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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.'"
I am very impressed by Ubuntu ease of use, and even more, by their commitment. When you have such an active community and big money behind such a project, it has a very good chance to succeed. It is amazing how much the folks at Ubuntu pay attention to minor usability issues.
If Linux ever becomes mainstream, it will be because of distributions like Ubuntu.
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.
Isn't it time that some of those efforts were combined to get some kind of weight behind Linux as a whole, or are companies like IBM and Novell already moving into their respective trenches when linux on the {Desk, lap, floor}top takes off? While i can understand these companies having their own distro as has been traditionally the case, but do we REALLY need another non-profit foundation that thinks it can topple the 800 pound Red Gorilla on it's own while trying to reinvent the wheel and juggling a mix of community support and paid support? I'm not trying to be an anti-linux jerk, i'm just wondering what Ubuntu has to offer that isn't in another distro already.
Will wank off Linus Torvalds for fame.
IMO Ubuntu is the distro most likely to break out into the main stream. I recently switched from Gentoo and can personally attest to the simplicity and ease of use of Ubuntu. The typical non-nerd doesn't want a command line; doesn't want to compile a custom kernel; doesn't know what "compiling" means. Ubuntu is perfect for the mainstream, and a guarantee that the project will continue is great news.
Long live Ubuntu! (And Kubuntu too)
I'm very happy that Ubuntu has come out of the gate, and done everything right. Since I've been using linux (1998) I've never seen any company so behind Linux as Cannonical have been, and I have a good feeling about this. Funny thing is, yesterday I just recieved my free Ubuntu cds; I 'ordered' 15 x86 versions, and 6 powerpc versions. I'm giving them to friends to try the 'live' option, and dropping them off at coffee cafe's, music stores and colleges. It's a good time to be using free software, and I think it can only HELP the world in coming together.
bad_outlook
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Is this vague enough for you?
I received all 30 of the 5.04 CD's I ordered within a month
$10m will make sound work out of the box :p
I am a bit confused because I see some people here give high praise for Ubuntu over Debian, things like how Debian is way too slow to release while Ubuntu is up to date, while others have pointed out that Ubuntu has the advantage where they can cherry pick the best things out of the x86 code that have gone through the rigorous testing in Debian.
From a support standpoint, when a security flaw is found, does Ubuntu fix it themselves (and thus make it available for Debian), or do they have to wait for the Debian packages to be fixed?
3 Years of desktop support and 5 years of server? The fact that Ubuntu is looking at long-term development for their OS instead of the usual 6-month fire-and-forget releases of many other Linux Distros subscribe to is an encouraging sign that Linux is coming of age.
Longer lifespans for Linux provides a level of security that will allow many users wary of switching over from Windows to start looking at a Linux distro as a serious replacement for their current OS. Just think: there IS an alternative to warning users that they have to buy a new OS for new features and security updates.
I'm only worried that theyll spend all $10m on pretzels and beer.
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Amadaeus
The last bastion of Mathie-ism
Mine took a couple months to arrive. I finally got them last week from somewhere in the Netherlands. I've been handing them out and people seen happier to get an actual pressed cd set rather than CD-Rs.
someone at my office ordered 10 of them about 3 months ago, and they did take a while to get here, but they showed up last week. Obviously, YMMV, but don't give up quite yet - they still may show up.
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.
This type of (financial) commitment to linux will do great things to silence (corporate) critics of FLOSS who say that there is no "structure and support" for linux. That's alot of money, and a solid commitment behind Ubuntu now. I'm glad that there are linux distros out there that are putting such an emphasis on having a product that is long-term, stable, and that will be patched/supported for a long time.
From my experience with Ubuntu (installed it with a friend on a brand-new powerbook), it is easy to use and works well. I really hope that the momentum Ubuntu is generating will continue... it is quickly becoming the best option for converting new users over to linux.
Ok, so now we have Ubuntu, Gentoo, Suse, Red hat, Mandriva, colinux, Yellow dog, Caldera
If they merged we could have UbunTuseYellowCoDrivaDeraDogHat.
If nothing else the domains should be readily available.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Ubuntu is limited by Debian's progress.
They freeze a version of Sid. Then make it really stable, then release it. More Ubuntu developers != more Debian progress.
Ubuntu is built of Debian and therefore if Debian continues to worsen it will be a bad thing for Ubuntu. This is why it is one reason all those thousand of Debian based distros are bad, too man developers doing the same thing - polishing a frozen Debian release for their own distro.
Hopefully, Ubuntu and Debian can become closer linked and Ubuntu fund Debian developers.
Why don't they just put the money into Debian? I guess I don't understand their motivation. Are they trying to become the next RedHat? Fair enough if they are I suppose, but the Debian/Ubuntu divide is a confusing one. I ended up installing Ubuntu just because the CD was free, and I didn't have to buy 20-something CDs.
First, let me say I really like ubuntu(it's edged out gentoo as my perfered linux distro) and have nothing but respect for its developers.
/etc/modules.
But with that out of the way, I really think there's room for improvement in the bug-squashing/support department.
For example, I reported a bug about three months ago that made it impossible to enable DMA support on devices connected to my ATA controller(i knew it wasn't a hardware problem, or bios misconfiguration since i had a gentoo install on another partition where everything worked fine).
Several users promptly confirmed the issue, and a nice person linked to a thread on the forums where the issue was debated. The issue wasn't too complicated, and was bacially a hotplug bug that was fixed by blacklisting the ata controllers driver module and then adding it to
The "problem" is, that it seems this bug is relevant for most i875 based motherboards(when the distro is installed on a sata disk, its then impossible to enable dma on the ATA devs), and its still not fixed in the repositories. To this day you still need to fix it manually, eventhough the bug is confirmed and very easily fixed.
Thats not very impressive if you ask me.
It should be: http://www.canonical.com/
I've been playing with Ubuntu lately, and I like it. There are some problems though:
Sound. I have to kill -9 the ESD process to get some applications to work. A lot of applications had to be tweaked individually after install.
Synaptic. Synaptic does its job, I can say that. But the user interface leaves a lot to be desired. I upgraded to Hoary yesterday. Why did that have to involve editing sources.list by hand?
Applications. Why the hell do newly installed applications need to be added to the menus manually? This is Ubuntu's biggest flaw. When you install a new program, you'd better know how to invoke it from the command line -- and good luck finding that out from Synaptic's description, which disappears after install anyway.
Firefox. Ubuntu's web browser of choice, Firefox, is unresponsive after opening new tabs. Firefox is much nicer in Windows. And IE for Windows is far more responsive than either.
Menus. I like the start menu organization. The "Places" menu is great. I was beginning to think that Linux was congenitally incapable of setting up the most important bit of UI on the system. The menu is even better in Hoary.
Folder Navigation. I don't like the fact that there is no back or up arrow when exploring file folders. This is massively stupid UI design.
All in all, it's a nice system. It's a million years behind Windows in usability; there is clunkiness present everywhere. But there are lots of free applications. As usual with Linux, it is so impossible to install or change anything without expert knowledge that you can safely recommend the system to your grandmother without the slightest fear that she will be able to mess anything up.
I heard from someone on the Ubuntu forums that the reason for delays is that they have had over 1 million orders for CDs.
It sounds like perhaps your order got lost in the mail or something. Why don't you email info@shipit.ubuntu.com and ask to be resend CDs. We are shipping thousands of orders a week and the vast majority are arriving without problem.
I would have though they could do better than one cent.
Oh... 10M$!!! Well then.
My biggest critique of Ubuntu is that it seems to almost handicap anyone who wants to be a software developer.
While yes, we can grep through apt-cache and try to find all of the development packages we need, why can't they just provide a pseudo-package "ubuntu-devel" that has everything (gcc, make and friends, gtk2 dev libraries and docs, etc) wrapped up into a neat little package? This is one of the things I loved about UserLinux that hasn't quite made it into Ubuntu yet.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
I still don't understand why the Ubuntu project isn't just the upgrade to the Debian project.
Debian's biggest problem, by far, is how long it takes to relase a new version (years). That's a packaging problem, because the new version is just a package of the packages already tested/debugged by the time the distro package is ready. Which means the bottleneck is testing the packages. Debugging is what consumes time, but testing and repackaging is what holds up the process.
Ubuntu now has the most agressive developers and distro team. And now it has $10M to work with. That goes a long way towards project management, getting Ubuntu releases every 6 months (their promise), rather than Debian's 3 years. All on top of Debian's base work. Many of Ubuntu's founders came from Debian core team members; more will likely join the better-funded project with the sparkling new brand name. I expect Ubuntu's pitch to their funders went quite along these lines.
The funders probably see a chance to take over as Debian's successor. They can get Debian's developers and userbase - that's practically all there is to Debian. Of course they won't get all users, because the Debian brand has loyalty, unless Debian terminates. And some users will leave a crippled Debian for a distro other than Ubuntu.
So unless Ubuntu can generate more users than Debian has, their move will result in a Debian2 smaller than Debian1. Quicker releases and a new start give them a chance. But that will really just let them stay the course.
Ubuntu needs a project that really takes off in their platform, the way APT did with Debian. I suggest an autoapt (easier)
or closely hyperlinked documentation (harder, but consolidates value much better). The autoapt, installed during the OS install, would subscribe users to patches, which would send email with recommendations, a changelog and hyperlinks to the source and installer. Making upgrades a snap, and reducing the TCO of the distro. As well as making that sysadmin task so easy that any user can do it, even if they aren't even expert enough to install the OS. Which will expand manifold the market of users skilled enough to use it, while making it more valuable to them. And to package developers whose SW will be "marketed" better. And to everyone using the platform, as security patches are more up-to-date in the field.
If Ubuntu replaces Debian, I want it to be better than Debian.
It's been a long while since Deb and Ian were an item. I wonder how long Debian itself can hold it together.
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make install -not war
This is a sincere question. Please don't mod me to flame bait. I have been a gentoo user for quite sometime now and am not sure what the difference between ubuntu and debian are. Is there much? Why is ubuntu so hyped?
Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
I like Ubuntu (the name, and yes, the distribution). But about the name, they're from Africa, and it sounds African and you can basically sound it out without screwing up. But SUSE is soo-say? right? Or Suzy? And Linux is Lynn-uks? And is the G in GNU silent? I forget. Is it SQL 'sequel' or S.Q.L.? And if it's the latter, why not make a 2 syllable word out of it instead of a 3 syllable acronym?
I've seen several complaints about the name 'Ubuntu' here. If you haven't visited ubuntu.com, then you should know that the name means "humanity to others" and "I am what I am because of who we all are". Semantically, this has a lot more to do with what Linux is than coloured hats or dogs.
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.
My family's experience has been good--they've recieved their CDs rather quickly. You might want to encourage your local library to get a Freedom Toaster (http://www.freedomtoaster.org/ ). My mother-in-law was thrilled to see her small-town, South African library get one recently (http://charlvn.blogspot.com/2005_03_01_charlvn_ar chive.html ).
It's a great help for getting installation CDs since few people there have high-speed internet yet.
This news is of great interest to me. Though im clearly sure that Shuttleworth will continue to fund the project, it having its own foundation seems proper. Of course Redhat is doing the same similar fashion with Fedora, and perhaps that will help its ailing problems.
"It's important for us to distinguish the philanthropic and non-commercial work that is at the heart of the Ubuntu project, from the commercial support and certification programs that are the focus of Canonical Ltd." -- Shuttleworth speaks volumes with this statement. Its clear to his intent for the project to stay stable and current.
Im reading and I see a lot of bad talk about ubuntu in here. Disgruntled Debian users that dont like the product because it upstages their own distrubtion , while still using debian as its base? perhaps. Other users that think that it sucks because its not what they are used to or that what they use is better? Sounds like Distro-Wars to me. Gentoo is better than Redhat, Kanotix is better than Knoppix. MiniSlack is better than Vector. Vidalinux is for users that want to use Gentoo but are too chicken to try to install it. If we stopped all this constant infighting with each other and actually tried to support each other, I think taking out the monster that is Microsoft would actually be easier.
Only through standardization, documentation, and some loose sense of unity coupled with the Freedom and choice of FOSS can this end be met.
Ubuntu is doing a damn good job. I have 4 Ubuntu boxes on my 15+ machine network, and the better that ubuntu gets, the more machines get converted. Ive introduced this product to over 50 people, 30 or so of which are now standard to power users. I consider that to be a clear sign of the Dist's ability to capture an audience. Would you say so?
"God of Rock, thank you for this chance to kick ass. "
Daniel Robbins develops Gentoo, project never sees profit, helps establish non-profit foundation to oversee distro, gets hired by Microsoft.
... OH MY GOD!
Mark Shuttleworth develops Ubuntu, project never sees profit, helps establish non-profit foundation to oversee distro,
p.s. Good thing for us Shuttleworth appears somewhat solvent.
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.
After all, I am strangely colored.
Great! I can't wait to "employ" the "core" of certain Ubuntu community members!
I have done my own mini-review of KUbuntu, also an analysis of why I think Ubuntu will succeed where commercial distros have failed.
43 - For those who require slightly more than the answer to life, the universe and everything.
I've heard nothing but good things about 'Ubuntu'... But for some reason I can't bring myself to try it out because of the funny name.
I realise you're saying this tongue in cheek, but Ubuntu is an extremely fitting name. The concept of Ubuntu embodies exactly what the FOSS movement is/should be about.
Being South African myself I'm also very proud that someone like Mark Shuttleworth is putting us on the FOSS map.
Thanks Mark!
siener's youtube channel
Disclaimer: I know a pretty good bit about the project seeing as how I'm a moderator (and one of the largest posters) on the forum.
For me personally Ubuntu just does a lot of the little things correctly. Its based off of Debian, so it has access to the what might be the biggest package repo in the land (I don't know about Gentoo , but Ubuntu has 15000+ packages in all of its repos together), but the developers only support a small part of that so unlike Debian there are timely releases. Like Fedora and Dropline, Ubuntu has a great Gnome desktop (I'll admit that Kubuntu isn't as polished) that is very useful from the start.
It has a great community (can't compare it with Gentoo, its a different crowd) that is more than willing to help. Our how to section is excellent.
It supports important things like Mono and Python, and helps Debian catch up to the modern era (by adding things like Xorg).
Finally, Ubuntu is easy to use out of the box (for most nerds) but can be VERY configurable (though probably not as much as Gentoo) and is a happy medium between a Xandros and a Slackware.
Thanks for you time.
Open Source Sushi
I'll just lay some points down once and for all, and I don't care what anybody says, these are the facts as I observe them with my own eyes and the common-sense that logically concludes from those observations:
(a) More Linux = Big Win for everybody! I don't care what it is, how it works, how narrow it's market is, who funds it, who writes it, what they believe, or whether they make money. More Free/Open software enriches us all.
(b) Bill Gates must surely be laughing his fat moneycat ass off watching all the Linux tribes bicker and flame each other. Just try to keep this in mind, when Linux fights Linux, Bill Gates wins.
(c) Every distribution I've tried that was derived from/based on Debian worked for me. I've never heard the complaints about Debian-based distros that I've heard (and experienced) with Debian itself. It is indeed in Debian's best interest to take a backseat and continue maintaining the base packages, but leave assembling them into released operating systems up to other distros.
(d) If the above statement makes your blood pressure pop your eyeballs out of your head and steam shoot out your ears, the person you are mad at is the Debian founder as I read in his own personal blog. And you have no right to be mad about that, it's his distro and he speaks much good sense about it and I am agreeing with him and emphasizing his point. If Debian is that precious to you, then just download it's packages and make your own system, because that's all anybody else has ever done, anyway! Isn't that the selling point, you can customize it?
(e) Linux wouldn't be Linux if everybody doing something with Linux didn't have the right to do it. If you're mad at all the distros, there's nothing to stop you from downloading the tarballs and building it yourself. You can even call your arrangement the One True Linux, and say everybody else is a hypocrite and a poser and a lamer. I can download the exact same tarballs and say the same thing about my arrangement and about everybody else. The point being: The source and kernel are GNU/Linux. United! Completely! Steady as a rock! Everything else is what we make out of it, because Linux is and will always be a ball of clay. You can use that clay to build an idol to worship, or a toilet bowl, but you also can't stop anybody else from doing the same. Don't be surprised if somebody pisses on your idol or worships your toilet bowl.
(f) This has been a Public Service Announcement. Flames will be printed out and shredded into hamster litter, because /dev/null is mailing me bounce messages.
we know when you say wife you mean pet turtle.
Give me some credit, it's a pet robot turtle.
With fricken laser beams shooting out of its leg holes.