Slashdot Mirror
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."
http://derstandard.at/Text/?id=2845484
He sounds pretty cool, for a communist!
Remember kids, when you download GNU/Linux, you're installing with Stallman, who is the new Stalin!
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."
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"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.
How many CDs will it take to ship all of that?
Once the line is crossed then it's on.
Shuttlesworth is independently wealthy.
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.
Software Defined RFID - The Rifidi Emulator
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.
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.
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.
Not to be rude, but, here, have a free CR/LF (free as in beer).
http://www.intellipool.se/ - Intellipool Network Monitor
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.)
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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!'
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 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. :)
I'm going to transform myself into a mighty hawk. Either that or I'll just go and work at Dixons, haven't decided yet.
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.
In terms of patches sent upstream, work on the kernel, etc?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
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.
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.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
"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.
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.
"Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad." -- Terry Pratchett
"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.
"Great Microsoft applications" or "Microsoft applications that grate"
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.
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
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.
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! \ \\//
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?
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
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.
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.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
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.
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.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
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:
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^)
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
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.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
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.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
copyright
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.
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!
This post © Copyrite Duggeek, all rights reversed.
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.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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"!
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
Hello? 2001 just called. They want their reason for not using Linux back.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
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.
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
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.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
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.
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.
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.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
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.
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.)
You could always just use Kubuntu instead (uses KDE, Konqueror and Ark by default).
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Uh, that's just the /free/ (as in completely opensource) version.
/free/ (as in cost) version that comes with proprietary stuff that is easier for the user.
You will still be able to get the
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
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...
Printers were still a issue in 2001? What?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
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)
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.
The responses I've quoted clearly have a broader significance.
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
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.
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.).
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
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.
Was just analysing some poetry when I read this topic, I think that Microsoft and 'great applications' is an oxymoron :P
"I could be bought, but Linux couldn't be." - Linus Torvalds
I hope you realize that is the story of every distribution.
really? so what distribution was Yggdrasil and Slackware based on?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
now this was a troll
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.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist