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Shuttleworth on Ubuntu's Direction and Intent

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the reasons-for-the-season-of-brown dept.

cj2003 writes "Mark Shuttleworth has released a FAQ about Ubuntu's Direction and Intent. It comments on the discussions of funding, of being a Debian-fork or not, of the strange names, and many other 'hot topics' relating to Ubuntu. In his own words: 'This document exists to give the community some insight into my thinking, and to a certain extent that of the Community Council, Technical Board and other governance structures - on some of the issues and decisions that have been controversial.'"

5 of 242 comments (clear)

  1. Insightful indeed... by menorikey · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Personally I think Ubuntu is great, probably one of the better distros of Linux that I've seen to date. The only problem I've run across is that it doesn't want to play nice with my Inspiron 9300, but that's not specific to Ubuntu; I have the same issue with SUSE as well, so mod me down if you think it's a dig (which it's not).

    (As an aside, Ubuntu "Live" was great for testing out that OS X x86 release that was going around, so in that regards, kudos to Ubuntu for being straight-forward to provide the means to get OSx86 up and running.)

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  2. Jambo Ubuntu by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Ubuntu 5.04 was like Windows 2000, and before that Windows95, and MacOS7.0 before that (and Win3.1 before than, and DOS, and VMS, and CP/M...): each of those was a desktop OS that "finally arrived". Easy enough to install, reliable enough to use all day, integrated enough not to miss the predecessor it supplanted. So when each of those rolled around, I switched. This time, I quarantined my old Windows machine in a closet, just opening an Ubuntu VNC window on it when absolutely necessary. If Ubuntu could just include a Multisync that syncs my Treo 600 (including Calendar and noncorrupted Contacts) to Evolution properly, I wouldn't even have to look in the VNC rearview mirror.

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  3. Propietary Software Industry by knightinshiningarmor · · Score: 4, Interesting

    From the article: I have no interest in taking Ubuntu to join the proprietary software industry, it's a horrible business that is boring and difficult, and dying out rapidly anyway.

    I agree that some tactics of the proprietary software industry are less than desirable, but how many of us would be able to earn a living without them?

    I also agree that many businesses (Google for example) are offering a free interface while keeping their proprietary software on the back end. However, the majority of companies AREN'T going in that direction (Adobe for example). That they're "dying out rapidly" is a ridiculous statement.

    1. Re:Propietary Software Industry by Matt+Perry · · Score: 3, Interesting
      In fact, a majority (approx. 90% by some counts) of all programmers already do earn a living working directly for companies that use the software
      Where did you get the 90% figure? I've seen comments like this before but I've never been able to find details on the studies that arrived at numbers such as this.
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  4. Re:I disagree. by Henry+V+.009 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Remote Desktop is very nice in all sorts of situations. It is far more forgiving on slow connections than X over ssh. The other thing I find myself using is XP Pro's built-in file encryption.