Mark Shuttleworth Reveals Ubuntu Netbook Remix

Glyn Moody writes "In an interview with the Guardian today, Mark Shuttleworth talks about the upcoming Ubuntu Netbook Remix, a tailored version for ultraportables, produced in collaboration with Intel." The new version of Ubuntu is barely mentioned in this interview, but it's tantalizing -- SUSE looks nice on the HP Mininotes, but for people who are used to and enjoy Ubuntu, it's an option to look forward to.

Comments

Re:Dislike Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

As a Linux user, I despise Ubuntu, I can't explain why, but I think it's too GUIsh along with other things like

Not using conventions i.e (at least in the Ubuntu versions I've used) /sbin/dhcpcd doesn't exists.

I prefer the slackware way of /etc/rc.d/rc.X instead of /etc/init.d or /etc/rc.d/rc.(level)/rc.ssh?

but there are few good things about Ubuntu, it made Linux and Open Source much better to new-comers, works almost always out of the box
It's friendly (but silly IMhO) to people who migrate from Windows, and it's the greatest achievement made in the last few years. friendly OS for Windows migrating users. I can tell you why you despise it. Because it's considered mainstream linux, and you are an arrogant prick who previously enjoyed looking down on the masses.

He didn't say Ubuntu is unlicensed.

[XanC]

He said the future is in unlicensed software. Which, IIRC, was the end-game goal for GPL. GPL is a temporary system to enforce freedom in an age of copyright restrictions. If software in the future becomes truly unlicensed, then there's no need for GPL.

Re:He didn't say Ubuntu is unlicensed.

[MrNiceguy_KS]

You know, I had never thought about it before, but in a way you're right about Free Software as "Communism done right". Communism as an idea is not bad, except that the idea ignores everything we know about human nature, i.e. that people are selfish bastards who will get as much for themselves as they can while doing as little as possible.

But when we're dealing with non-physical property like software, it works, simply because people taking as much as they can doesn't reduce the amount available to others. "To each, according to their needs," really does mean everyone can have as much as they want of what's out there.

I think the correct phrase isn't "communism done right," but rather "Communism the only way it can actually work"

Re:What is it with Ubuntu

[paroneayea]

One of the things that's with Ubuntu is that it's the only group with a real sense of marketing. Granted, it's viral marketing, but if you look at http://ubuntu.com/ versus http://debian.org/ you'll notice that one is quite pretty and modern, and the other looks like it fell out of a wormhole circa 1996. I even tried talking about a site redesign on #debian on freenode once and got flamed by someone saying "why the hell should the look of a website matter?" Perhaps it somewhat matters because when I was a newbie and knew nothing about the merits of distros, I overlooked Debian as being a fairly amateurish distro because, well, its website looked amateurish. Yes, I know better now, but we should acknowledge at least a little that appearances do matter.

Of course, it's not just the website. Ubuntu also has an army of Diggers, and it's overall just a really easy distro to get started with when you know nothing about Linux, because the project has made appealing to that crowd one of its goals.

Re:Why reading the article is important...

[AKAImBatman]

Ubuntu is unlicensed, eh? And everything that's included in it, eh?

Sure. I've used an unlicensed copy of Ubuntu many times. It says right there in the GPL: If you don't want to accept the license, you don't have to in order to use the software. So I didn't. :-P

So I guess I can change some #IFDEF s, release a "new" operating system, and get rich, eh?

You could if you agreed to the GPL. If you didn't, then I imagine that the various Linux authors would take issue with your attempt to ignore copyright law.

Free software is not "public domain," which is what unlicensed/uncopywritten means.

No, unlicensed means unlicensed and public domain means public domain. Just because public domain software is unlicensed doesn't make all unlicensed software public domain. (i.e. A car stays in a garage. Is everything in a garage a car?) Unlicensed means exactly that: You didn't agree to a license to obtain the software. I don't agree to a license to obtain a book, either, but copyright law is still in full effect.

Re:What is it with Ubuntu

[lytles]

I'm on the bandwagon. I've been using linux for 12 years, longer if you include machines administered by others. Ubuntu isn't perfect, but from what I've seen it's the best thing out there - it just works.

Everything is easy. Install a new package. Get the source for that package that isn't quite working right. Configuration. Update packages. Upgrade to the new version. It's all trivial, and just works. /etc is simple and clean.

And my folks are running it. When i visit I f with things. But when I'm not there, they can still upgrade packages, etc. And they're on dialup, and it still just works :)

We run suse on the servers at work, and i needed a very recent gcc with fortran and gomp. Ended up building from source, including a half dozen dependencies. On my workstation (ubuntu) "apt-get install gfortran libgomp". done. 5 hours vs 5 minutes. Actually, I think it took several iterations, maybe spent 2 full days installing it on suse.

Great for the power user.
Great for the beginner.

Re:What is it with Ubuntu

[story645]

The Ubuntu site is a very clean interface-see button, go to section, then get into the detail. It's perfect for the user who doesn't know anything 'cause they'll never even know what they're missing. The site's incredibly easy to navigate-it just requires more buttons to get somewhere. The Debian site has the standard F/OSS interface-throw just about everything at the user under a couple of subheadings. Less clicks, yeah-but not that much better for it.

Website design is as much about the audience as anything else-and the Ubuntu site is perfectly geared towards it's audience, as is Debians towards it's- which is why it looks any other F/OSS project page where as Ubuntu's looks like a standard corporate page.

Re:Dislike Ubuntu

[debatem1]

Slackware is older than Ubuntu, so it must be the better distro.
Solaris is older than Linux, so it must be the superior operating system.
Monarchy is older than democracy, so it must be a better form of government.
I can make my examples more absurd, if you want.

Re:What is it with Ubuntu

[osu-neko]

Agreed. The Ubuntu website is the amateurish one that breaks the rules. For example, it is fixed width and doesn't flow to fit the screen, and it fails validation (Debian's site passes validation and flows). I also feel it just isn't as functional as the simpler, cleaner Debian site.

Like most people, you're confusing two different concepts here: skillful vs. professional. Debian's site is clearly more skillfully done, and wins on technical merit. Ubuntu's site is clearly more professional; people are more likely to pay for a site like that. Debian's site is both technically superior and more amateurish. The very qualities you mention as signs Ubuntu's site is "more amateurish" are common and even to some degree desired in many professional web designs (fixed-width, for example, is required to accurately control precise layout, a common client requirement). If the Debian developers were trying to sell the site design, it'd look more like Ubuntu's, which is to say, more professional, albeit not as good in many ways.

Never confuse "professional" with "better" or "amateur" with "worse". The first terms relate to the compensation for the activity, the second refer to subjective criteria which are usually utterly unrelated to that.