New Ubuntu Foundation Announced

AccUser writes "Mark Shuttleworth and Canonical Ltd, founders of the popular Ubuntu Linux-based operating system, have today announced the creation of The Ubuntu Foundation with an initial funding commitment of US$10m. From the article: 'The Ubuntu Foundation will employ core Ubuntu community members to ensure that Ubuntu will remain fully supported for an extended period of time, and continue to produce new releases of the distribution. As a first step, the Foundation announces that Ubuntu version 6.04, due for release in April 2006, will be supported for three years on the desktop and five years on the server.'"

Comments

Re:It would be nice if they actually sent out CD's

[rylin]

Not sure why yours weren't sent out, but mine definitely were.
I ordered 20 x86 versions and 15 x86_64 versions, and they arrived in a semi-timely manner.

Really impressed with Ubuntu

[jd142]

I just got a really cheap laptop and Mandriva(running on my desktop) didn't like it. Ubuntu just worked. And installing ndiswrapper for the wireless card was a piece of cake.

I've used Ubuntu as a rescue cd at work very reliably.

Can't wait until October for the next release.

Re:Oh crikey, not another one!

[Mad_Rain]

Isn't it time that some of those efforts were combined to get some kind of weight behind Linux as a whole

Mandriva was doing pretty good about your request, merging Mandrake, Connectiva, and Lycoris... It seems to be more aimed at the desktop than the server, although Mandrake has good server products too.

However, after being a Mandrake user for 3 years, I switched to Ubuntu for its easy install and upgrade path, in addition to maintaining more recent software. I hope that Ubuntu abosorbs some Debian distrobutions (Knoppix, knoppmyth, etc.), while maintaining their simplicity.

Re:I see a problem

[forlornhope]

You are wrong wrong wrong. Ubuntu doesn't freeze sid. They work on packages. In fact durring the Hoary dev cycle you could see packages that were in Ubuntu that were no where near in Debian. Ubuntu Main is developed by Ubuntu developers in colaboration with Debian developers. What you are thinking of is the Universe, and even that is becoming less as the Masters of the Universe get up and running.

Ubuntu is a Debian derivative, but they are not mooching off of Debian. Ubuntu is providing value to its users and Debian. If you look at the Debian Gnome 2.10 packages, you see Ubuntu finger prints all over it.

Also Debian is not worsening. Its changing. THe project has become too large for the old, informal ways to work. Debian is evolving and though there are growing pains, its getting better. With the rise of teams and more formalization, Debian is looking healthier and healthier every day. They finally released Sarge, and now it looks as though Etch will be out in a timely manner.

Seriously, Debian isn't sick, its just changing. Ubuntu and Debian also already work very well together. Reference the Gnome 2.10 packages and the upcoming switch of debian to xorg. Both have Ubuntu Developers deeply involved because they are also Debian Developers and as Ubuntu Developers have already gone through it.

Re:Ubuntu review

[Anonymous Coward]

I've already moderated in this topic, so I'll have to log out and post as AC:

Sound: That's a really crappy bug. I've not experienced it myself, but I can quite believe it. I believe that Desktop Linux is gradually converging on ALSA (I know at least that ARTS is dying off) as the "one true sound system", so hopefully this will be less of an issue as time goes by.

Synaptic: Agreed, that's pretty lame. The unfortunate thing is that it would probably be just an evenings work to add a GUI for selecting repostories.

Applications: I use Kubuntu (which uses KDE instead of GNOME), and I've not seen this happen so far - I can think of no packages I've installed that have not shown up on the menus. However, finding the sodding thing is not always so easy - it would be nice to add a special "Recently Installed Apps" sub-menu that contains a temporary list of apps that have recently been installed, or at least some way of indicating where in the menus your most recently installed apps have been placed. Even better would be a text-box in the menu itself that has "find-as-you-type"-style searching that searches for both app names and descriptions.

Actually, I might just go and file a bug report about that right now :)

Firefox: I've not noticed actual "unresponsiveness", but the Linux version of Firefox has always seemed far more sluggish than the Windows, alas.

Menus: Glad to hear it!

Folder Navigation: I'm guessing this is the much-maligned "spatial navigation" that caused a kerfuffle a while back. Thankfully, KDE uses the Konqueror file manager which I find to be very capable indeed. I actually miss some of its features while I'm at my Windows machine at work. :(

Re:How Did These Guys Get $10M?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mark Shuttleworth, patron of the project, is a multi (multi-multi!) billionaire, who has been in space. He has stated that he would like for Ubuntu to be able to support itself, but if it doesn't, he doesn't mind at all as he mainly considers Ubuntu to be a way of giving back to the community.

Re:Huh? Terminology please

[poopdeville]

Red Hat and Debian came up with their own package management systems. The issue is that Linux software is designed to be modular -- for instance, programmers take advantage of libraries so that they don't have to replicate code. But this creates a dependency. You need to have the library installed before you can use software that depends on it. Package management systems figure out what a software package depends on and installs that automatically.

The apt suite is Debian's package management system. Actually, I'm not sure if Red Hat came up with RPM or not. RPM.org isn't immediately clear on that point. But Red Hat is the distribution most strongly associated with RPM. I wish I could offer a comparison, but I couldn't offer a fair one. I tried Red Hat a few years ago and fell into "dependency hell," which is when a package manager can't figure out what needs to be installed. But this was several years ago. From what I gather, RPM is much better now. I've had no reason to switch from Debian though, so I haven't tried it since. Still, apt is nice. :-)

Strictly speaking, "ricer" is a racist term for asian youths who extensively modify their cars. The term has been picked up other uses to mean people who obsessively customize to gain minimal performance benefits. Gentoo is a source based distribution (for the most part) -- as such, the user must compile the software he plans on using. Gentoo was designed to facilitate easy optimization for your hardware/needs during the compile phase. This tends to cause much obsessiveness among its users.

I don't know what your goals are for Linux, but for desktop use, it would be hard to go wrong with Ubuntu. Debian is great for just about everything, but ideally you'd have some more experience (or enough patience to RTFM enough to ask smart questions). There are obviously other great distributions. Once you figure out what your needs are, check out http://www.distrowatch.com/ to help you pick a distribution.