Internet.

As a South African entrepreneur and someone who is successful in the IT world, have you ever given this problem any thought, or considered starting an initiative to provide better access to the Internet?

MS: Clearly, with one of the world's most expensive and profitable telecom monopolies still firmly entrenched in South Africa, we need to act firmly. Last year the South African government took some big steps towards deregulation, then they de-fanged those initiatives at the last minute. I expect there is ongoing debate internally as to the right plan of action, and unfortunately it's taking a long time for those in favour of bold deregulatory moves to get their point across.

Critical issues in the coming year will be the pricing of international traffic on undersea cables, which continues to be a very secretive monopoly, as well as control and pricing of access to the last-mile copper currently entrusted to Telkom. I certainly hope that SATRA, the SA telecoms regulator, will allow new operators access to existing last-mile copper for a low price, as has been done very successfully in France, where I think the maximum line rental the incumbent operator can charge is around EUR 10.00 per month. In SA, it should be lower. In addition, I'd like to see SATRA selling off international bandwidth that is currently a monopoly in an annual open auction.

In addition, I'd like to see proactive work done on Wi-Max, WiFi and general spectrum liberation to stimulate investment in the possibilities of a wireless broadband world. The opportunity is there, whether or not the regulatory authorities have the skills and the willpower to lead is unknown.

Health care open source?
by mspohr (589790)

I do a lot of work in South Africa and other parts of Africa with health care information systems. There is a pressing need for open source information systems for AIDS treatment and also health system management. The existing proprietary solutions are expensive, not suitable, not customizable, and don't build local capacity.

Would you be willing to branch out from education into health care open source projects? I know people in South Africa, Kenya, Zambia, Ethiopia, and other countries who would be willing to participate.

MS: I certainly encourage the use of open source in government wherever possible. And there is in fact a pilot project in the SA ministry of health which turned into an accidental open source success - I say accidental because I don't think the officials in charge realised the potential, but they agreed to let the developers work on that basis and now this small tool is being used in several countries on the continent.

I hope that's an indicator of what the future holds in store.

I don't fund health care work in SA, as a rule, because I want to build the Foundation team steadily over time, and think education is a big enough elephant to swallow first. Once we have a good track record in education (TuxLabs, SchoolTool and other projects are a good start) we can expand to other areas of social entrepreneurship and innovation.

Thanks everyone for these questions -- apologies for taking so long to answer them!

Comments

It's nice...

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

to see get the real facts from MS for once.

Re:It's nice...

[Anonymous Coward]

Boo! Not funny. Not funny at all.

Re:It's nice...

[MS_is_the_best]

Nice interview, my nick is suitable..

Re:It's nice...

[Anonymous Coward]

You have multiple sclerosis?

Wow

[digital-madman]

I'm surprised it didn't take 5 years for the interview....

Re:Wow

[bird603568]

If it did it would still be up to date. ;|

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, five years are needed for the interview, otherwise how can you really be sure the answer is 100% correct. If you like your interviews to be bleeding edge you risk getting an incorrect answer.

Re:Wow

[dokkeri]

No no... This is Ubuntu, not Debian...

Re:Wow

[digital-madman]

I beg to differ on the Troll mod'ing... It's based on Debian...and we no the release cycle.. So if it's based on Debian...that means...you know what...never mind... I don't feel like explaining it...

A reply...

[youknowmewell]

A return reply time worthy of a Debianaut.

Formula for failure..

[Nasa Rosebuds]

The Ubuntu project is all about creating a free, high quality OS for everybody -- home, office and data center.

I once saw a sign that said: Formula for failure - Try to please everyone.

I think there is some truth to that phrase. I really don't like it when software tries to be everything for everyone.

Re:Formula for failure..

[Anonymous Coward]

While I agree...

Microsoft does basically the same thing. One OS, different configurations...

Re:Formula for failure..

[grumbel]

I see nothing wrong with targeting everybody, actually I would consider it quite wrong to target somebody specific and leave out the rest. Software for Linux stays software for Linux, if I use Emacs at home or at a data center makes zero difference to the software itself. Sure the distro itself should provide some default package selections for different uses, but the software itself and the packages for it can stay 100% the same, no matter who uses them.

Re:Formula for failure..

[jb.hl.com]

I think there is some truth to that phrase. I really don't like it when software tries to be everything for everyone.

Well, that's Debian out...aaaand Gentoo, can use it as so many things...don't forget Red Hat in all its forms (Fedora, RHEL), boy, that must be awful for you...hell, let's go for -1 Troll here, Windows, quite damn flexible, used by a lot of people for everything, even Mac OS fucking X has a server version.

You are not going to find an operating system, and certainly not a distro, which isn't going to try to be everything for everyone. There probably is one somewhere, but I haven't seen it.

Re:Formula for failure..

[natrius]

I really don't like it when software tries to be everything for everyone.

Out of the box, Ubuntu tries to be the friendly desktop distribution that most people recognize it as, which satisfies the home requirement and the office one with a bit of customization. Under the surface, it's merely a collection of packages that can be put together however you like. If you install the packages containing the server software you need, you've got a server distribution. When you have the many individual application developers along with the many hands within Debian proper and Ubuntu itself working to make sure all the packages work well together, it's not that hard to see how you can accomplish many things.

Re:Formula for failure..

[advocate_one]

I've got some bad news for you... it is an OS for everyone... well, not quite... die hard Mac fans and Microsofties will hate it... those sort are never pleased with anything different...

Re:Formula for failure..

[jumbledInTheHead]

I strongly disagree. A distribution is different than a specific software program too. It is possible to configure any linux distribution for a variety of different uses depending on what software goes on it. Besides many of the applications for home and office are the same. Web browser and an office suite are something nearly universal on computers. If you have different needs you can apt-get what you want. Ease of use and reliability should be universal. Whether Ubuntu will fill these rules is yet to be seen, but the goals aren't going to sink them.

Re:Formula for failure..

[Taladar]

You are not going to find an operating system, and certainly not a distro, which isn't going to try to be everything for everyone.

Thats bullshit. Lots of distros are specifically designed to e.g. rescue lost data (livecd), run as headless server, dsl router, ...

Re:Formula for failure..

[MsGeek]

Disagree: the Mac fans will love it because Gnome is very MacOS X-like. The Microsofties will like Kubuntu. Those who love Linux will love Debian.

Re:Formula for failure..

[advocate_one]

no, die hard Mac fans and die hard microsofties will never be satisfied... we get them all the time in here complaining about this or that feature of Linux whenever something new likelooking glass desktop or that "wobbly windows" thing

Re:Formula for failure..

[Krunch]

Windows may be a commercial success but do you think it's a technical success ?

Re:Hmmm

[ZephyrXero]

If you want to make money with Open Source, build your low level stuff completely open, gpl'd and all of that...then sell your higher level version with all the bells and whistles, and tech support. Example, video games... you make your graphics engine, physics engine and whatnot all completely open source and public, but you keep your characters, story, levels, music and graphics proprietary...

At least his comments on his space experience...

[Marthisdil]

...were worth reading. The rest was the expected stuff.

Well done

[FidelCatsro]

He really does come across as a genuinly nice guy , Well awnserd questions and he knows what he is on about (alot more than i can say for alot of people in his position).I use Ubuntu on my old imac g3 and have been very impressed with the distro , it is debian at its heart but the customisation are mainly things i would have done myself for my home system(x.org etc) . As he said almost all the things i would need are in the universal repositorys. I have found it very stable whilst remaining modern .. good job all round.
Its nice to have another major Distro on the linux PPC platform -
I am very tempted to recomend The use of ubuntu at work as the support also seems well devised(if anyone has any personal experiance with ubuntu support then i would love to hear about it) and the web support is steadly improving.
Ok i am begining to sound like a driviling fanboi but respect where it is due

Re:Well done

[falkryn]

I'm curious by your post as to how well Ubuntu runs on the G3. Reason I ask is that I have an old G3 b&w powermac here (350MHz with 256M of RAM (I can kick that up to 512 though if I want)) currently running OS 9 on it (OS X would be painful on such a configuration). Been thinking of putting another OS on it, but I'd prefer to keep a dual boot for the time being. How hard is it to do that? Does the ubuntu ppc installer come with a disk partitioner now? What type of performance does one get on such an "old" machine? Even running gnome?

Thanks

Re:Well done

[FidelCatsro]

I have an imac g3 dv se+ (400mhz) and 383MB ram.
it runs fine (both gnome and kde ) and if i were to install xfce or perhaps fluxbox even(which would run perfectly)it would fly.
as for the duel boot , i did not bother trying , but i would imagine it is easy as it gives a boot prompt and the wiki and installer info for ubuntu is probably present online .
Basicaly i wouldnt worry about performance (FYI: i did run OS X on it for a while and whilst not extremly fast it is workable if you tone down some gloss, i even was able to use photoshop (like the magnification on the dock))the g3 is still a rather good procesor whilst not being in the same class as the g4 at the same clock speeds it still holds its own well.
Oh and yes the installer does have a partitioner , i did not test it throughly though as i was wipping the 60GB HDD i had in the machine so just set it to erase everything ... have you tried the live CD actualy ,, there is one on the ubuntu website which should give you a good idea about performance and let you try it out and see if its your cup of tea
.
In sumation , Partition present works not knowing how well aparently stable , PErformance is not really an issue but i wouldnt flood the machine with open apps,try live CD first if your on broadband of some form ,read wiki , it runs gnome and kde well

Re:Well done

[falkryn]

great, thanks for the reply.

Re:Well done

[Anonymous Coward]

no problem , it seems to make some sense( i wrote it at 8am with a hangover )
glad i could be of use

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

If I got rich, I'd do the same.

[shapr]

I admire Mark for spending money to make the world a better place, rather than spending it to make only his own life a better place.

I admire his efforts to organize schools to teach children and make the future a better place too.

This is the real spirit of open source, giving what you can in hopes it benefits others, improves the world, and in the long run benefits all of us.

Maybe I'll get rich one day and I can do the same.

Re:If I got rich, I'd do the same.

[killjoe]

The best thing about open source and linux is that anybody can help. If you can't do anything else you can write documentation, volunteer to run tests, design logos, work on web site themes, help on IRC, give lectures in local schools, donate time to big brothers and big sisters to teach kids linux, the list goes on and on.

So don't wait till you are rich! Roll up your sleeves and get busy!

Re:If I got rich, I'd do the same.

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn his reply was long though, what is it, like at least 15 Shatners.

Re:If I got rich, I'd do the same.

[johnMG]

> If you can't do anything else you can write documentation,

No. Please no. :) It takes certain skills to write clear, concise, and readable docs. Nothing turns me off to a project faster than lousy docs. If you're good at writing, excellent, please contribute to the docs, but if you're not, killjoe's other suggestions are great. Also submitting bugs to the relevant project's bugzilla page (including step-by-step instructions to reproduce the bug) is a great way to contribute.

Re:If I got rich, I'd do the same.

[observer7]

i am in total agreement with him . we all can contribute in our own way http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/linuxtwincit iesmn/

OT: Source Hoarding

[nurb432]

Ok, so this is slightly OT but the talk of 'open source is good' brings this to mind..

Considering the impending IP/DMCA/copyright/etc doom that is coming soon to open source in an attempt to stamp it out, how would one propose to create and retain ones own source code 'repository' of all the pertinent packages that one would need when the eventual happens and lots of code disappears ( or is simply not allowed to run on the new 'drm-chips'.. )

Obviously collecting a Linux distribution's source disks are a start, but how about something that has more long term safety due to changing platforms, like the entire NetBSD ports tree ( with all package sources, not just the 'tree' of course, which are spread out all over the net currently ). Tried this using FBSD and 'fetch' one weekend but it made a mess of my ports directory and would be almost impossible to 'maintain'..

Sure, I'm sounding paranoid, but the day may happen and I know personally I still want to have something I can use without being told I cant do x y or z...

And again, no flames for being OT please, and no this isnt some sort of troll about 'impending doom'..

Re:OT: Source Hoarding

[natrius]

Considering the impending IP/DMCA/copyright/etc doom that is coming soon to open source in an attempt to stamp it out, how would one propose to create and retain ones own source code 'repository' of all the pertinent packages that one would need when the eventual happens and lots of code disappears ( or is simply not allowed to run on the new 'drm-chips'.. )

None of those things you mentioned can directly harm open source. IP is just a concept. Someone can claim that their IP has been infringed upon in an open source project, which would be bad. The DMCA has no bearing on open source. Copyright is what allows the privileges granted to the user by open source software to be passed down without being taken away. Without copyright, there is no GPL. With that said, if there were DRM chips that would somehow stop open source software, how would having the code help you?

I think you should be more worried about the Internet. Without the Internet, where are you going to download all your software? All that has to be done to stop the flow of open source software is to take down the Internet. The developers wouldn't be able to collaborate, and the users wouldn't be able to download the software. It would take some sort of doomsday scenario for either of these situations to occur, in which case I'm sure you'd have better things to worry about, such as killing terrorists with steak knives as they push the front lines forward through your neighborhood. Instead of worrying about a failsafe stash of code, you should probably be assembling a redundant transcontinental wireless network, completely independent from the major backbones. Impossible? I know. That's why paranoia's overrated.

Re:OT: Source Hoarding

[beattie]

Instead of worrying about a failsafe stash of code, you should probably be assembling a redundant transcontinental wireless network, completely independent from the major backbones. Impossible? I know.

Impossible? Some of us would call it Ham Radio :)

McDonalds

[Otter]

But there's more to Africa than Darfur and Zimbabwe, much as there's more to America than McDonalds and Shock-and-Awe.

I haven't been in a McDonalds in years, and don't plan to go anytime soon. But it still seems to me that a company that offers predictably not-bad food with low prices, quick service and convenient locations (and with which customers are free to do business or not, as they see fit) is hardly something to be ashamed of, let alone something to compare to Darfur.

Shuttleworth strikes me as a Mark Cuban type who thinks that because his business was transiently worth a fortune at the moment when he unloaded it on some sucker, that makes him a business genius, not a mix of audacity and dumb luck.

Re:McDonalds

[Otter]

Mea culpa -- I haven't eaten in a McDonalds in years. I was last in one two days ago, in Turin. One of the lesser-known contributions McDonalds and Burger King make to humanity is that they frequently offer the only public restrooms in European or Asian cities.

Re:McDonalds

[Anonymous Coward]

The comparison is that they are both parts of stereotypical images of the respective regions.

Re:McDonalds

[advocate_one]

yes... so many "Public Houses" in the UK actually restrict the use of their toilet facilities to patrons only... I mean, what else is a Public House but a place for the public??? And finding a restroom in most shops is impossible... the facilities are for staff only

Re:McDonalds

[Builder]

But it still seems to me that a company that offers predictably not-bad food with low prices, quick service and convenient locations

Uhm, do you know the cost of that convinience ? Do you know the damage that McDonalds has done to food (not just food they serve, but all meat you buy)?

The fast food industry are the main reason that things like Ecoli is now so common in store bought foods. They are also responsible for huge labour issues, etc. They are the company the sue activists and then try to get the case canned because they are taking such a beating on the PR front.

Go read fast food nation. Personally, I think that Darfur has a better history!

Re:McDonalds

[killjoe]

First of all I take exception to the "not bad food" part. McDOnalds food in addition tasting bad is awful for you.

Secondly he is refering to the idea that a corporation which makes crappy food is somehow seen as the embodiment of america. As if there was no such thing as good food in america which is of course wrong.

He is talking about the fact that your perception of africa is tainted by the crappy things you see on TV just like world's perception of America is tainted by mcdonalds and gee whiz bombing videos released by the pentagon.

Re:McDonalds

[i_should_be_working]

He was just trying to make the point that Africa is much more than the things we hear on the news. When many people outside of America think of it, they think of McDonalds for good or bad. He could have said 'there's more to America than baseball and apple pie', without implying that apple pie is as bad as Darfur. It's just that the things we usually hear about Africa are bad.

But if he was ascribing a value to Mcdonalds maybe he was comparing Zimbabwe to McDonalds and Darfur to Shock-and-Awe. Zim's a really beautiful place, even if it does have some problems now. I'd still much rather go there than McDonalds.

Re:McDonalds

[Anonymous Coward]

Go read fast food nation. Personally, I think that Darfur has a better history!

You are a deeply stupid, foolish person.

Re:McDonalds

[Otter]

1) I'll let McDonalds customers dispute the "tasting bad", but their food is not "awful for you". You can eat it in a healthful or an unhealthful way, just like carrots, udon, venison chili and creme brulee.

2) Several people are claiming that he's talking about stereotypes, without making judgements on them. Perhaps, but rereading what he said I'm pretty confident in my original understanding.

3) The notion that the worst human rights disaster in the world (with the possible exception of North Korea), a country that just tok another big step in its slide into complete catastrophe and greasy hamburgers are all "crappy things" is precisely the point to which I'm objecting.

4) Gee, the moderators are really wailing on me today, huh? I've got -1's going on two different stories.

Re:McDonalds

[Anonymous Coward]

Go read fast food nation. Personally, I think that Darfur has a better history!

Go read an actual science book, and learn what sorts of foul excuses for food humans have been forced to survive on for most of our 100,000-year evolutionary existence.

Re:McDonalds

[theolein]

You just didn't get what the grandparent was talking about did you?

He was refering to popular media conceptions of a country, not what is necesarily bad about a place.

Or have you heard anything much else about Africa in the news apart from Zimbabwe or Dafur?

Re:McDonalds

[peatbakke]

... not to nit pick, but this is a false statement:

The fast food industry are the main reason that things like Ecoli is now so common in store bought foods.

The rate of food borne pathogens has gone down dramatically in the last 100 years, and the trend continues through the advent of fast food in the last 50 years. In particular, E. coli contamination in particular has been reduced by over 15% since 1999, when substantial advances were made in the quantity and sensitivity of testing.

http://peaches.nal.usda.gov/foodborne/fbindex/FBI_ Stats.asp

(google is also helpful)

Re:McDonalds

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree also.

This is truly an excellent global public service that these facilities are offering. In so many places public restrooms either don't exist, or have been closed.

Re:McDonalds

[mp3phish]

Maybe he should have used mad cow disease as a better example. One disease which has significant evidence of being directly contributed by the fast food industry.

Re:McDonalds

[John Miles]

Maybe he should have used mad cow disease as a better example. One disease which has significant evidence of being directly contributed by the fast food industry.

More people died of starvation while I typed this post, and more will die of starvation while you read it, than have died of human variant-CJD in the past ten years.

Priorities, priorities.

Re:McDonalds

[mp3phish]

"Priorities, priorities."

And the fast food industry is doing a LOT to stop out hunger... Every day they provide lunch to millions of starving americans.(sarcasm)

The starving 3rd world isn't an excuse. Starving people don't need more beef. They need more food. Using them as an excuse to farm cows using unhealthy practices is just plain ignorant.

Re:McDonalds

[Anonymous Coward]

And the fast food industry is doing a LOT to stop out hunger

Yeah, about as much as the furniture industry or the greeting-card industry. Were you going somewhere with that argument?

The starving 3rd world isn't an excuse. Starving people don't need more beef. They need more food. Using them as an excuse to farm cows using unhealthy practices is just plain ignorant.

Who's using what as an excuse?

Re:McDonalds

[ces]

Well assuming you aren't a vegan you can get beef that isn't raised or slaughtered with any of the practices the activists complain about.

I buy Oregon Country Beef at the local store, given that their prices haven't gone up much while "normal" beef has it comes out being around the same price nowdays. There are similar brands of grassland and organic beef availible all over the country.

Why do I buy it? Well to me it just tastes better and it supports a bunch of small ranchers in a nearby state. I can also eat it rare without worring about getting sick.

Similar options are availible for Pork, Chicken, and Lamb. They aren't even all that much more expensive around here anymore. I suspect that the "traditional" producers have been forced to raise prices due to higher oil prices (modern farming is hugely energy intensive) whereas energy is a much lower component of organic food products prices.

Re:McDonalds

[mp3phish]

Maybe you didn't read the parent.

Re:McDonalds

[rhodes777]

"...his business was transiently worth a fortune at the moment when he unloaded it on some sucker..."

From what I've seen over the last few years, Thawte is still a major player, years after he sold it.

Still confused on using deb/sid repositories

[Sark666]

Regarding this question:
Apparently this means that Ubuntu will not work with general debian apt repositories. Is this true?

His response didn't clear this situation up for me.
From what I understand, they take a snapshot of (all?) deb sid packages every six months and make them their own for ubuntu.

So within that 6 month window if a package enters sid that is not currently in ubuntu, and I'd like to have the package and enable the sid sources, is everything still going to behave? I'd think you could get away with some programs, but if in turn some libs start getting updated from sid I could see problems.

So what's the deal on this? Anyone have experiences with mixing sources or have you found there's no need as ubuntu has all of sid? Also in between the 6 month cycle. Do they upgrade their packages faster than sid sometimes? Besides the obvious gnome, x.org etc.

Re:Still confused on using deb/sid repositories

[natrius]

The general rule is use the Ubuntu repositories unless you really need something else. If there are packages that have been updated after the upstream version freeze, there are probably going to be several programs you want that fall into this category. In this case, you're probably more of a tinkerer than a normal user, so you probably want to join the people running the development branch of the distro. I've only been running Hoary for a month, and that was after most things stablized, so my experience isn't really typical. However, I hear that there weren't any problems for people who were running it from the start. I'd recommend upgrading to Breezy (the next version) once it opens up, which should be pretty soon.

To answer your question more directly, I personally don't think that you'd run into any big problems by using debian packages do to the way Ubuntu versions its packages. An Ubuntu package uses the same base package version as the Debian one, then for each revision of the package, "ubuntu" followed by the revision number is appended. This means the subsequent Debian package version will be higher than Ubuntu's, and it will replace it. Technically, since Debian receives all of Ubuntu's packages, the new package may contain the patches and you won't have many problems. There are probably a few Ubuntu specific things out there, and those will break.

Installing a new version of gaim won't break much, but upgrading glibc is probably a bad idea.

Re:Still confused on using deb/sid repositories

[mr_sas]

Generally as long as you don't "apt-get dist upgrade", you're fine afaik, I've never tried adding sid, but used debian mariallat with no problems.

Re:Still confused on using deb/sid repositories

[crimsun]

I'm one of the universe maintainers (Masters of the Universe, or MOTU).

Ubuntu, being a Debian-based distribution, _can_ work with general apt (.deb) repositories. Whether one _should_ add such to one's sources.list is a completely different matter. Ubuntu's repos are tuned for our (Ubuntu) packages. Adding in external repos very well will result in massive dependency headaches (unless you're skilled with apt pinning, but even that can get messy - my home machine is Sid+experimental+Hoary base, Sid since '98, and I've snagged my share of "oh crap"s) - the notorious Ubuntu Backports used to be a source of much weeping and gnashing of teeth, though they've fixed many of the versioning problems that would have wrought insanity with a dist-upgrade.

Roughly speaking, we regularly sync with Debian Sid as a base, then work from that. For the universe packages, we sync (and merge) as often as we need to ("need" determined by the amount of effort required to backport versus simply merging a new sync from Sid). We have a system for requesting that new packages be synced from Sid. We also have "quite a few" packages that are newer than their counterparts, if they exist, in Sid. The development branch of Ubuntu tracks Sid regularly, but not all of Sid is in said development branch (though it's pretty darned close to being "all").

As part of the team that oversees nearly 15000 packages just for Hoary Universe, it's difficult to do extensive QA, but we're getting to the point where, through inviting new members to join our universe maintainer team and automated regression testing, we can make that a reality (http://higgs.djpig.de/ubuntu/www/ truly is wonderful). My colleagues are a great bunch.

Re:Still confused on using deb/sid repositories

[shutdown -p now]

As long as you add universe/multiverse repositories, you should get all the latest stuff.

Re:Still confused on using deb/sid repositories

[hawkwind]

How did you come up with "Masters of the Universe"?

Re:Still confused on using deb/sid repositories

[crimsun]

The counterpart is Masters of Main (MOM); "main" is the repository officially supported by Ubuntu. "Universe" is not supported by Ubuntu; the community and ourselves (the team, MOTU), have that honour. :)

Re:Still confused on using deb/sid repositories

[Sark666]

Well, when I hear masters of the universe I think of He-man ;)

Re:Still confused on using deb/sid repositories

[crimsun]

That's part of the humour. ;)

Re:Still confused on using deb/sid repositories

[hawkwind]

when I hear master of the universe I think of something else ;)

Re:Still confused on using deb/sid repositories

[macshit]

I'm running a Debian system with all of the following in my /etc/apt/sources.list:

• Debian sid
• Debian experimental
• Ubuntu main
• Unbuntu "universe"

In general, everything works wonderfully.

I've encountered one real bug -- a duplicated file in some python packages -- and just have that package on hold.

With a few packages I have to prevent it from trying to use the newer Debian-experimental versions, as the Ubuntu dependencies don't like it.

Right now I have 3 packages on hold for the above reasons. If you're basically aware of how packages and versions work (enough to judge whether you should put a package on hold or downgrade to an older version to satisfy some dependency -- using aptitude is a huge advantage here, as it seems to have far more advanced features for tracking down problems and trying out scenarios than other package managers), I'd say go for it.

[Note that while I tons of packages installed, I don't have anything from KDE or xfce, so I don't know if there are problems there or not.]

As for using Unbuntu instead of Debian, I have no idea, but I certainly don't want to do that.

SABDFL?

[Jacco de Leeuw]

I wonder what a SABDFL was (South-African B*st*rd Director From L....??? :-). Apparently it's:

"Self-Appointed Benevolent Dictator For Life".

Re:Ubuntu target is...?

[Looke]

I'd expect anyone serious about management to see past stupid first impressions and consider the real product. "You can't judge a book by its cover."

Re:Hmmm

[The Pope's Corpse]

From my experience, the only real heavy use of OSS in the commercial industry is server based. DNS, HTTP, email, database, etc. It's Apache over IIS, qmail over exchange, Postgres/mysql over sql server/oracle, Linux over Unix/Windows Server whatever, etc. The majority of people dropping these systems in place have loads of experience and can figure out problems. Support contracts become moot. I still fail to see where the money is going to come from. And if Linux conquers the desktop, are companies going to pay for dozens of support contracts or hire a couple of guys who know anything and everything there is to know about whatever distro they adopt?

And I speak from the perspective of working for a business who makes heavy use of OSS for the free aspect of it. The uppercase F does not really factor into the equation.

SABDFL

[Bazman]

"South African Benevolent Dictator For Life"

Baz

Health Care Software

[Mr. No Skills]

I do a lot of work in South Africa and other parts of Africa with health care information systems. There is a pressing need for open source information systems for AIDS treatment and also health system management. The existing proprietary solutions are expensive, not suitable, not customizable, and don't build local capacity.

Not to point out the obvious, but Googling "Open Source Health Care" finds plenty of information to get started. I wonder what questions this one bumped off the list?

Re:Health Care Software

[mspohr]

I thought I should explain since I am the person who posted that question.

I am aware that there are a lot of open source medical projects. I have formally evaluated most of them. They all need a lot of work for use in Africa for AIDS/TB and health system use.

I posted the question to try to interest MS in devoting some of his time and attention to health and I didn't necessarily need a public reply.

I'm sorry if your favorite question didn't get answered.

/Mark

Re:Health Care Software

[Mr. No Skills]

*off-topic, private (poster's Email not available)*

I guess my message came across as a little negative - more of a comment about how different this question seemed to be from other questions, and maybe I just read your question wrong.

I work in healthcare IT in USA, and I'm involved in some public domain projects. While I don't understand the specific needs for AIDS/TB, I do understand how the costs can be prohibitive for commercial projects. Write me at the above Email if you wish.

Re:Ubuntu target is...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, the KEY to making it big in the IT world is to have a stupid name. Wiki... Blog...

We use Tikiwiki at work, my boss still thinks it's one of the Teletubbies, but hey at least we're using it.

Re:What?

[Cuchullain]

I've used QTparted to resize ntfs. Perhaps he is referring to one of the offshoots of parted.

K

Re:Ubuntu target is...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, whatever, you can just call it Ubuntu 5.04. Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning "humanity for others". If your boss gives you shit, say that, and then ask him pointedly if if he's racist. That'll shut him up! (Might still get you fired, though.)

Gnome isn't such a weird name, is it? Maybe I've been around it too long to know.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

He propably meant Gparted altough in Ubuntu 5.04 "Hoary Hedgehog" Partman is used.

Re:Ubuntu target is...?

[jb.hl.com]

Gnome isn't such a weird name, is it?

Not as weird as Windows XP. It doesn't even stand for anything. I'd probably have an easier time explaining that GNOME stands for the GNU Network Object Model Environment than I would trying to pull something out of my ass to explain Windows XP...

Microsoft rips off Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/33934/index.h tml

Re:Microsoft rips off Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, that's definitely a blatant ripoff. Maybe even copyright infringement.

Re:Microsoft rips off Ubuntu

[happymedium]

That article is basically a troll. The Special Olympics (as well as many other organizations, I'm sure) has a very similar logo; it's a common and intuitive design and impossible to call a ripoff. Aside from that, the logo is cool but ultimately unimportant to Ubuntu, and that article implies that MS ripped something significant.

Re:Microsoft rips off Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

The Microsoft logo is comprised of their MSN Messenger icon people. Who ripped off who?

Well, ya know...

[PCM2]

I admire Mark for spending money to make the world a better place, rather than spending it to make only his own life a better place. I admire his efforts to organize schools to teach children and make the future a better place too. This is the real spirit of open source, giving what you can in hopes it benefits others, improves the world, and in the long run benefits all of us. Maybe I'll get rich one day and I can do the same.

Well, ya know, you don't have to be "rich" to spend money to make the world a better place. Small contributions to the charity of your choice really do add up. Feel bad when you walk past a dozen homeless people bumming for change on your way to work, but can't justify handing out cash that might go to somebody's drug habit? Donate to your local shelters/soup kitchens. Feel like kids are spending too much time in front of the TV and aren't exposed to the humanities? Donate to your local museums or arts organizations. Want to help healthcare? There's numerous efforts to cure diseases or promote international medical aid that you could contribute to. I'm not just trying to be glib, I'm really serious -- you should try it. Say you give $200 or something, to a couple of different organizations; I bet you won't really notice it's gone, in the long run, but the organizations you donated to really will appreciate it. And all of the above, even donating to a PBS station, does something to make the world a better place if it helps to enrich, educate, or otherwise help the needy.

Also, if you have a full-time job, don't forget to see if your employer will match your contributions. That's a great way to send extra money the direction you want it to go, above and beyond what you feel you can personally afford.

Re:Well, ya know...

[kalayl]

Although I agree with you entirely, I often have the same concerns that you mention as to where the money goes. My concerns are more about ensuring that 100% of my financial donations arrive where they are needed in a direct way.
But if there isn't a creditable enough charity you can find, I'd always recommend giving of your own time in some sort of practical way. If your time is worth x amount of dollar per hour, then you're practically making a contribution to the same amount of dollar/hour by providing yourself as a skilled human resource. If that involves writing some software, fixing some computers, pouring soup or helping old people get their teeth back in, it's making a direct, tangible contribution that noone will be able to funnel into a private bank account.

Re:Well, ya know...

[redboar]

Soup kitchens and museums are usually the same waste of money as giving it directly to a bum or kid who will fund their drug or XBox habit, respectively. This is coming from a person who lives near Chicago, the most corrupt city in the world thanks to Daley Jr.

Ubuntu and the status quo

[KingBahamut]

I feel the project has done phenominally. I honestly hope that with its sucess that Debian itself will take a huge turn as well. Thats all I can see that happens. Im behind this guy all the way.

Re:What?

[natrius]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure he meant gparted.

"Ubuntu Linux 4.06"

[jbellis]

you're welcome

Re:"Ubuntu Linux 4.06"

[natrius]

Except that version number is incorrect. The versions are "year.month" with leading zeroes dropped for the year. Warty was version 4.10 (October 2004). Hoary is 5.04. Breezy will be 5.10.

Re:Ubuntu software

[ZephyrXero]

hmm.... maybe my memories gone but I'm pretty sure I saw a Mark Shuttleworth dissing on autopackage somewhere recently, on a debian discussion I believe...although I may have read it wrong.

welcome aboard

[justins]

I'd expect anyone serious about management to see past stupid first impressions and consider the real product.

You're new to the business world, aren't you?

Re:welcome aboard

[Looke]

You're new to the business world, aren't you?

Not really, but I'm still clinging to idealist hopes... If my boss were to dismiss an alternative on such stupid grounds, the decision wouldn't be rational, but foolish, arrogant, and prejudiced. I have a hard time respecting that.

Re:welcome aboard

[k-hell]

... which is how decisions often are made in this world.

Re:Hmmm

[ZephyrXero]

I think we will see a shift in the industry where instead of paying for a specific piece of software, companies will help fund it's development. This is still cheaper in the end, and much more productive for everyone.

Hacking on Less Sexy Projects ie SchoolTool, etc

[SlashMaster]

"But YOU try motivate someone to hack on a sewerage management system in their spare time."

I get the impression that government doesn't want to compete with private enterprise in this arena. For instance, I believe that it was a Linux User Group meeting in Des Moines about 2 years ago where a person employed by the State of Iowa developing software for the state described their policy as 'not to release it into the public domain' so as not to compete with private enterprise. This was considered pro free-nterprise.

Your best funding to software in this field may be for lobbying government and/or government developers to release appropriate government developed software to the public domain. You might find an immense amount of software in this area if that succeeded.

Re:Ubuntu target is...?

[Anonymous Coward]

at least it has meaning, and as an african I can tell you it is an extremly profound word, and i'm sure anyone with a connection to this continent wil concur. (I'm talking about ubunthu, not whoring hedgehogs or whatever)

Gentoo, knoppix, whoppix sound completly funny to me but I'm sure they don't mean a thing.

Re:Ubuntu target is...?

[fernando.malick]

Speaking of blatantly stupid names... what about Microsoft Windows?

For those keeping score at home

[Anonymous Coward]

Kubuntu is a distribution based on Ubuntu, a distribution based on Debian, a distribution of Linux, an implementation of GNU.

And they say Linux is confusing. PSHAA!!

The Linux answers were good, but...

[gosand]

I liked hearing his responses, but I have to say that his descriptions of space travel were awesome. I am sure he could have gone into more detail, but he paints a pretty amazing picture of the experience. Sounds like a helluva ride. Even if you have the money to take that trip, it takes balls to actually go through the training and time to do it. After all, he has a great fortune to risk by doing so.

Re:The Linux answers were good, but...

[freeweed]

After all, he has a great fortune to risk by doing so.

Well, yeah, that. And his life.

I'd venture that's one hell of a larger risk, but then again I ain't rich :/

Re:The Linux answers were good, but...

[gosand]

Well, yeah, that. And his life.

I thought the life thing was sort of implied. :) I just meant that he is wealthy, and could easily lead a comfortable life without taking such a risk. I am sure that someone who is that wealthy goes through additional fears on top of "I could die". If you are grinding through a daily job, the fear of death may not be as great as if you have a 10,000 sq/ft house and a few ferraris. :)

Re:Ubuntu target is...?

[MrDomino]

I think it's very telling that the parent was modded "Funny"...

Good point

[gr8_phk]

I'm running FC3 and I wonder... After installing software from the net, or updating packages, how would you restore a machine to that same state if the HD failed? What if the packages were no longer available? I really like the idea of having everything on physical media. It'd be nice if everything you install or update over the net also gets added to a local "repository" that you can backup to a CD and "reinstall" at will to the same point. Automatically rebuilding from source is the ultimate version of this. Some day, I may want to reload an old disto with a bunch of upgrades onto what will then be "old" hardware. Depending on the net even in 2006 for FC3 seems a stretch. Other distos may vary, but the problem is the same.

Re:Ubuntu target is...?

[killjoe]

Why is Oracle, verison, qwest, IBM or even Micro-soft any better.

Tell me you want a micro-soft and I am tempted to break into giggles and find you an impotent midget (no offense intended towards little people).

Partial response to first question

[crimsun]

I'm part of the Ubuntu (Masters of the Universe) MOTU Xfce team, and after 4 consecutive nights of merging, Xfce 4.2.1.1 (based on Xfld) is installable from your friendly neighborhood Ubuntu mirror. Enabling universe, updating, and installing 'xfce4' is all it takes.

Re:Partial response to first question

[advocate_one]

Thanks... I was steeling myself to enabling the Marrilat repositories for installing that one... probably find it's upgraded itself behind my back over the past couple of nights... I've had a hard time keeping up with the flood in the last week...

Re:Ubuntu target is...?

[swv3752]

Well, you don't refer to by the release name just like with anything else. It is just Ubuntu to your boss. The name is no worse than Windows XP. I mean what's up with that? It sounds likesomething out of a Mountain Dew commercial.

Re:Ubuntu target is...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows eXPerience, I think.

Re:Ubuntu target is...? [winhat]

[winhat4]

The eye is the star at the blatantly stupid names?

A bayonet is a wannabie hacker faggots.

You can lead a horse to water, but you are a group of primates closely related to the multi-level security policy of the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the windows world.

Drm-Chips

[nurb432]

When chips refuse to run the *binaries* that were available in the past i am thinking 2 options:

1 - using source, code around the 'problem' ( be it DRM or just technology )
2 - create new hardware ( FPGA, surplus machines, etc ) and port said applications over..

While i agreee IP is just an abstract concept, I think it will become an evil beast in the near future that could stop the legal distribution of a lot of items. The IT world is now sue happy, and its not going to get any better soon.

Internet going down hard due to terrorists? Sure.. thats always possible, but you are right, figuring out how to balance my checkbook would be low on the list of things to do ..

I'm planning for realstic 'legal issue' senerios...

Ubuntu rocks.....

[buff_pilot]

Two weeks ago I found Ubuntu.

I've tried various distros over the years, but none had enough polish for the rest of my family to use.

After installing the distro on a lower end machine (PII 350), I took the plunge and migrated my wife's machine.

She loves the eye-candy in Gnome. All she does is surf, email and use office apps. I upgraded to Open Office 2 and she's happy.

Past attempts at migrating my wife's machine to a distro failed. This one worked great.

My kid's machines are next.....

User support on the Ubuntu forums has been great. Any problems I run into usually can be answered with a search of the forums.

Re:Ubuntu rocks.....

[eobanb]

I found the 'Ubuntu needs corporate-oriented software' question interesting. I'm not in a big business environment, but I still need corporate tools, because I'm at a large university, and there is lots of support for using NFS and AppleTalk and email and Active Directory and dialling in and using IPsec VPN, but only on Windows and Mac OS X. Many people don't realise that so-called corporate tools often apply to educational environments as well. If I could use IPsec out of the box like I could with a certain RPM distro, I'd be a happy happy user.

Re:Ubuntu rocks.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Ugh, why dont you go drink a tall can of STFU. I am so sick of these BS stories "my mom likes Linux" etc., etc., it is so obviously fake. First off you expect us to believe you have a wife. Please....

About the education plan.

[ahfoo]

I went and checked out the Foundation website and tuxLabs. While this is certainly a nice gesture, I'd like to share some of my own ideas about what would really be necessary for FOSS to have a big impact in education. It's not a minor issue. And, as a matter of fact, I believe that education is the last place we're going to see open source succeed. That's not to say that it won't succeed, but that it's not going to happen without some major developments taking place.
I understand Mr. Shuttleworth is focused on South Africa and perhaps just brigning computer labs to schools is still a major accomplishment in South Africa. But in other parts of the world entire curricula even in elementary schools are based around computers. Essentially, computer labs become the classrooms. This isn't some futuristic fantasy land although it might seem that way from a South African perspective; this kind of system already exists today. It's more than just a computer lab to learn typing and a few computer skills, entire curricula are computerized.
One of the things that makes these elaborate electronic classrooms possible is easy-to-use authoring systems so that content specialists AKA teachers are able to develop electronic content. This is precisely why education is the last place you're going to see open source succeed: the development tools in open source are hardly dumbed down. What passes for a RAD system in open source like KDevelop is hardly the kind of thing that you are going to see elementary school teachers putting to use to make a lesson plan and the fact is, those teachers, as opposed to experienced developers, are the people that you want to design the lessons because they have the direct knowledge of what will work for the students. More importantly, if those teachers are empowered to develop the computerized lessons themselves, they'll be able to adapt them in accordance with their experience in the field.
So, if Mr. Shuttleworth really wants to have a serious role in bringing open source to education I would suggest that there are various Courses of Action(sic) that could have far reaching consequences.
One extremely ambitious project would be to fund the creation of a completely new media presentation system for FOSS platforms along the lines of Macromedia Director. Perhaps some existing code from some open source SVG applications like Inkscape could be reused in this effort or even combined with something like Open Office Impress which already allows for transitions between slides. It's not a hell of a start, but it's something.
Ultimately, something along those lines is really essential if you want to put a dent in the entrenched monopoly position in the education market. It's not the kind of stuff that makes young ambitious coders drool with excitement but education is like that. The reality of it is painfully dull and not sexy at all which makes it a last choice for open source coders. Education is filled with ironies. It's all about learning and yet it requires everything to be dumbed down. In order for education to become more exciting, free, effective and open, someone is going to have to do some very unappealing and thankless work.
Anyway, if you're reading this Mr. Shuttleworth, I seriously would recommend you look at the development tools used to produce some of the sophisticated electronic classrooms in America today and, if you have the will, to devote some of your resources towards making something along those lines possible in an open source version.

Re:About the education plan.

[node 3]

And, as a matter of fact, I believe that education is the last place we're going to see open source succeed.

WTF?

Re:About the education plan.

[shis-ka-bob]

Please look at SchoolTool. The Shuttleworth foundation has been funding the development of software for school administration. It has been desgined to be used globally. Every school needs administrators to schedule classes and oversee daily operations. If this tool can make schools less expensive AND give them access to tools that encourage best practices, I say more power to them. This is a signficant project that addresses a rather different educational need than the one you are describing. You may well be describing a valid need, but I a bit irritated at the suggestion that someone addressing something other than your pet project means that he is less than serious in 'bringing open source to education.'

Besides, I have found that sophistication is a first cousin to sophistry. If the software my kids are using at school counts as sophisticated, I would prefer to have them use things with less Flash(TM) and more substance. Give me a classroom with OpenOffice and Python over Macromedia & Microsoft Office any day.

Ports Tree

[nurb432]

In theory, if you use the ports tree in *bsd, this is exactally what happens.

It brings down all the source you need, then compiles it and leaves the orginal source behind.

Problem is what if tomrrow you find out you wanted item X, but its gone due to some cease-and-deist ( or just the orginal guy is gone ).. Thats why I'm thinking a 'complete as possible' local archive.

Re:Ports Tree

[Taladar]

I don't know about BSD but with Gentoo I suppose you could do:

find -name \*ebuild /usr/portage | xargs emerge --fetchonly

and backup /usr/portage/distfiles after it finished. That way you should have all packages needed to install anything currently in the portage tree (except for packages with fetch-restrictions due to license problems or installed from a game CD or something similar).

Thanks Mark

[abelsson]

For setting an example I would like to follow, if I ever have the fortune to have the resources to do so.

Re:Ubuntu target is...?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's an emoticon.

Re:Ubuntu target is...?

[Anonymous Coward]

No - Windows eXperience Point, of course. When you've collected enough Windows XP, you can level up to a real OS.

Re:Hmmm

[ShieldW0lf]

If you want to make money with Open Source, build your low level stuff completely open, gpl'd and all of that...then sell your higher level version with all the bells and whistles, and tech support. Example, video games... you make your graphics engine, physics engine and whatnot all completely open source and public, but you keep your characters, story, levels, music and graphics proprietary...

That doesn't sound like a very good business plan. You go ahead and do that... I'll compete with you and win. My business plan? Download your game engine and sink the money I saved on building my own into characters, story, levels, music and graphics. Then clean house in the marketplace because my game shits all over yours.

Not dissing open source, mind you. But if you're going to try to sell the FOSS way to people, you're going to have to come up with an idea that doesn't have a hole in it large enough for a bear to spend the winter in.

Oy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I love Africa much as I think an American loves America

So, not that much these days?

Re:Ubuntu target is...?

[Taladar]

At least I won't find glassmakers when I search for Ubuntu in google.

Ubuntu supports already NTFS resizing

[irgu]

From the extensive NTFS Resize FAQ page:

Feb 24, 2005: Ubuntu 5.04, codenamed "Hoary Hedgehog", is the newest distribution that added support for non-destructive NTFS resizing during installation by the use Partman and ntfsresize. Here is how you can do it when the [Partitioning disks] screen appears:

1. Choose the "Manually edit partition table" option.
2. Choose the NTFS partition you want to resize.
3. Choose the "Size:" line.
4. Choose if you are asked about "Write changes to disk and resize the partition?".
5. Enter the new size.
6. Please wait patiently until the resize process frees the needed space for Ubuntu installation.

Re:Ubuntu target is...?

[0racle]

eXPeriance. XP, GNOME and Ubantu are all terible if you must have descriptive names, but then again, people don't have decriptive names either, jsut something to set them apart from others, and that seems to have worked out.

Re:Hmmm

[aldoman]

I'd love to agree with you, but sadly graphics and physics engines are huge money-makers.

The Doom3 engine over its lifetime will sell for many times more than the Doom3 game itself sold for. I'd guess Valve wants to try and do this also with Source.

Not to mention both of these games I belive use the Havok physics engine which is done by a completely different company - I think all Havok does _is_ physics engines. Suggesting they GPL their only money maker is not going to work sadly.

I think Open Source's best place is going to be the building blocks for the apps that run on top of them. For example, a web application which you deploy via Firefox running on Linux. Or a database app written on top of pgSQL or mySQL. This is going to be a two way process - the people developing the 'front ends' to these blocks are going to be improving the back-end - it's in their interest.

Re:Hmmm

[ZephyrXero]

Well, if you are using these engines for your games, it's going to be in your best interest to contribute back to them. As more developers use these tools, more can contribute back and everybody benefits... it's a little idealistic, but fairly realistic.

Missed asking the most important question

[Anonymous Coward]

Is he really Gustav Graves? http://www.jamesbondmm.co.uk/bond-villains/toby-st ephens.php

Hmmm-Proprietary just wants to be free.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Example, video games... you make your graphics engine, physics engine and whatnot all completely open source and public, but you keep your characters, story, levels, music and graphics proprietary..."

Hi! I'm Mr Massive P2P Downloader and I just have one thing to say. "Your characters, story, levels, music and graphics", just want to be free. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Might I recommend McDonalds work. I haven't figured out a way to download that...yet.

Re:Hmmm-Proprietary just wants to be free.

[ZephyrXero]

"Hi! I'm Mr Massive P2P Downloader and I just have one thing to say. "Your characters, story, levels, music and graphics", just want to be free. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Might I recommend McDonalds work. I haven't figured out a way to download that...yet."

Hi Mr. Massive P2P Downloader....I could care less if you pirate one of my games, I doubt you would have ever played it all if you hadn't stolen it anyway. So, You make no difference in my profits ;) ...and it looks like I'm not alone.

Re:Hmmm-Proprietary just wants to be free.

[Tigen]

I doubt you would have ever played it all if you hadn't stolen it anyway.

Maybe he wouldn't have... but since he's a gamer he would buy some game, except he doesn't because he plays the ones he downloaded.

Re:Ubuntu software

[Daniel]

If joeyh's comments are anything like right, I'm not surprised. Something about people who do not learn from history comes to mind...

Daniel

slashdot needs an ubuntu image

[Rizzer]

It's misleading to use the Debian image for an Ubuntu story. Ubuntu is not Debian, even though there is a relationship between the two.

You need to use a proper Ubuntu image, for example http://www.ubuntulinux.org/favicon.gif

Re:slashdot needs an ubuntu image

[Rizzer]

Sorry, that should be http://www.ubuntulinux.org/favicon.ico

Re:Hmmm

[ShieldW0lf]

I don't agree. If you're using FOSS to provide services, sure. Contributing to Linux or Apache is in your interest.

But not in this example. In the game business, it's all about differentiating yourself from the next game over on the shelf. Contributing back to the engine may make your game better, but it's also making their game better, so there's no slant towards people giving you their money instead of the other guy. If your goal is to make a good game, sure, contribute back. But if your primary goal is to make a profitable business, spending money that doesn't result in an improvement in your product RELATIVE TO ITS COMPETITION is money wasted. You may as well spend it on corporate art for the boardroom for all the difference it will make in your profitability.

I'm not saying that I think FOSS has no place in the game development, and I'm not saying it won't make better games. All I'm saying is, with the "sell the game that loads into the engine" business model, there is strong financial incentive NOT to expend resources contributing back any more than is absolutely necessary.

The only circumstance I can see where there might be an incentive to contribute back would be if there were other competitors, using a different game engine, that were a greater risk in the market to your business than the competitor that wrote the game engine you're using. In that circumstance, it might be financially justifiable to contribute back until you defeat those other competitors in the marketplace, and then return to the original strategy.

Are you talking to IBM?

[ArtDent]

I wish I hadn't missed the question-gathering story, but I'll post here anyway, in the hopes someone might be able to answer.

Will I ever be able to buy Ubuntu preinstalled on a p5/pSeries machine?

As a Debian user for more than 5 years, I've always wondered why anyone would want to run Red Hat or SUSE on a server, when Debian is so much nicer. It's so much easier to deploy just the components you want, to configure remotely, to keep things up to date...

I can only think that the reasons are the age of stable (bleeding edge is no good for a server, but years-old versions aren't ideal either, and you need recent kernels to keep pace with new hardware) and, more importantly, no obvious commercial choices for distribution and support.

It seems to me that this distribution solves the former problem, and could very solve the latter one, too. Between Canonical and the many organizations assembling in the Ubuntu Marketplace, it seems like someone should be able to offer something more appealing than Red Hat and SUSE.

My impressions have been that IBM is very interested in seeing different sources for Linux, and that having IBM on your side makes a big difference when it comes to selling to "the enterprise."

Has anyone talked to IBM? Are they interested in this software and this model? Or, are two distributions enough for them? Is this just *too* open for them?

Re:Are you talking to IBM?

[cheros]

I'll forward it to some people I know at IBM - good question IMHO.

= Ch =

Re:Hmmm

[ZephyrXero]

Well, I'm sorry but I don't agree with you either. Go look at the new engines coming out these days... the Doom3 engine, Unreal3, etc.... we're about to hit a huge plateau as far as graphics go. The engine you are using will no longer matter, it will be what you do with that engine that matters. Besides, gameplay is always more important than technology.

Re:Ubuntu target is...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu means people here in South Africa. So it would mean people's linux.

Gnome is weird, but all words socially constructed

[fantomas]

People bring their previous references with them : "Gnome" is a word they've probably previously used and have associations for what this means. Hence the marketing drive to pick meaningless, inoffensive, pronounceable names for products. It's big business. Call your product "Nova" in English to sound high tech and Spanish speakers will read this as "doesn't go". I can't imagine trying to persuade the administration team to choose software called "XFCE-buntu" or any other highly referential to insiders, exclusive to outsiders name. A name which is highly self-referential might win you sales from alpha geeks and developers but will likely exclude a wider audience.

Re:Gnome is weird, but all words socially construc

[AEton]

Call your product "Nova" in English to sound high tech and Spanish speakers will read this as "doesn't go"

That's an urban legend that makes me sad to hear.

To think that Spanish speakers couldn't distinguish between "no va" and "nova" is like asserting that Americans can't tell the difference between a "notable" kitchen and one with no table.

Re:Ubuntu target is...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but it's got an "X" in it!

Thanks

[sql_noob]

Thanks for bringing us the best distro for python development. I really mean it.

Kickstart and NIS

[cjwatson]

With regard to "Corporate Usage", yes, Hoary's Kickstart support includes support for installations with NIS authentication.

Re:Ubuntu target is...?

[MiniChaz]

What do you mean XP doesn't stand for anything? I thought everyone knew it was short for eXtra Pain or eXpensive Product depending on context.

Re:Ubuntu target is...?

[Anonymous Coward]

XP denotes XPerience. Just because it sucks doesn't mean they haven't poured tons of money into marketing. They didn't just fight all of Europe to keep from calling the stripped down version "version N" for nothing. Quit hating, start learning.

Re:Ubuntu target is...?

[chochos]

The fact that your post was modded Funny does say a lot...

Re:Hmmm

[QuantumG]

You're both right. If you're making a game you always have the choice: invent or license. You can invent a new engine and rely on the novelty of your gameplay to see your through, or you can license and engine and rely on the quality of your content to see you through. Now there's a third option, use an open source engine instead of licensing an engine. Considering that there's a lot of open source engines that are almost as good as commercial offerings it makes good economical sense to look at open source offerings before settling on licensing. As for whether you would contribute back to the open source engine, well, that's really a case of whether you ever want to make a game again. If you do you'll see that you need to support the open source engine now if you want to use it again in a year's time, otherwise it will fall behind and when you go to make your next game you'll find that you have no choice but to license.

Re:Ubuntu target is...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Duh... XP stands for Xtra Problems