Interview With Mark Shuttleworth

suka writes "The founder of the Ubuntu project argues in a recent interview with derStandard.at that the time for mass consumer sales of Linux on the desktop has not yet come. He goes on to talk about the integration of proprietary drivers, the One Laptop per Child project, and 'great applications' from Microsoft."

Comments

Text only

[choongiri]

http://derstandard.at/Text/?id=2845484

Re:Text only

[mlmll]

Better link yet, with white backgrand *and* the guy's pic :) :http://derstandard.at/druck/?id=2845484

Oh I see how it is

[antireverser]

He sounds pretty cool, for a communist!

Remember kids, when you download GNU/Linux, you're installing with Stallman, who is the new Stalin!

Re:Oh I see how it is

[WaZiX]

In Soviet Ubuntu, apt gets you?

dpkg-reconfigure humor damnit!

Re:Oh I see how it is

[Joe Snipe]

I can't wait to get home and sudo apt-get install you. Best soviet joke ever.

Re:Oh I see how it is

[bluefoxlucid]

Remember Stallman's vision is a world where everything-- libraries, the OS, programs-- every strip of code is GPL. If you try to introduce a new, non-GPL strip of code, it needs to be a license which is "GPL Compatible" so that as soon as it links to any library it becomes GPL (rather, anything that links to it implicitly links to GPL code by proxy, and thus is forced to be GPL or "GPL compatible").

To escape this visionary world, you have to write your own OS, own tools, own compiler, own C library, everything; he's backed down on the C library and compiler (LGPL and GPL with an exception clause) because he knows nobody will use it, but by the same turn if the world was in his vision then nobody would use your new OS stack either. You would have to write a completely new application base; it'd be just like the uptake of Linux, except all your own stuff, i.e. imagine having something like Ubuntu but 100% BSD/MIT licensed and you'll understand how hard this would be to accomplish.

Stallman's vision is effectively that, in the software world, everyone contributes "for the common good." You write code, you release it, you open the source code to everyone and leave it free for use to everyone. Everyone contributes, everyone benefits. This is the core of Marxism; the only thing missing is that the copyrights aren't all turned over to the FSF (if we claim that everything "should" be turned over to the FSF or some central copyright holder to "ensure that it stays open," then this does become Marxism).

Stallman is the next Lenin, not Stallin.

Re:Oh I see how it is

[WaZiX]

And here I thought that the core of Marxism was that a central government ruled all production in a given country...

Truthiness Anyone?

Re:Oh I see how it is

[Gospodin]

And here I thought that the core of Marxism was that a central government ruled all production in a given country...

Common misconception. Actually, if you read Communist Manifesto, you'll see that Marx argues that history leads inevitably from feudalism to capitalism to an anarchical state in which all contribute to the common good, communism. The idea was that economic decisions would be made democratically by the proletariat rather than by the capitalists.

Lenin and Stalin's "contribution" was to rush to communism the transition by means of government force, so what you're referring to is really Leninism.

(The above should not be taken as an apology for Marxism, which is, after all, "The Road to Serfdom." I just wanted to clear up a common misconception.)

Re:Oh I see how it is

[Bogtha]

To escape this visionary world, you have to write your own OS, own tools, own compiler, own C library, everything

Nonsense. Just because an OS is GPLed, it doesn't mean everything running on it has to be. Just because a compiler is GPLed, it doesn't mean that the things you compile with it must be. Just because tools are GPLed, it doesn't mean the things you use them for must be. The GPL is only as viral as copyright normally is.

Re:Oh I see how it is

[maxwell demon]

In Soviet Ubuntu, apt gets you? Well, from the article:
this version of Ubuntu will not include any video footage unless it also includes either the source content or access to the source content.
Well, the source content of a video is whatever was filmed. So better make sure you're not on a video distributed with Ubuntu. :-)

Re:Oh I see how it is

[WaZiX]

Actually, if you read Communist Manifesto,

Have you read Das Kapital? The Communist Manifesto was more of an ideological essay, his real economic work can be found in there.

You know, to put misconceptions aside... You'll learn that the core of Marxism is that capitalistic profit is an abuse of the proletariat, and that it should be banned; but he also realized that profit (and this is where my previous post came from) is the main driving force behind technological development, so in order for a society to move forward, you would need a central government that dispatched resources so that you can both abolish capitalism and maintain a developing society.

Even Marx realized that communism could not work without a central authority.

Re:Oh I see how it is

[lattyware]

I laughed so hard at this I almost cried. Genius.

Re:Oh I see how it is

[RockoTDF]

In soviet union, sudo dpkg reconfigure reconfigures you!!!

Re:Oh I see how it is

[ceroklis]

No, more like El Che.

Re:Oh I see how it is

[bluefoxlucid]

Well, GCC has a GPL exception in it. GCC builds code that contains code from GCC itself, and links to libgccs, and links in some entry point code (there's code for PIC, non-PIC, relocatable, non-relocatable, etc). This code is all under GPL; if you link it to your program (by building your program with GCC) you get a program that must be GPL'd. The GCC exception is a clause that states that you can do this without GPL'ing your code, if and only if the linkage is a result of using GCC and not of your explicit -lgcc_s or whatnot.

If glibc were GPL and not LGPL, every Linux app would have to be GPL or link to the BSD Libc and demand a copy of libc-bsd.so be installed. GNU Readline is like this.

Re:Oh I see how it is

[Anonymous Coward]

Ssh! No giving Stallman ideas!

Re:Oh I see how it is

[ggvaidya]

I think you've got to backwards - which isn't to say you aren't making a very good point; you are, it's just not the point you think it is.

Remember Stallman's vision is a world where everything-- libraries, the OS, programs-- every strip of code is GPL. If you try to introduce a new, non-GPL strip of code, it needs to be a license which is "GPL Compatible" so that as soon as it links to any library it becomes GPL (rather, anything that links to it implicitly links to GPL code by proxy, and thus is forced to be GPL or "GPL compatible").

Right, exactly. As near as I can tell, that is Stallman's vision in a paragraph.

To escape this visionary world, you have to write your own OS, own tools, own compiler, own C library, everything; he's backed down on the C library and compiler (LGPL and GPL with an exception clause) because he knows nobody will use it, but by the same turn if the world was in his vision then nobody would use your new OS stack either. You would have to write a completely new application base; it'd be just like the uptake of Linux, except all your own stuff, i.e. imagine having something like Ubuntu but 100% BSD/MIT licensed and you'll understand how hard this would be to accomplish.

First off, a slight caveat: he's not backed down on the compiler - the compiler's output wouldn't be a "derived" part of the software anyway. He has backed down on the library, exactly as you say.

The rest of your paragraph is (again, IMHO) exactly what the FSF has been trying to achieve for the last twenty years! Way Back When, most of the compilers/operating systems/system utilities/Unix toolkits were all proprietary. The FSF has been recreating all these tools "100% GPL licensed" so that when you buy a new computer, you don't have to rely on XYZ Corp's C compiler, or ZMachine's operating system; you have the option of taking the GNU system and porting it to your new computer, giving you (a) exactly the same experience you'd have on any other GNU system, and (b) the ability to tinker around with the system as much as you like, with (c) a known set of restrictions (the GPL rules). As compared to the proprietary systems, which could have arbitrary restrictions ("you cannot release software written in this program without paying extra for 'distribution'") or - heck - sensible restrictions, too (per seat pricing, vendor lock-in, incompatible formats, etc.)

My point is that while you seem to think that this "visionary world" is a conspiracy of some sort, it is actually exactly the world the FSF has been trying to bring into existence since 1985, and they're pretty open about it. If you disagree, there are always alternatives. The nicest thing about GPL software is that it's so hard to lock you in anywhere.

Stallman's vision is effectively that, in the software world, everyone contributes "for the common good." You write code, you release it, you open the source code to everyone and leave it free for use to everyone. Everyone contributes, everyone benefits. This is the core of Marxism; the only thing missing is that the copyrights aren't all turned over to the FSF (if we claim that everything "should" be turned over to the FSF or some central copyright holder to "ensure that it stays open," then this does become Marxism).

Yes, yes, he does. And as an aside, the FSF does claim that all GNU software copyrights should be turned over to the project. Not all GPL software, just anything with the "GNU" name on it, really.

Personally, I like having an extremist organisation in my corner. I don't think anybody should be forced into this Brave GNU World, but I like the trend that's going on of people working together to improve common pieces of software, while still making money for their effort and knowledge in doing so. Like any large inhabitant in the ecosystem, the FSF makes a lot of noise

Re:Oh I see how it is

[MidnightBrewer]

That would totally suck. I'd have to go to somebody's house every time they demanded to see the source? And I have to do it for free? No, thanks. ;)

I think the idea is just plain silly. "...this version of Ubuntu will not include any video footage unless it also includes either the source content or access to the source content." Sounds like a weird sort of marketing spin to me, to please the "everything must be free" people. As an independent film maker, if I included video content on such a distribution, I'm also supposed to give you the raw, uncut, digitized footage, inclusive of bad takes, deletions, etc? That's not just stupid, it's impractical.

Video is not the same as software, no matter how you try to objectify it. Not to mention, most video is edited in proprietary applications that don't run on Linux. If you want my original project files, good luck with that; it's going to take a different OS and cost you several thousand dollars for the software to be able to actually open them.

Re:Oh I see how it is

[The_Wilschon]

So, to put it shortly, the Communist Manifesto is inconsistent with Das Kapital in that one lauds the death of the state and the other calls for a strong state.

Re:Oh I see how it is

[Anonymous Coward]

We can call him Stalin when he kills millions of Windows machines out there with GNU/Linux

"Yes"

[Anonymous Coward]

derStandard.at: So are we going to get pre-installed Ubuntu on Dell computers?
Mark Shuttleworth: Well - time will tell.
derStandard.at: Are there active talks on that?
Mark Shuttleworth: I would not comment on any conversations underway.

What a long winded way Mark has of saying "We're talking with Dell right now."

Re:"Yes"

[MadJo]

What a long winded way Mark has of saying "We're talking with Dell right now."

Those types of conversations are very sensitive, he was probably advised not to say anything like that. (this way you could induce that they are talking with Dell, but he doesn't actually say it.
So that when eventually there is no deal, he can't be held responsible for any false hopes. After all, he didn't say that they were having talks with Dell, it was only in your mind.

Re:"Yes"

[Anonymous Coward]

He seems to have a longwinded and highly non-technical way of saying just about everyone, to be honest i'm not sure that an interview with him holds much value, there must surely be people inside the Ubuntu community who actually make things happen, rather than just bankrolling them, who could give a far more valuable interview. Having read this whole article i've learned nothing, other than the fact that canonical isn't to blame for the lack of a 3D desktop in Ubuntu, it's Novell's fault of course.

Re:"Yes"

[rolfwind]

Bankrolling them IS making things happen.

Re:"Yes"

[Ixan]

Perhaps he's an Ent?

Bleah

[drinkypoo]

He goes on to talk about the integration of proprietary drivers, the One Laptop per Child project, and 'great applications' from Microsoft."

All he says about Microsoft is that they make some "great applications". I can only assume he's talking about Office, or Visio or something.

All he says about OLPC is that he's afraid they'll be criticized for not getting the machine down to $100 yet, and that he'd be happy to help any governments run Ubuntu on the thing if that's what they want.

And all he says about integration of proprietary drivers is that they're willing to do it to make software work. So there's no news on ANY of those fronts.

Much more interesting is what he says about the new truly Free distro that's coming out. It will contain no media, no documentation, and no firmware for which source is not provided. There won't be a video clip unless you can get the materials used to make it. No PDFs without the source documents needed to produce them. Now THAT is a wonderful thing to contemplate.

Re:Bleah

[TheRealMindChild]

All he says about Microsoft is that they make some "great applications". I can only assume he's talking about Office, or Visio or something.

More like Visual Studio

Re:Bleah

[drinkypoo]

More like Visual Studio

Visual Studio is a gigantic pile of crap known to blow up on a regular basis. And its companion, visual sourcesafe, is widely considered to be absolutely the worst SCMS around.

If he's talking about Visual Studio, then I don't find him to be very credible any more...

Inline autocompletion of functions and methods is neato, but it's not worth the other kinds of pain provided (nor is Visual Studio the only place to get it.)

Re:Bleah

[rikkus-x]

Visual SourceSafe isn't what Microsoft want you to use anymore. They now sell Team Foundation Server, which is not related to VSS.

For me, Subversion with VisualSVN (for VS.NET integration) and TortoiseSVN (for Explorer integration) is just about nirvana.

Re:Bleah

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using TFS for about half a year and although on paper it seems interesting, practical problems for my use were very annoying. To name just two - unability to work in offline mode (unless you check-out whole project and don't add new files...) that often results in new files not added to Source Control (and breaking project) and broken "Get Latest Version" (ok, maybe that's VS bug) that sometimes doesn't get latest version. These are not necessarily the worst, but at overall, it seems useless for real use.

Re:Bleah

[Cyberax]

Have you tried VisualAssist for Visual Studio?

It's THE best autocompletion/intellisense engine for C++. Nothing even comes close.

Re:Bleah

[mackyrae]

Yuck. If you want an IDE that draws the outlines of methods and you fill them in, use Eclipse. We don't need .NET or VB. They're rather sucky.

Re:Bleah

[Anonymous Coward]

Inline autocompletion of functions and methods is neato, but it's not worth the other kinds of pain provided (nor is Visual Studio the only place to get it.)

In fact, vim can do that.

Not to be rude, but...

[Don Qigong]

That's a mouthful considering it's coming from someone who, if we want to be brutal, did little but repackage someone else's hard work. Okay. Let's not be brutal. Maybe he's right that Linux isn't ready for widespread desktop deployment but, if that's true, it's a reflection on the consumer population just as much as its a reflection on the actual readiness of Linux. I feel Linux to be perfectly ready. It is the consumers who have lots of catching up to do. One has to wonder if there's a financial motivation behind this--ie. where does Shuttleworth make his money and would his commercial profits and revenues be at all threatened by widespread deployment of desktop Linux solutions? From the point of view of the established rulers the underdog will never be ready for prime time, will always need just a little more work, will never be able to compete competently with the current status quo. Keeping the new arrival running in circles is very profitable--especially if they run faster, futher, better, and with less effort than any other competitor. Some artists feel that their work is never perfect and to some extent that's true. At some point, though, they have to let go and decide that a work of art is finished. It's ready to ship. Business leaders, on the other hand, turn a profit by promoting the next product. They also turn a profit by continually frustrating the product in development because it encourages the developers to work harder. Nothing is better for share prices than a good display of "work harder!" effort. Is Linux truly not ready for the desktop or are they just milking it for everything it's worth?

Re:Not to be rude, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

"That's a mouthful considering it's coming from someone who, if we want to be brutal, did little but repackage someone else's hard work. "

To quote Yoda:

"And that is why you fail"

To think that in 2007 we are still seeing people with that mindset when it comes to open source software is really shameful. It is long past the time for the open source crowd to learn that usually the tech is the easy part of product development. The long and grueling hours is actually making it work and be useful for a wide variety of users. Anyone who has ever actually developed and shipped a real world commercial application knows this very well. Too many open source people have never learned this basic truth of software development.

Re:Not to be rude, but...

[NiceGeek]

Shuttlesworth is independently wealthy.

Re:Not to be rude, but...

[Don Qigong]

Which means that his business interests are a hobby. People tend to not like losing at their own hobbies. It makes even more sense that his opinion, if only subconsciously, is skewed by a desire to guard his investment interests.

I didn't mean to bag on the guy personally or downplay the enormous contribution Ubuntu has made. My response was a little bit knee-jerk because I'm upset that, year after year, all we hear is "not yet ready, not yet ready, not yet ready". Well, goshdarnit, just how ready does it have to be before the industry talking heads allow us the privelege of,"CHARGE!!!"

Re:Not to be rude, but...

[unPlugged-2.0]

Well I think that is a little bit unfair.

History shows that it is not the product or the core engine itself that causes something to have an effect but the way it is sold, the way it is packaged and the way it is marketed.

Let's face it, yes Ubuntu may have borrowed a lot but it also has pioneered a lot and I am not speaking strictly technically - though they have done that as well just look at their source control tool developed for Ubuntu.

What mark has done very well is build up a community and give a sense of purpose and advancement something that was seriously lacking in the Debian base from which it was born.

Again Mark is a businessman and he realizes that Technology without implementation is nothing. This interview itself does not really speak of much new things but it would be an injustice to say that Mark and the Ubuntu project did not pioneer or do anything of significance.

Re:Not to be rude, but...

[xBOISEx]

First of all, while he may be repackaging a lot of what Debian has done, he was a Debian developer through the 90s. (source) Second, he made his money in internet security certificates, so I highly doubt wide-spread desktop linux would hurt him financially. And third, you have to realize that there are tons of people out there who find that Windows works just fine for them, and you don't fix something unless its broke. This is why Dell has been hesitating, they don't feel that the investment is worth the risk.

Re:Not to be rude, but...

[ZachPruckowski]

Insightful? Shuttleworth is independently wealthy from a previous internet business, and his mission from day one has been a mass Linux desktop. Don't believe me? Look at Bug #1 in Ubuntu "Microsoft has a majority market share". Ubuntu isn't market-driven. Shuttleworth has said that he'll support the distribution himself out-of-pocket if need be.

I don't think those concerns are valid, nor do they reflect much knowledge of the situation.

Re:Not to be rude, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a mouthful considering it's coming from someone who, if we want to be brutal, did little but repackage someone else's hard work.

Well, system integration is where is the added value. Factoring out the work of millions of system administrators and users who would have to do the exact some thing. A very boring, but very necessary job. When the number of components grows as N, the work to make them work grows as N^2. That's also why the delay between Debian stable releases is only slightly smaller than the time to release Duke Nukem forever.

Re:Not to be rude, but...

[BuR4N]

Not to be rude, but, here, have a free CR/LF (free as in beer).

Re:Not to be rude, but...

[drinkypoo]

That's a mouthful considering it's coming from someone who, if we want to be brutal, did little but repackage someone else's hard work.

I hope you realize that is the story of every distribution. The amount of work put in is practically nothing compared to all the work that goes on upstream, even if you're talking about someone like RedHat that really contributes an awful lot of code (although they also contribute a lot of awful code - I'm talking virt-manager here right now, although it's hard to tell where virt-manager's fuckups end and libvirt's begin.)

Is Linux truly not ready for the desktop or are they just milking it for everything it's worth?

Shuttleworth is losing money hand over fist on this whole Ubuntu thing, so I don't think you can really apply that argument to Ubuntu.

"Hand over fist" might be an exaggeration, but in the interview he reveals that he is still funding Ubuntu.

The impending release of the all-Free distribution of Ubuntu proves, IMO, that Shuttleworth "gets it". People complained that it wasn't Free, so he's making a Free release. Give 'em what they want.

He also specifically says that a lot of people have a lot of success installing Ubuntu on relatives' computers. So clearly he doesn't think that it's completely unready for the desktop. I think he sees it more as an impossibility in marketing at the moment, and I agree.

Re:Not to be rude, but...

[HomelessInLaJolla]

Is it worth noting that nearly everyone concentrated solely on the first line of OP's comment and, filled with uncontrollable rage and spite that anyone would dare say something like that, completely ignored the assertions which came afterwards?

I thought that _I_ had a knee-jerk response. The other readers have taught me the true meaning of knee-jerk.

Re:Not to be rude, but...

[Eberlin]

I feel compelled to chime in -- I'm an Ubuntu user who had hopped around from Red Hat to Fedora then to Mandrake, finally settling in with Ubuntu starting with Hoary or Breezy, I think. Simplistically, yes, all they do is repackage someone else's work, but as far as I'm concerned, they've put together something better than the other distros I've tried.

The argument about whether Linux is ready for the desktop has been going on for quite a few years now. I'm about as tired as the next Linux Fanboy about hearing that next year will be the year of Linux. Hasn't happened yet. If it did, it would be a gradual shift, not an overnight "whoa!" type of thing.

For me, Linux has been ready even before Ubuntu made things easier. Then again, I didn't mind doing the extra work of running through config files and doing BASH basics. I'm not a Linux/unix expert by any means, but I don't mind a little adventure or two. (Not daring enough to try Gentoo)

What Ubuntu did was make things a LOT simpler. For multimedia stuff, I still turn to an ubuntu guide (last time I tried automatix, I don't think it worked properly...but a while ago). Otherwise, it's synaptic for a few other things and I'm set to go. I try to write down all the extra apps I install so I don't forget next time I have to do a clean install/upgrade.

Now to the whole business side of things -- Ubuntu is one of the free ones. Yes, they offer paid support, but this doesn't seem like the same business model as what MS uses. I'm not really sure what money Canonical will be milking by releasing version after version. The software will always have improvements, and in that sense, won't ever be absolutely "done" -- it isn't like making macaroni and cheese, dude.

Linux (especially Ubuntu) is ready for my desktop. Most other people, on the other hand, won't "switch" without being given a compelling reason to do so. That's unfortunate.

Re:Not to be rude, but...

[Cutterman]

"I feel Linux to be perfectly ready. It is the consumers who have lots of catching up to do."

Yep. Adding a Samba user in the KDE control fails silently - this was known to be broken in 2005 and is still broken - doesn't look like anyone is interested.

Sure, _I_ can add one in an eyeblink at the command line with smbpasswd or pdbedit, no big deal, but there's still careless crap like this all over the various Linux desktops and it's a showstopper for Joe Average-would-be-Linux-user.

I use Linux (and contribute) for pretty much everything now except for a few games but lets have a bit less of that "consumers will have to catch up" BS - it's Linux that has to catch up if it wants to gain real credibility on the desktop.

Re:Not to be rude, but...

[cHALiTO]

Right. Makes me think of Carl Sagan, who was (is?) often criticized for 'not having done any real discoveries or advances in astronomy', he was only a good 'popularizer' of astronomy and science in general, as this was a trivial or nonimportant thing.
Making something popular is sometimes very important, as it draws needed attention to a subject. In Sagan's case, maybe he didn't do a nobel-worthy discovery, but how many great scientists are there now, that were inspired by his work? how many of today's great scientific minds wouldn't have turned that way without his incredible talent for communicating his contagious passion for science and discovery?

I think a similar kind of credit is due to the ubuntu project. Maybe they didn't rewrite the kernel, but they made linux slick and easy to install and accessible to a LOT of people who draw attention (and indirectly resources) to linux. I know in my case, it helped me get a lot of friends interested in linux, who had previously tried it but found it too confusing.

There are many ways to contribute to a project, besides coding.

Re:Not to be rude, but...

[NDPTAL85]

How ready? Probably 5 minutes after Linux users stop acting like you...er I mean like asshats....er I mean ....so "hard to manage."

So as Mr. Shuttleworth inferred "Not yet."

Re:Not to be rude, but...

[Don Qigong]

Could you make another fine display of professional ad hominem for us? Have you thought that the mindless outlashing from people like you is what is really holding Linux back?

Typically, when you bite off more than you can chew, you do play sour grapes and try to make the label "hard to manage" stick. Did you ever think that maybe you're trying to manage someone who, in all reality, should be managing you? That probably never made its way into your ego clouded mind, did it, because, in your world, you're above everyone else.

Re:Not to be rude, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

If I could connect to wireless internet or my printers would work under Linux it would be a start. Those are two things I consider a necessity.

Re:Not to be rude, but...

[Have Brain Will Rent]

"I feel Linux to be perfectly ready. It is the consumers who have lots of catching up to do."

Here is how the free market works. Consumers by the goods that they want not the goods that the manufacturers think they should want. You don't have to like it but you need to recognize it. If Linux proponents do not get this then Linux will fail to capture the desktop. Period. End of story.

Now some things are inherently complex in nature and require a moderate amount of learning to do successfully and sometimes users need to be shown the possibility of a better way of doing things - where better is defined by the user, not the programmer. That does not in any way change the above. Most consumers buy computers to do something other than become deeply knowledgeable about computers. They will pick the solution that maximizes what they can get done while minimizing the amount of effort required to be devoted to activities other than doing what they actually want to do. That is human nature and it is not unreasonable.

People value their time. I've never used a Mac in my life but I know lots of people who do. If over the life of a machine they save 10-20 hours of learning curve by getting a Mac then they have made up the difference in price between that Mac and a Windows or Linux machine.

The attitude expressed by the quote above is why much software fails in the marketplace. It's also a major reason why we now have UI specialists - because too many programmers thought the user should be the one to adapt. Now most programmers no longer get to make those decisions.

What really puzzles me is why people want to write software for other people to use if they don't want to write the kind of software that those people actually want to use.

I haven't used Unix for about a decade. This week I had to do something on a Windows machine that I couldn't do with Windows. I decide to try running Ubuntu off a live dvd. Despite the long time since using Unix I was very quickly able to figure out what I needed to do, which included reconfiguring the package management and installing a package not included in the default configuration. Having done a lot of command line based Unix installs and configurations in the distant past I was very impressed with how easy it was for me to get the job done with Ubuntu. But I can tell you that someone without a Unix background would probably have given up. It's definitely getting there but Mr. Shuttleworth is right - it's not ready for the average desktop user.

Re:Not to be rude, but...

[grcumb]

Insightful? Shuttleworth is independently wealthy from a previous internet business, and his mission from day one has been a mass Linux desktop. Don't believe me? Look at Bug #1 in Ubuntu "Microsoft has a majority market share". Ubuntu isn't market-driven. Shuttleworth has said that he'll support the distribution himself out-of-pocket if need be.

I don't think those concerns are valid, nor do they reflect much knowledge of the situation.

Seconded. I think it's also important to consider just how much Shuttleworth and Canonical have given, not only for Ubuntu but for Debian as well.

To characterise what they've done as 'ripping off someone else's work' does no justice whatsoever to the immense number of hours they've invested in:

• Integrating a compositing window manager that out-blings Aero by a country mile;
• Creating an entirely new system start-up service to replace the aging init.d
• Investing huge amounts of effort in improving the package management GUI to a point where anyone can use it;
• Creating themes that - like them or not - are better organised, cleaner and simpler to use than anything that's come before;
• Providing top-flight technical support services, both free and paid;
• Creating one of the most dynamic and energetic user communities in FOSS today;
• Spending millions preparing an educational version of the OS, and paying to roll it out into African schools;
• And dozens of other things that I will leave as an exercise for the reader.

Rest assured, this is not the work of a rip-off artist. If it is, then I wish someone would 'rip-off' my work early and often! 8^)

Re:Not to be rude, but...

[ajs318]

Hello? 2001 just called. They want their reason for not using Linux back.

Re:Not to be rude, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

When the number of components grows as N, the work to make them work grows as N^2

N!, as any traveling salesman should know :)

Re:Not to be rude, but...

[towsonu2003]

Here is how the free market works. Consumers by the goods that they want not the goods that the manufacturers think they should want.

You obviously don't live in a so-called "free" market. In a "free" market, consumers buy whatever the corporations want them to buy.

Re: Not to be rude, but...

[Dolda2000]

Right, not being able to add a Samba user seems like a real showstopper for Joe Average.

I'd say that, while it is true that Linux may indeed have some catching-up to do, it isn't exactly wrong to say that the consumers will have to catch up, either, only if one thinks of it with a less obvious meaning. The problem for Linux isn't really so much that it isn't up to par for the average user, nor that the average user isn't up to anything but Windows, but rather that the average user isn't ready for a non-homogenous market.

Many people still just don't understand that it could be possible for anyone not to be able to read their Word document, nor that a wallpaper CD they bought from X-mart wouldn't work on their computer just because it depends on a Windows craplet. Microsoft has just saturated the world with Win32 to the point where it's taken for granted, by users and developers alike. What is needed for Linux to succeed as a desktop platform for average users probably isn't anything technical anymore, but rather just for it to succeed enough. Or anything but Windows to succeed enough, be it Mac or BeOS or even Plan9 for that matter. Once the market becomes heterogenous, the mental threshold that blocks anything but Win32 will be gone.

And to be honest, it's not as if the market is becoming less heterogenous, at least. Win32 still leads by far, and it isn't exactly disappearing quickly, but I have only seen statistics showing it to decrease, not anyone showing an increase in Win32 penetration. If just average users begin grokking that there is such a concept as different operating systems, the problem will be solved.

And to be honest, that's all I'm hoping for. I don't really care if someone wants to run Windows on their own computer -- after all, that's their problem (as long as I don't get called over to fix it, and even then it's mostly their problem, since I won't be able to fix it as well as I would an operating system that actually is fixable..). All I want is that people stop assuming that anyone will be able to read their Word documents or malformed, flash-ridden web pages.

Re:Not to be rude, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

though they have done that as well just look at their source control tool developed for Ubuntu
you probably mean the proprietary source control tool developed for Ubuntu.
So basically, you mean it's unfair to have harsh words for someone who is using tremendous amounts of money to market some other projects free softwares, while himself developing proprietary apps that could be used by those who contribute to this free software he uses? And what are the reason? It wouldnt be of his best interest to release them now? Excuse me? Does KDE or GNOME tells him that it wouldnt be practical or interesting to release their code to him?

SuSe had a lot more difficulties with the free software community when it was providing its SuSe installer with a "not enough free" licence. Novell put all those tools and many more under the GPL whenever it could.
Mandriva has a lot more financial difficulties and still, has always provided a Free as in Freedom version of its ditro and all its tools under the GPL.
Red Hat provides the fedora core which is 100% free and doesnt pretend its foundation is an act of pure philanthropy in very clear documents nor pretend its a community work without any commercial goal. Its founding is much clearer too.
Meanwhile, ubuntu's money is lying in a european fiscal paradise to avoid paying taxes in africa? I guess Halliburton is using the ubuntu philosphy without knowing it. "humanity to the others, and the money for me".

THAT is not fair. We should not have dual standard as a community based on ethics. We are asking the IT world to do something that is right and difficult based on moral ground and based on the perception that it is the better for the society as a whole in the long run, meanwhile a large crowd of us is looking in awe at some smooth talker who don't get his acts straight. And why? Because he is rich and a good marketer?
err? So we now have our own bill gates and we should rejoice?
This is morally wrong.

Re:Not to be rude, but...

[Ash-Fox]

Printers were still a issue in 2001? What?

Re:Not to be rude, but...

[Jarn_Firebrand]

You say you write down all the extra apps you install. You may be interested in this, it looks very useful, though I have not used it: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=261366&hi ghlight=backup

I just remembered it when you said you keep a list.

Re:Not to be rude, but...

[Lumpy]

I hope you realize that is the story of every distribution.

really? so what distribution was Yggdrasil and Slackware based on?

Re:Not to be rude, but...

[drinkypoo]

really? so what distribution was Yggdrasil and Slackware based on?

Ygg and Slack both depended on the GNU toolchain, which is the result of literally orders of magnitude more work than packaging a distribution.

I hope that in this moment the student has been enlightened. Or else you're a bozo.

Re:Not to be rude, but...

[towsonu2003]

parent rated as troll? screw you...

now this was a troll ;)

It's full of source!

[Don Qigong]

How many CDs will it take to ship all of that?

Re:It's full of source!

[Qzukk]

How many CDs will it take to ship all of that?

I dunno... probably somewhere around 21.

Re:It's full of source!

[drinkypoo]

How many CDs will it take to ship all of that?

I'd guess at least two. But then, maybe it will just have less content. Also he says that the sources don't need to be on the disc necessarily, but that you will be able to get them.

I would hope that Ubuntu will be going DVD one of these days soon, because it would allow them to unify the various flavors of distribution. Maybe even to put multiple architectures on one disc. It wouldn't eliminate the CD version, because many people need it, but it would be a positive step IMO.

I don't think that the full source code will be on disc, it will be available just like always via Ubuntu repos.

Re:It's full of source!

[Braino420]

I would hope that Ubuntu will be going DVD one of these days soon

It is available on dvd. It doesn't have all the different "flavors" of ubuntu, but those are just an apt-get away (or you can download the dvd for that flavor).

Re:It's full of source!

[evil_Tak]

I would hope that Ubuntu will be going DVD one of these days soon

Yes, that would be great.

Re:It's full of source!

[drinkypoo]

It doesn't even have the various types of install (server, desktop, etc) does it? It looks to me like it's just a way to include even more repo packages that will be outdated when you install them. Not very useful.

Re:It's full of source!

[AusIV]

The impression I got was that they're shipping things for which the source is available, not that they're only shipping source. You'll still download a ready-to-burn ISO, but there won't be anything on it you couldn't easily find the source to.

Re:It's full of source!

[Braino420]

I'll humor you, and spoon feed you more information easily available from google. You have options to go to boot the DVD live, in safe graphics mode, text mode, oem mode, or "install a command line system". Umm, if you want updated packages then I recommend you don't download the DVD! It's more for people who don't have a fast internet connection wherever they are installing.

Re:It's full of source!

[jon_anderson_ca]

I would hope that Ubuntu will be going DVD one of these days soon, because it would allow them to unify the various flavors of distribution.

Well, it's not from Canonical (so I guess you could say that it's not canonical), but:

http://www.thelinuxstore.ca/index.php?main_page=pr oduct_info&products_id=1282

Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu and Edubuntu, all on one DVD.

That photo

[jeevesbond]

Linux is great, I use Ubuntu, but that is one funny photo. It's like he's posing for a catalogue or something. Or maybe: 'Shuttleworth, for men. The new Open fragrance from Mark Shuttleworth'

A review by Richard Stallman said: 'It smells like GNU piss, and did nothing to cover up my body odour!'

/ontopic

His comments on Beryl/Compiz are quite telling. That's a fork that should never have happened. Also interesting are snippets about Canonical customers (from the article):

We have installations of several 100.000 machines in spain, obviously you know that Google uses Ubuntu on all of their developer desktops.

[...]

As an example, Lufthansa has all of there pilots use Ubuntu on their Laptops, cause they are constantly in different hotels using the WIFI-system and they don't want to get spyware and viruses.

[...]

I'm extremely happy with our relationship with Sun. It's been very good for us, it's been the first major server vendor to adopt and embrace Ubuntu. So that's given us entry to customers that we wouldn't have otherwise had access to.

[...]

derStandard.at: Initially the development of Ubuntu was mostly financed by your private funds, is this still the same or is this already changing?

Mark Shuttleworth: Well, it's changing, but it's not completely changed. Ubuntu still does depend on continued funding from me.

[...]

derStandard.at: But are there really big customers that are paying for your support?

Mark Shuttleworth: Yes of course. There are some large organizations who use Ubuntu

We all like to think that Ubuntu costs Shuttleworth a fortune but they're obviously meeting with some success. This is something I've worried about before: what happens when Shuttleworths' money runs out? Seems that we needn't worry for much longer. :)

Re:That photo

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't the photo taken from the cover of his upcoming new album "Mark Shuttleworth: In his own words, over and over, ceaselessly"

Re:That photo

[rolfwind]

We all like to think that Ubuntu costs Shuttleworth a fortune

No, I'd like to think that people who sincerely and significantly contribute to OSS and the community in general meet with success.

Whether that is happening is another story.

Re:That photo

[wall0159]

"what happens when Shuttleworths' money runs out?"

Because it's Free Software - nothing happens if/when money runs out. All the progress has been put back into the community, so anyone can pick up the baton. _That_ is the fantastic thing about Free Software!! :-)

Re:That photo

[The_Wilschon]

Some of what Ubuntu Ubuntu (instead of, say, Debian) is not the software, and is not free or Free. For a quick example: Shipit. Is there any meaningful way in which Shipit could be Free? It is most certainly not free (to Shuttleworth), nor will it be.

"truly Free" not great for average consumer?

[Hemogoblin]

I don't mean to troll but the "truly free distro" as you describe it doesn't sound very wonderful to me. I'm not quite the average consumer, but 90% of the things I use my PC for are non-free by your definition. You won't see any mass-adoption unless the free distro could provide the same or better functionality and be user-friendly. Unfortunately, I don't really see that happening unless current trends change drastically. This is probably why Ubuntu is moving in the opposite direction from "completely free" and is gaining popularity as a result.

To me, "truly free" sounds nice philosophically but not practically.

Re:"truly Free" not great for average consumer?

[drinkypoo]

To me, "truly free" sounds nice philosophically but not practically.

You haven't said anything that is insightful or surprising to anyone with two neurons to rub together. Ubuntu isn't going to drop the normal Ubuntu distribution. They're simply also making a truly free distribution to satisfy those people who demand such a thing. At some point in the future at which the normal distribution does not outshine the Free-as-in-speech distribution, there will be no need for the nonfree. But until that day - and I suspect it will be a painfully long time coming - it's wonderful (IMO) that they are taking both approaches.

Re:"truly Free" not great for average consumer?

[disasm]

yes, but the time to rip things out without adding things in isn't that significant, and if it gets ubuntu's criticizers off of attacking them for not being free, as well as attracts them to the distro, it can only help, and it doesn't hinder the vanilla ubuntu users any. Sam

Re:"truly Free" not great for average consumer?

[LingNoi]

To me, "truly free" sounds nice philosophically but not practically.

I am thinking about what things are non-free on my Ubuntu Distro and it is only one thing, the Nvidia drivers.

The nouveau team is making great progress with that and Mark has already said that they would be switching the drivers the moment something viable comes out.

Now that doesn't mean everyone will have a completely free workable system, but for me personally I can see it happening soon

Re:"truly Free" not great for average consumer?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that your missing alot. Do you have an ipw2200 or broadcom wireless chipset, that firmware isn't free. Do you use any video players, most likely that codec isn't free. Do you use flash on your browser, the flashplayers that actually work (until very recently) aren't free.

I wish that I could say that I ran a purely free OS, but it's just not true. I use win32codecs and the realplayer codecs in mplayer, and I use the ipw2200 wireless firmware. I DONT use flash or any of those other stupid plugins. Admitadly these things are the shim layers for using free software with things designed to be proprietary only, but it's still not free.

Also, they're talking about making sure that there's no DRM built in and that sort of thing. If you use ubuntu then you probably use Debian's xpdf which has DRM turned off, so that's a good thing. Do you use acrobat reader? oh actually, that's an entire binary only piece of softare as well. For a long time gif viewers were iffy since there was a patent on it. I think that's still technically true of mp3's but nobody cares anymore. Hmmmm, that's what I can come up with at the moment, did I miss anything? How about DECSS. I supose that DECSS is free, but debatably illeagal.

How much development does Ubuntu contribute?

[pembo13]

In terms of patches sent upstream, work on the kernel, etc?

My take on desktop Linux

[orclevegam]

Ok, I'm just a developer, but I've used Linux off and on for various things over the years, and I'd like to think I have a pretty good feel for what Linux needs to really take off on the Desktop (and no it's not there yet, but it's getting closer every day). There are essentially three different flavors of "desktop market", and you really need to cover at least two of these three in order to have an impact.

The first market, and the one that Linux is more than capable of supporting as it stands now with little trouble, is that of the enterprise desktop, which is distinguished from the enterprise server by the fact that the likes of the CEO and marketing department would be running these systems, rather than the IT guys. The main problem with this market is one of image. You need to actually convince the CEOs that Linux on their desktop is just as good or better than Microsoft. To a great extent IBM, Novell, and other major corporations are doing a very good job of getting the word out, and I think we're really seeing progress on this front.

The second market, and once again, one that Linux can handle without much problem is that of your typical non-technical home user. The problem with this market is that it needs to be easy. Dead easy. One button, very small words, short sentences easy. For an example of how to handle this market perfectly, see the install process of the latest beta of Ubuntu (7.04). The key to winning over this segment is to first get a distro that is so simple they never have to use the command line to do everything they need on a day to day basis. This means, they need to be able to setup and install new hardware and software, perform updates, and configure everything from GUI without any particular technical knowledge outside of that supplied by said software/hardware. Once you've got the distro nailed, have some technical user install it for them the first time and get them using it, once they use it on a day to day basis, become comfortable with it, and realize it's better than what they had before, they're sold. Distros like Ubuntu are making headway in this market, but still have a little ways to go, I think this is the source of at least part of the comments in TFA.

The third market, which is the hardest one for Linux, and also the most critical right now, is the power user and gamer market. In order to win this market, Linux needs two things, it must support the latest and greatest in graphics cards out of the box (look to intel for some interesting developments in this department), and it must encourage game developers to produce cross-platform games. Now, the second of those two requirements can be mitigated by using things like Cedega to run non-ported games, but in that case graphics cards need to be fully supported in order for the games to play on par with the windows counterparts. To a certain extent this market revolves around hardware support, followed by market demand. Intel and AMD are positioning themselves to be strong players in this arena, in particular the moves by Intel to package Linux drivers with their Windows drivers on new graphics cards, as well as to open source graphics drivers is very encouraging. AMD (ATI) has recently started to release drivers for their cards if not at the same time as the Windows ones, at least in the same time frame, and adopting a common versioning number for all the drivers has also helped in comparing support progress. Once the hardware support is in place, it's just a matter of demonstrating to manufacturers that the user base is sufficient to justify the cost of developing on Linux. One of the best ways to do that would be to get a large enough portion of the casual computer user population switched over to Linux.

If linux can get a large enough portion of two of these markets, or even a relatively small portion of all three, it will have enough momentum to finally interest the likes of Dell, and HP. From that point forward, it's just a matter of free market dynamics.

Re:My take on desktop Linux

[oatworm]

Apple has done a decent job lately without touching the gamer crowd, though it could be argued that this is in part due to some gamers purchasing Apple hardware and running something like Boot Camp. That said, I don't see that being a very significant portion of the gamer market, especially since most gamers prefer to either make or mod their own systems.

If there's one thing that can be learned from Apple, though, it's that, for Linux to succeed, adoption has to be driven by the "early adopters", who then preach the benefits of the new product to the world. For Apple, that's primarily the creative professional crowd, which plays into their upscale, "hip" image. Linux, however, has no prayer right now of attracting that crowd, and that's okay - Linux isn't upscale. Instead, Linux can work the market from the bottom-up, which is precisely what it's starting to do - get college kids on it that don't want to deal with pirated Windows and don't have the money for a Mac, get engineers on it who just want something that works, and sell the Enterprise on it as a system with a much lower TCO than MS or Apple that works "well enough".

On a more personal note, I'm a Mac guy, but I don't have the money for a Mac right now. Since I want to save up for a Mac, I didn't want to spend money on Windows, so I grabbed an Ubuntu Breezy Badger disk from work. Since then, I upgraded to Dapper Drake (sticking to the LTS non-beta versions) and, at some point, will probably upgrade to Feisty Fawn. It works "well enough", which means that, though hardware support is a little painful, I've had to play far too many games with the ATI card on my machine, and doing basic multimedia tasks like playing an MP3 playlist or watching a DVD just "feels" more painful than it does on a Windows machine (I can't objectively describe it - sorry), it gets the job done for cheap. Thanks to my exposure to Ubuntu, I've started looking at the enterprise side of Linux to see if I can't find something that works "well enough" that can replace things like Exchange, Windows Server 2003, or even the work PBX (hello, Asterisk!). Thus far, I haven't found a lot that's as easy to use as any of those products, but they cost a lot less and get the job done.

Consequently, based on my own anecodotal experience, I'd say the gamer crowd isn't that critical for Linux - the games will come to Linux when everyone else comes to it.

Re:My take on desktop Linux

[noewun]

Distros like Ubuntu are making headway in this market, but still have a little ways to go. . .

They have a long way to go.

Example: to start up Samba in OS X: click on one box on the Sharing Control Panel. To start up Samba in Ubuntu: apt-get install samba; edit smb.conf; create password for Samba share. For your average user, the one step in OS X can be somewhat confusing. The idea of editing smb.conf might as well be performing open heart surgery. I run Ubuntu on my laptop at home, and I like it. But it's nowhere near ready to be a desktop for your average user.

Re:My take on desktop Linux

[Zebedeu]

I'm running Ubuntu 7.04 and setting up Samba was a breeze: Just right-click a folder, and select "share this folder", then select "windows share" (or something similar) and a dialog pops up requesting that you install the samba service. Press OK and the install is performed for you. Then, after the install is finished it just works.

There are still some kinks to this process: I could access my shared folder right away with a pocket pc, but a windows machine kept asking for a username and password. In the end I had to create a samba login to be able to access the folder, but I might be missing something...
Also, when you move or delete a folder, the share is not removed automatically.
Finally, I had problems sharing a folder with spaces on the name.

Anyway, it seems that the issues I had are all related to simple bug fixes or default configuration changes. The process itself seemed pretty smooth and straightforward from a end-user's perspective.

Re:My take on desktop Linux

[css-hack]

Try Feisty.

I used 5.04 and 5.10 before trying the Feisty beta, and the difference is remarkable. Roaming networking. Automatic codec installation. Support for binary drivers by default. Everything is easy. If you've got a fancy video card, you can do the crazy 3D desktop effects, too.

Check it out.

Re:My take on desktop Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

about the games, michael simms from tux games said once that it would need 20M to start a game industry under linux in order to have a chance to attract enough gamers and editors so that it becames a real alternative.
But there isnt such a thing in the linux world of a guy who has 20M to spare AND the intention to really take on microsoft.

Re:My take on desktop Linux

[Ash-Fox]

In order to win this market, Linux needs two things, it must support the latest and greatest in graphics cards out of the box

Windows doesn't even do that...

Now, the second of those two requirements can be mitigated by using things like Cedega to run non-ported games, but in that case graphics cards need to be fully supported in order for the games to play on par with the windows counterparts.

Personal experience: I actually find my games run better under Linux+Wine than under native XP SP2 :)

Re:My take on desktop Linux

[noewun]

I'm still runnig Edgy, so I can't comment on Feisty. Hopefully it's better.

The time for mass consumer sales has passed.

[Animats]

"The time for mass consumer sales of Linux on the desktop has not yet come."

No. It's past.

Linux missed the window. 2003-2004 was when Linux on the desktop might have made it. WalMart, Dell, and HP all had supported Linux offerings. Microsoft XP was stale and buggy, while Longhorn/Vista was stalled. Firefox worked great, OpenOffice worked OK, and things looked good for desktop Linux. That was the big opportunity.

The window closed when playing DRM-protected video content on PCs became important to the average consumer. Linux couldn't keep up in that area, because the proprietary codec vendors didn't all support Linux. As Microsoft and Apple took control of video formats, Linux was squeezed out. Neither iTunes nor Microsoft video codecs are available for Linux.

I had real hopes for Linux on the desktop, but it's not going to happen now. Focus on the OLPC software; that might make it.

Re:The time for mass consumer sales has passed.

[Anonymous Coward]

" As Microsoft and Apple took control of video formats,"

Huh? That's FUD if ever I saw it. MPEG4 is Apple's "taking control of video formats"?

Strewth, I use Linux some of time myself - though I really prefer OS X - but Linux fanboys do get on my nerves.

Re:The time for mass consumer sales has passed.

[Scott7477]

I think that is correct; however the other side of the coin is there is still opportunity for Linux on the business desktop. Businesses won't want their employees watching YouTube on company time; the lack of video codecs on Linux may prove to be a selling point. It would be interesting to know what the proportion of PC sales is between sales to the home user and sales to businesses.

Re:The time for mass consumer sales has passed.

[camcorder]

Fluendo is developing/selling (has to sell them due to royalties) MS codecs for Linux. Also they are working on legal DVD player. Morever gstreamer has DRM stack in it, for HD/BlueRay protection schemes. If any distribution put money to pay for licence fees for codecs, they can release those codecs bundled. There's nothing to stop them, however nobody would like to use DRM unless it's enforced, and with a typical Linux distribution you can't enforce that.

In past it was not possible for computer manufacturers to offer Linux because they were not enough consumers to choose Linux over Windows and Windows might charge them with higher oem licenses. However today they see that people would like to buy pre-installed Linux boxes, and computer manufacturers yet see that they can support them as well. Dell will soon bundle his own build of Fedora if I'm not mistaken. Maybe they will offer other distros as well. Then we'll see if Linux is already lost, or you're talking non-sense.

Re:The time for mass consumer sales has passed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Eric, is that you??

Re:The time for mass consumer sales has passed.

[immcintosh]

Perhaps one (arguably) good opportunity for the platform has passed. Speaking as somebody who works with a dual-boot Vista / Gentoo system, I can say from personal experience that if Microsoft keeps taking their operating system in its current direction (very shiny, DOG slow in comparison) Linux might find itself with a good many more such opportunities in the future. To be perfectly honest, I'm finding that with Linux it's actually easier to accomplish most tasks that are more complex than, say, word processing because the operating system stays the hell out of my way, unlike Vista. I, for one, see good things in Linux's future.

Re:The time for mass consumer sales has passed.

[Animats]

Perhaps one (arguably) good opportunity for the platform has passed.

UNIX/Linux on the desktop has failed to go mainstream so many times now. In the early 1980s there was an AT&T PC that ran UNIX. That went nowhere. The whole UNIX workstation industry has come and gone. (If you'd like a high-end SGI or Sun workstation, Wierd Stuff Warehouse in Sunnyvale, California has a pile of them at low, low prices. Hurry before they rust.) Linux laptops are no longer available from any major vendor, and the minor vendors charge more for a Linux laptop than the same system costs with Windows.

I have hope for the OLPC initiative, though. That's the first major rethink in desktops in a decade.

Re:The time for mass consumer sales has passed.

[dpastern]

I don't want Linux to support DRM - period. I didn't vote for DRM, I didn't ask for DRM, it violates my rights as a user. The "industry" is trying to FORCE DRM onto me, without any choice. I want that choice, and I want to say no to DRM, and Linux doesn't apper to be moving to support it. Of course, we all know that Linus has no problems with DRM, and the Linux kernel will probably embrace DRM (if it doesn't already) in the future. The day that happens, I'll give GNU Hurd a whirl, since I know that it will *never* support such illegal methods of consumer slavery.

People can say no to DRM, and if we don't stand up to it en masse, then we're our own worst enemy and deserve everything that we get as consumers.

Dave

Re:The time for mass consumer sales has passed.

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

very shiny, DOG slow in comparison

I use Vista on three systems.

My Media Center box has 768M of memory, a P4 Northwood 2.66GHz, and a GeForce 6200. It's not fast (certainly much slower than XP or GNOME), but it's usable. I used to use XP on this box, but when bad memory ended up corrupting the disk (test your memory BEFORE you move defrag file on the disk), I didn't really feel like digging around for a floppy drive to load the SATA drivers.
My notebook has 1.25GB of memory, a Pentium-M "Dothan" 1.73GHz, and a GeForce Go 6400. It's still not as fast as XP or GNOME, but it's pretty darn close.
My desktop has 2GB of memory, an Athlon 64 X2 1900+ (@2.7GHz) , and a Radeon X1600 Pro. It pretty much flies.

The thing is, in a year, my "high end" system will be a value system. Walk into a Best Buy and try to buy a desktop that's single-core. Only the cheapest value systems don't have either an Athlon X2 or a Core 2 Duo. Try to buy a box with less than 1GB of memory - again, you'll find that only the cheapest systems are equipped with 512M.

2GB of DDR2 is now like $105. An Athlon 64 X2 1900+ is $65. A GeForce 6100 IGP board is $40.

The Intel/AMD price war has had many effects. One of them is that dual-core is no longer a high-end feature.

Re:The time for mass consumer sales has passed.

[empaler]

I'll have no problems watching YouTube if I just install the proprietary Adobe Flash player.
Free in the not-so-free sense, but still available and easyish to install.

Shurely shome mishtake

[cyber-vandal]

"Great Microsoft applications" or "Microsoft applications that grate"

Linux is not a PC platform

[Burz]

It is a kernel.

The 'GNU' part adds a shell userland and some libraries that are nice for systems programmers. But the bulk of high-level functionality that defines a 'desktop' is included/excluded pretty capriciously by the various distros.

Without a standardized core of UI and API functionality that makes system environments relatively easy and predictable for end-users and application programmers alike, then you don't have a platform. Without a platform (like a desktop version of LSB), these people will feel like "Linux" is a waste of time.

Also, the platform should have its own name, not "Linux". You'll know that Linux is succeeding on the desktop PC when people commonly refer to the platform containing Linux, instead of the kernel.

Re:Linux is not a PC platform

[CheeseTroll]

I suggest we call one of those platforms "Ubuntu". Another one might be called "Fedora", and yet another would be "SUSE".

Goofy names, I suppose, but I don't have the expertise (or patience!) to create my own platform, so I'll settle for using one of those.

Re:Linux is not a PC platform

[Russ Nelson]

I've got more GNU Kool-Aid here, if anybody wants it. Burz obviously already drank his fill and then some.

Linux is an operating system, just like Solaris is an operating system. It's still Solaris even if you replace all the userland tools with GNU tools. It never becomes GNU/Solaris no matter what you do to it. Same thing for Linux. It never becomes GNU/Linux or Lignux. Now, should RMS ever choose to give up this battle and create a "GNU" distribution of Linux, I'd be happy to call it GNU/Linux, or even just plain GNU if he wants.

Re:Linux is not a PC platform

[Chandon Seldon]

Solaris is an operating system because you can, say, run Abiword on it without installing the GNU System first. Linux, on the other hand, is not an operating system - you can't run Abiword on just Linux - you'd need a whole operating system like GNU/Linux to do that.

Re:Linux is not a PC platform

[petrus4]

I'm glad this got moderated Troll. It gives me a sense of hope about the site's moderators when I see isolated examples of GNU cultists *not* being rewarded for promoting Stallman's dogma.

Burz, I believe the owner of this website offers forcible deprogramming as a service, although these days it's referred to as an intervention. I would urge you however to have a family member contact this man immediately, and plan a time for him to do some work with you.

It's not too late to get help.

Re:Linux is not a PC platform

[blindd0t]

This was utterly disappointing to have come across. While I certainly agree that Linux is indeed a kernel, what is so wrong about summing up variations of Linux as simply being Linux? The beauty of Linux and GNU is the fundamental freedoms provided, of course. I believe that people should be free to call it what they will, and if for no other reason, the greater summation of programs, distributions, and contributions referred to as Linux is deserving to the project (the kernel, of course) that is at the root of it all. And let us take this a step further. How many average users have you heard say something like, "I need to install Microsoft." Do you really think Microsoft cares that what they say is horribly inaccurate? Of course, I suspect they only care that the vast majority of people in this constituent group are purchasing their software.

Re:Linux is not a PC platform

[Khaed]

Goofy names, I suppose

We live in a world of goofy names. Some of them make sense, others don't, but think about how some of these would sound if you hadn't heard them before:

Nintendo, Atari, Apple Computer, iPod, Microsoft, Windows, Linux, Gameboy, Playstation (sound a little like Fisher price?), X-Box, Sega, KDE, Gnome, and the browsers: Firefox, Netscape Navigator, Netscape Communicator, Internet Explorer, Konqueror, all sound kind of weird if you think about it. And, of course: Wii.

Don't get me wrong, I get the names of all of these (okay, except "X-Box"), but if you weren't used to them, every one would sound extremely odd. The initial reaction to Wii and acceptance is a good case in point. When it first announced I don't think I know anyone who didn't blink and wonder why they chose it, but now no one cares. I'd still rather they picked a different name, but then, I'm sitting here telling people I run something called Ubuntu...

Re:Linux is not a PC platform

[Burz]

It is a kernel.

The 'GNU' part adds a shell userland and some libraries that are nice for systems programmers. But the bulk of high-level functionality that defines a 'desktop' is included/excluded pretty capriciously by the various distros.

Without a standardized core of UI and API functionality that makes system environments relatively easy and predictable for end-users and application programmers alike, then you don't have a platform. Without a platform (like a desktop version of LSB), these people will feel like "Linux" is a waste of time.

Also, the platform should have its own name, not "Linux". You'll know that Linux is succeeding on the desktop PC when people commonly refer to the platform containing Linux, instead of the kernel.

There seems to be quite a bit of kneejerk ideology at work here with the moderation of my parent post. "Shoot the messenger" I suppose.

Anyway, my point wasn't to support RMS' ideas but to underline the lack of a consistent platform that meets the expectations of PC users. Its too bad that Slashdotters are so extremely political on this subject, that they didn't even recognize that I don't consider GNU to be good enough. But I guess mentioning "GNU" is like waving a red cape.

Ole, bull-y mods ;-)

Re:Linux is not a PC platform

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahem.

http://www.gnusolaris.org/

Re:Linux is not a PC platform

[Russ Nelson]

Err, I can run Abiword on Linux. I do it all the time. And I, like most people who run Linux, don't need GNU/Linux to do it.

The battle was lost at the time Stallman started fighting it. If he wants to create GNU/Linux, he can do it any time he wants. The reason he doesn't is because the day he does, everyone will say "Oh, so THAT's what GNU/Linux is" and he will have to face facts: that people call Linux Linux, and not GNU/Linux.

The seven tools that linux needs.

[jbossvi]

the acticle was a little light on *what* apps we need. And I had just finished reading another article that actually spells out the the specifics. http://planet-geek.com/archives/003830.html

Re:The seven tools that linux needs.

[TractorBarry]

That list is missing one thing.

Some Audio/MIDI software that is comparable to Logic Audio and that can run VST plugins. Personally the only reason I still have a Windows box is to run Logic Audio 5.5.1.

And before I get the usual "have your tried Rosegarde/Muse/Ardour etc." replies yes I have and, whilst they're good efforts, no they're not currently a patch on Logic Audio and (crucially) they do not support VST.

However the latest version of Ubuntu (Feisty) is simply that good that I've finally switched everything else over to my Linux box (web development, programming, image editing, CD ripping, DVD burning etc. etc.).

Re:The seven tools that linux needs.

[Skye16]

Okay, I read it. Trillian? He lost all credibility with me.

I can accept that some people like to use it. Maybe even a lot of people. But if I *had* to use Trillian, I'd say fuck it and go back to writing letters. Considering I have a broken hand, it would be quite difficult, but I'd prefer to feel the bones in my hand grinding together with each painfully written letter than to use Trillian. I have never *seen* a bigger pile of shit, and I've had some doozies.

If he's going to talk about anything, talk about Adium. Now there is a client done right. To those developers, I salute them.

Re:The seven tools that linux needs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ardour is a very decent DAW... Its supports VST (albeit without the fancy uis) but because of licensing issues with Stienberg VST enabled versions cannot be redistributed... Which means if you want VST support you have to build it yourself. The other issue with VST is as far as can be told it doesn't provide an interface for determining the latency of a plugin which means that automatic latency compensation does not work (ie you have to use artificial latency plugin manually to compensate for the latency of the VST).

There is another project to create native VST plugins on linux - but then you have to convince plugin creators to actually compile their plugins for linux.

The only major place that Ardour falls down is Midi Support (It has support for midi control surfaces but no editing per say at this point). This can be largely got around by syncing with an external midi app. Rose garden is a good midi app (Not as good as Logic) but badly needs automation. Muse 1.0 is heading in the right direction but is about as stable as nitroglycerin on a hot day.

Probably it hasn't passed

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't watch DVDs on my computer. I watch DVDs on the TV as do most people. I don't play console games on my computer, I play them on the Nintendo.

Most people don't want their computers to be all things to all people. They want to do chat and email and youtube and surf the internet and download MP3s to their player and a bit of word processing. Linux does those things just fine. Most people will get Linux at home after they start using it at work. Linux, being a disruptive technology, is gaining acceptance away from the desktop mainstream but it will eventually achieve critical mass.

Re:Probably it hasn't passed

[westlake]

Most people don't want their computers to be all things to all people.

If true, then why does the 16:9 display and the DVD-drive become standard on the laptop? Why does PC gaming remain a billion-dollar industry? Why the hoo-rah over the royalty structure of Internet radio?

Most people will get Linux at home after they start using it at work.

Name one - just one - client app that is unique to the Linux office desktop - one app that would drive Linux adoption in the home.

More to the point, name one user - just one user - who wants to bring any memory of the locked-down corporate desktop into his home. These are two fundamentally different markets.

Linux, being a disruptive technology, is gaining acceptance away from the desktop mainstream but it will eventually achieve critical mass.

The home PC - the mass-market Windows PC - is proving an infinitely more disruptive technology than Linux. Consider it's impact on the newspaper industry, book publishing, broadcasting, motion pictures, CD sales...

Re:Probably it hasn't passed

[roemcke]

Name one - just one - client app that is unique to the Linux office desktop - one app that would drive Linux adoption in the home. apt-get

Great interview.

[n1hilist]

What I enjoy about Mark's comments int he inteview (and in others) is that he tends to be genuine, calm and honest in his talkings, and uses very few corporate buzzwords. Maybe that's because he rolls his own distros, cigarettes and whatnot, but it's refreshing to see an important IT headcheese soundling like you're talking to him as a person and not a bot.

Here's wishing Ubuntu a long, prosperous future! \ \\//

Stop the presses!

[HomelessInLaJolla]

Wait! Wait!

Ego-driven micromanager throws a chair at a user with four whole comments and then accuses them of being "hard to manage" when the chair misses.

Ballmer? Is that you?

Typical

[petrus4]

One has to wonder if there's a financial motivation behind this--ie. where does Shuttleworth make his money and would his commercial profits and revenues be at all threatened by widespread deployment of desktop Linux solutions?

"Person X isn't voicing the opinion of Linux that I want to hear. This obviously means that they're a paid shill in the service of $corporation."

Please develop some basic maturity. Shuttleworth is funding the most popular consumer-oriented Linux distribution in existence. I.e., he's paying for it himself. Why would he spout FUD about something which he himself is sponsoring? That's self-defeating behaviour.

That's a mouthful considering it's coming from someone who, if we want to be brutal, did little but repackage someone else's hard work.

Really? This sounds like yet more sour grapes from someone affiliated with Debian. In case you don't understand the difference between Debian and Ubuntu, allow me to explain it for you. Ubuntu is a project run by and for people who live above ground. As such, they don't foam at the mouth due to the idea of people using binary hardware drivers, and they also don't subscribe to a lot of Debian's other aberrant, regressive "philosophies" and attitudes, either. Shuttleworth has to pay official lip service to them occasionally, because as you say, unfortunately the development effort does consist of a few of the abovementioned troglodytes, and it's true that he does seem to care about not alienating them.

If Ubuntu, as so many people say, would be nothing whatsoever without Debian, then how come Ubuntu is so much more popular? Here's why. Ubuntu is Debian, without Debian's people, and without the conflict and terminal immaturity that those people generate and suffer from. Ubuntu is Debian with a neurotypical re-interpretation.

One of the main things I've seen a lot of members of the Linux community becoming increasingly shrill about in the last few years is people "stealing their code," and I think I'm finally beginning to understand why. It's because although the software that you write itself genuinely is technically better than what is being developed elsewhere, as people on the other hand, deep down, you yourselves actually realise just what chronically socially disabled, mind-bogglingly juvenile, generally detestable individuals many of you really are. It therefore quite logically follows that you're understandably terrified that the mainstream population is going to want to take the good that you do produce (your code) for their own use, while leaving the bad (you yourselves) as close to being entirely ignored as possible.

Re:Typical

[WeAreAllDoomed]

In case you don't understand the difference between Debian and Ubuntu, allow me to explain it for you. Ubuntu is a project run by and for people who live above ground. As such, they don't foam at the mouth due to the idea of people using binary hardware drivers, and they also don't subscribe to a lot of Debian's other aberrant, regressive "philosophies" and attitudes, either. Shuttleworth has to pay official lip service to them occasionally, because as you say, unfortunately the development effort does consist of a few of the abovementioned troglodytes, and it's true that he does seem to care about not alienating them.

this is incredibly rude and uncalled for. the debian crew aren't "aberrant"; nor are their philosophies "regressive". if anything, they're *progressive*, and the ubuntu phenomenon is a welcome bridge between the realities of the present and the ideals of the future.

as for attitudes... ok, they have good days and bad days. :-)

fwiw, i use ubuntu on all my desktop/laptop machines, and debian on all my servers.

Re:Typical

[petrus4]

this is incredibly rude and uncalled for. the debian crew aren't "aberrant"; nor are their philosophies "regressive". if anything, they're *progressive*

That's one opinion. Mine was based on what I've actually seen the Debian people doing, in terms of the IceWeasel debacle, and the Etch delay issues, etc etc...not to mention the endless trolling from Debian fans/developers on here.

If you want to see them in a positive light, I can understand the desire to do so. I wouldn't have a problem doing that myself if I actually saw them behaving that way.

What's that relevant to?

[2short]

If Ubuntu makes it easier for more people to adopt Linux, how much more development might eventually result?

Mind you, I use Linux even though I've never contributed to the kernel, and probably never will. I don't think that makes me a bad person, nor do I see why Shuttleworth or the Ubuntu project should be held to a different standard.

That traitorous bastard

[HappySmileMan]

"mass consumer sales of Linux on the desktop" "'great applications' from microsoft"... I don't want to see Linux gradually sell out, I like it the way it is... FREE and OPEN SOURCE... If it's available for sale then eventually someone will realise that it'd be much more profitable to close the source, implement DRM on everything and sue everything that moves. And personally wheter or not you think I'm over-reacting... The point is that once it becomes profitable enough to sell Linux then what's to stop all major distributions selling it?

Re:That traitorous bastard

[Chandon Seldon]

Nice parinoia, but the GNU GPL makes "closing the source" pretty hard.

Even without that, you'll find that simply being Free Software is pretty valuable. If it wasn't you'd be hearing a lot more about BSD/OS than about FreeBSD - but FreeBSD is orders of magnitude more popular because it's Free Software.

Re:That traitorous bastard

[fooDfighter]

copyright

Re:That traitorous bastard

[HappySmileMan]

Well yeah I know that you can't actually close the source of Linux, but you don't need to if it's full of closed-source applications, especially the 'great applications' from Microsoft

Re:That traitorous bastard

[maxwell demon]

All major distributions (well, actually the distributors) except Debian are already selling it today.

Now about what's there to stop anyone from making it closed source: The GPL.

Re:That traitorous bastard

[Chandon Seldon]

The more parts of the platform that are open, the harder it is to accomplish synergistic lock-in. Windows Client + Windows Server + Exchange + Microsoft Office sustains lock-in much better than Linux Client + Linux Server + Linux Backend + MS Office.

How not to sell Linux to the home market

[westlake]

Three things stand out:

very few pieces of firmware ship their source code, so this new flavor of Ubuntu won't ship any firmware unless we can also ship the source code for it.
There are kinds of content out there - like PDFs and so on - which are not editable but where there is an editable source document effectively, and we won't include this content unless we include the source document. Things like video content: Well, an edited video is nice, but what about the source materials? So this version of Ubuntu will not include any video footage unless it also includes either the source content or access to the source content. By this we are extending the concept of "freedom" to cover not just applications software, all the way down to firmware and content which is further than any other distribution goes.

So for example we get a lot of reports now of developers who install computers for their parents and they put Ubuntu on them, because it's not gonna get spyware, it's not gonna get viruses, it's very easy to maintain remotely and keep up-to-date. And so they are not getting constantly called by their parents saying their computer won't work or "my ISP tells me that I got viruses on my computer". It does everything they need, it does web and e-mail, office and spreadsheets and things like that. So in those cases Ubuntu is a very good option for everyday users.

I haven't actually tried Vista final, I tried to run a Vista Beta under VMWare and wasn't very successful, but I can see, that they have tried to raise the game.

From this we can draw some conclusions:

It is more important for a distro to be "politically correct" than to meet the needs of users for whom access to source will always be meaningless.

The geek stereotype of the home user is alive and well in Ubuntu. No mention of media play, no mention of games.

Ubuntu is the OS of choice if you have son or daughter willing to install and maintain it. For everyone else, there is OSX and Windows Vista.

Re:How not to sell Linux to the home market

[thelexx]

There is a difference between being pc and having standards/morals/convictions and trying to stick to them. The fact that you seem not to recognize this is troubling. Or perhaps, and more likely, it is a selective recognition on your part. As for the rest of your comment, consider that many 20-40 year old geeks parents are incapable of installing ANY operating system. In short, your conclusions are specious, not insightful.

Re:How not to sell Linux to the home market

[roemcke]

From this we can draw some conclusions:

It is more important for a distro to be "politically correct" than to meet the needs of users for whom access to source will always be meaningless.

...and that is a very good thing sir.

Even if the access to source is meaningless for the majority of users, it is NOT meaningless for those few who contribute to your favorite application.

If we started to accept closed source software in our distributions, the development of free software would come to a halt.

So the the only way to meet the needs of the users, is to be "politically correct" and stick to free software.

Re:How not to sell Linux to the home market

[Ash-Fox]

Uh, that's just the /free/ (as in completely opensource) version.

You will still be able to get the /free/ (as in cost) version that comes with proprietary stuff that is easier for the user.

Re:How not to sell Linux to the home market

[batkiwi]

You do realize that is for a specialized Ubuntu "fork"/"derivative"/whatever, and not the mainstream Ubuntu, right?

OR, when Microsoft released Server 2000 Datacenter Edition, which only runs on dedicated hardware and can only be bought from an OEM, did you reccomend everyone jump ship from windows since MS wouldn't let you buy ANY version of windows any more (which is the same level conclusion as the one you drew)

Re:How not to sell Linux to the home market

[westlake]

There is a difference between being pc and having standards/morals/convictions and trying to stick to them. The fact that you seem not to recognize this is troubling.

The problem is that home user doesn't give a damn about your standards. Source has no more meaning to him than the chicken scratchings on a Sumerian stone tablet. His interests and values lie elsewhere. He will never sacrifice an easy-to-install high-performance driver to satisfy your concept of freedom.

consider that many 20-40 year old geeks parents are incapable of installing ANY operating system. In short, your conclusions are specious, not insightful.

They don't need to install an operating system. They don't want to install an operating system. What they choose is the OEM system bundle.

Re:How not to sell Linux to the home market

[westlake]

You do realize that is for a specialized Ubuntu "fork"/"derivative"/whatever, and not the mainstream Ubuntu, right?

The responses I've quoted clearly have a broader significance.

Re:How not to sell Linux to the home market

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they don't. All comments related to freedom and source materials are about "this new flavor of Ubuntu".

--
J

Re:How high can you count?

[Duggeek]

Got Ubuntu? Then you're halfway to the answer.

Open your package manager; the one through System, but not the Add/Remove item! (the one with the big list, no icons)

Make sure to select All packages and scan the list; find every package that lists a Latest Version ending with '-ubuntu XX'.

Each of those packages has the Ubuntu team's fingerprints on it, and those changes are fed back to the community. (upstream patches; whether upstream uses them or not)

I'm sure there's some clever shell-command that will do something like this for you, but I would gladly defer that honor to someone that's done it before.

Even if you're not impressed with the results, consider that Ubuntu has put Linux “into the limelight” like no other distro before it. (with the possible exception of RedHat)

Power to the penguin!

Ch-ch-ch-changes

[rinkjustice]

I'm a guy whose been using Linux since Red hat 5.1 and who webmastered a fairly popular Linux website pre-dotcom bubble era to evangelize Linux. I see how the good reputation of Ubuntu is spreading quickly nowadays, moreso than Red Hat has ever achieved. Mark Shuttleworth is making a positive difference in this world by funding Ubuntu, and I see how Linux is really being seriously considered by pedestrian users who thought Microsoft was their only option.

Naysayers and unbelievers be warned. Shuttleworth is onto something with Ubuntu. To steal a quote from Isaiah in the Old Testament: "Those who mock will mourn"!

"Not Ready?" Ha!

[twitter]

He did not say Ubunto was not ready for the desktop, he said the market was not ready for Ubunto!:

I certainly would not push the large IT companies to put Linux on consumer PCs, because I understand that in their business, the cost of a user accidentally getting Linux, thinking that they get cheap Windows would be a problem for the companies selling the computers. So I don't think it is really ready yet for mass consumer sales of Linux on desktop.

This is not a quality or ease of use issue, it's one of familiarity. Here's what he thinks of the "ready" issue:

So there are lots of places where Ubuntu is relevant for ordinary users. But not everywhere, I absolutely would agree to that. But it's certainly good enough for me and I'm a pretty demanding user.

In other words, it's ready. There's a big difference between "eating your own dog food" and using something that's good enough for your own demands. It should be obvious where Mark sits.

There were lots of nice material in this interview and it's too bad the submitter had to focus on the bogus issue above. That Google uses Ubunto for all of their developer desktops is news to me. Other traction, like airline pilots using Ubunto for security reasons is great to hear about. Mark's goals, particularly his desire to promote free software are also news to me because I have not paid attention. This is all good news.

Just a thought .....

[ajs318]

Given that there's an infinite (unproven; but certainly large) number of source programs that will compile to any given binary, there's the ghost of a possibility of issuing source code that could be compiled on any architecture -- yet wouldn't make any more sense to anyone trying to understand or modify it than a binary. That would make it truly cross-platform (meaning it would be for all Linux, not just x86 Linux)* and meet the letter, if not the spirit (the phrase "ride a coach and horses through" rather seems to spring to mind), of certain "restrictive" software licences. Absence of source code never stopped anyone from distributing binaries without authorisation, so there's no reason to suppose its presence will encourage further unauthorised distribution.

* Some of the source programs that compile to a given binary are in fact architecture dependent, since they rely on inserting a piece of data which is really an order code requiring extra data; then using the order code of the following instruction as the data for that instruction and its data, if any as another order code, and so on. This isn't at all portable and isn't what I mean. Mere obfuscation of function and variable names is insufficient; but you can write quite simple instructions in very roundabout ways and rely on redundant portions being optimised away (or the whole thing running on a fast processor!) As long as all the "pessimisations" you make are such that they will be optimised out by the compiler, and not the preprocessor .....

How about drag and drop unzipping

[Anonymous Coward]

I know people have been trolling for years about drag and drop in linux. The thing is that it is still not working as reliably as in Windows. Make no mistake. I use Ubuntu and i know what i'm talking about...

Drag and drop doesn't work reliably. In Dapper (2 versions of Ubuntu back), when you tried to unzip something (from fileroller to nautilus) by drag and drop, you had to hold during the "drop" for as long as fileroller needed to decompress the files. If fileroller didn't have sufficient time to decompress then nothing happening.

In feisty (the current beta Ubuntu) drag and drop from fileroller (the WinZip of Ubuntu) to nautilus (the Explorer of Ubuntu) doesn't work at all due to incompatible Drag&Drop protocols (fileroller uses XDS whereas nautilus does not).

For the nonbelievers:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/file-rol ler/+bug/13199
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=171655

It is a joke to suggest that linux is desktop ready, when such simple things do not work. I manage fine because i'm more of a command line person. My parents would not. They would just try to drag and drop the damn file inside the zip to where ever they need it....

Re:How about drag and drop unzipping

[Ash-Fox]

You could always just use Kubuntu instead (uses KDE, Konqueror and Ark by default).

The SCO angle (Re:Oh I see how it is)

[twenex27]

Let's see, Stallman and Stalin - note the resemblance in the names. Stalin hated the Jews, and Stallman IS a Jew, therefore he's trying to use his Yiddishkeit to hide his communism. Also, the M in RMS stands for Michael, who was an apostle of Jesus. Judas was also an apostle of Jesus, but also a traitor, and therefore OBVIOUSLY a communist, so Stallman has obviously chosen the name "Michael" to throw us off the scent again. Given the prohibition against shaving in the Bible, Judas presumably had a beard, and RMS and Stallman are just as hirsute, though RMS hides his Stalin-type moustache in a cunningly-designed camouflage beard. And as to the "in" in "Stalin", Stallman, the new Stalin, is IN America trying to turn us all communist.

Re:The SCO angle (Re:Oh I see how it is)

[theshowmecanuck]

Are you really Michael Palin?

Re:The SCO angle (Re:Oh I see how it is)

[twenex27]

Hahah, no, but if that's meant as a compliment, thanks.

Now I'm intrigued as to why you would think that.

Re:The SCO angle (Re:Oh I see how it is)

[theshowmecanuck]

It reminded me of Monty Python oblong logic speeches. I'd say circular logic, but they never quite made it 'round. ;-) For some reason, Michael Palin came to mind first.

Re:The SCO angle (Re:Oh I see how it is)

[twenex27]

Heh. Maybe SCO are fans of Monty Python.

Re:The SCO angle (Re:Oh I see how it is)

[joedoc]

I hate to drag religion into this relevant discussion of Mark Shuttleworth, Richard Stallman and famous Communists and Marxists...

...but there never was an Apostle named Michael. The Twelve were commonly believed to be Simon Peter, Andrew, James the Greater, his brother John, Judas Iscariot, Phillip, Bartholomew, Thomas Didymus (Doubting Thomas), James the Lesser, Matthew (the tax collector), Simon the Zealot, and Thaddeus (sometimes referred to as another named Judas). The names varied through the ages, but this was generally considered the correct list of names. Even in alterations, there never appeard the name Michael.

Now, perhaps the original poster is referring to Michael the Archangel, who reportedly appeared to both Daniel in the Old Testament and in the Book of Revelation at the end of the New Testament. Michael is depicted as the leader of the Army of God in Heaven, and is, in many places, the patron saint of police officers and military personnel.

So, with this correction, perhaps the original poster wanted to depict Stallman as some kind of warrior angel who would come down from on High to smite those who would force proprietary and closed-source software on the people of this world.

I'm sorry, but trying to picture Stallman equipped with great wings, wearing flowing robes and brandishing a might sword just made Diet Coke come out my nose.

Re:The SCO angle (Re:Oh I see how it is)

[twenex27]

I hate to drag religion into this relevant discussion of Mark Shuttleworth, Richard Stallman and famous Communists and Marxists... ...but there never was an Apostle named Michael. Fair enough, but in my defence that's just the kind of factual error SCO would make!

...

So, with this correction, perhaps the original poster wanted to depict Stallman as some kind of warrior angel who would come down from on High to smite those who would force proprietary and closed-source software on the people of this world. No, it was just an (admittedly cheap) shot at SCO. As such, if anything it depicts Stallman as a communist Satan, Antichrist or Judas Iscariot, in a mock-SCO stylee.

I'm sorry, but trying to picture Stallman equipped with great wings, wearing flowing robes and brandishing a might sword just made Diet Coke come out my nose. Heh.

Re:The SCO angle (Re:Oh I see how it is)

[theshowmecanuck]

Or maybe they took the shows as documentaries rather than satire and parody? :-D

How to Sell Linux to the Masses

[triso]

Linux Advertisement 1.

INT - MARY'S HOME OFFICE.
[Mary is seen banging her hand down on her desk]
MARY:
Damn!
[John comes into the picture]
JOHN:
Hey Mary, what's wrong?
[In a frustrated voice]
MARY:
My computer is as slow as molasses...
and all those pop-ups...
I can't get any work done.
JOHN:
That's because you're using Windows XP and Internet Explorer.
[Intrigued, Mary turns to John and looks into his eyes]
MARY:
Go on.
JOHN:
I use Linux and I'm never going back. No more blue-screens-of-death, re-boots, re-installs, pop-ups, virus attacks and no more spy-ware.
MARY:
But I'm not a geek.
JOHN:
Linux isn't just for geeks anymore and it's free. You can share it with your friends, too.
MARY:
Sounds great. How do I get copy?
JOHN:
I'll bring the disks and install it for you on Saturday.
[Mary is now elated]
MARY:
Sounds like a plan. Can I go down on you?
JOHN:
Sure!
[Fade to black]
VOICE OVER:
Linux...Look for the Penguin.
SFX: Zipper opening
MARY:
Oh John, I never knew.
SFX: Slurping sounds.

Re:How to Sell Linux to the Masses

[Anonymous Coward]

Why isn't this modded +fellazilion funny?

You beat me to it... Try Feisty!

[css-hack]

You beat me to it! To the GP and his sibling: I suggest you try Ubuntu Feisty when it comes out on the 20th.

You can also go to the System menu at the top of the screen, Administration > Shared Folders. If NFS and SMB support are not already installed, you will have to click (oh no!) "Install Services" at the pop-up. It takes about 15 seconds on broadband to download the packages.

Then click the "+ Add" button in the "Shared Folders" dialog.

Want to browse a network? Mount an FTP, SFTP, SMB share? Go to the Places menu at the top of the screen and select "network."

I don't know that I've ever had to use the CLI for anything. (I use it all the time, of course, to do special customizations, or to compile/run CLI programs. It can't be beat for speed, if you know what you're doing. Especially on old hardware.)

Re:"Not Ready?" Ha!

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe someone who didn't even spell the name of the Distro -- the Distro mentioned in TFSummary -- was moderated up as insightful.

Of course, considering all the grammar errors in TFA, this isn't too surprising... ("Is it they're, their, or there? Fuck it, just use there the whole way through!")

Re:"Not Ready?" Ha!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubunto Ubunto Ubunto!!!

Tough questions, although not tough enough

[Respect_my_Authority]

The interviewer asks some very good questions about the weak areas in Ubuntu-Canonical's business strategy and Shuttleworth has to dodge many questions and hide behind half-truths, handwaving and his usual marketing gobbledygook.

Ubuntu allegedly has a "policy of not doing our own software development, but only packaging what others have developed" -- with the few rare exceptions like the Upstart init system. Ubuntu-Canonical doesn't hire any top developers to do upstream development like some other commercial distros, Red Hat and Novell, do. For this precise reason, the GNOME hacker Jeff Waugh had to leave Ubuntu when he wanted to concentrate on developing GNOME.

Given this background, I'm inclined to believe that Shuttleworth is heavily distorting the reality when he claims that a lot of KDE 4 development is now happening inside of Ubuntu. This is one of the several points where I would have wished the interviewer to be a bit tougher and to push a bit harder in order to dig out the truth behind Shuttleworth's marketing talk. Of course, if Ubuntu-Canonical has indeed changed their policy lately and if they are now hiring KDE developers to do upstream development for KDE 4, then this revelation would have greatly added the news value of the interview. It's unfortunate that the interviewer didn't push this question (and some other questions) any further but, instead, left Shuttleworth's dubious claims open for speculations.

Mircrosoft and 'great applications'

[binary1011100]

Was just analysing some poetry when I read this topic, I think that Microsoft and 'great applications' is an oxymoron :P

Re:"Not Ready?" Ha!

[Anonymous Coward]

it seems your misspeling of "ubuntu" is no typo since you repeat it over and over.
what a pain in the ass!

Re:How high can you count?

[petermgreen]

Each of those packages has the Ubuntu team's fingerprints on it
remember though those "fingerprints" may be as small as adding a patch for integration with thier propietry launchpad system (and so not much use for anyone else) or other little ubuntu specific tweaks that are of no use to upstream.