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Ubuntu To Pay for Upgrades To the Free Software User Experience
jcatcw writes "Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols reports that Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical, is using his millions to improve the Linux user experience, hiring people to work on X, OpenGL, Gtk, Qt, GNOME and KDE. He had doubted that desktop Linux could ever equal the smooth, graceful integration of the Mac OS. Now, between the driving pace of open-source development, and Shuttleworth's millions, it might be happening. Why not? After all, Mac OS itself is based on FreeBSD. Desktop Linux's future is starting to look brighter."
As anyone with half a brain knows, Mac OS X is based on the Xnu kernel, not the FreeBSD one. Xnu is a combination of Mach combined with various bits lifted from FreeBSD 5.x (but is not itself the FreeBSD kernel). OS X is an updated NeXT, not a GUI-fied FreeBSD.
I can't believe the editors let such a blatant slip-up onto the front page. Wait, it's slashdot --practically speaking, we have no editors. ;_;
Maybe you should point people here when making that statement.
Windows has more viruses because linux has more virus coders.
Shuttleworth paying out of pocket to help the ubuntu experience is nothing new. He's always done this. The printed CD's of ubuntu have always been free to whomever requested them. That's cost out of pocket for canonical. Don't get me wrong, this is great; but it's something they've always been doing.
HA! Almost forgot about Mach! BSD was just a subsystem on a Mach kernel, too. More 80's-isms. Now we call Microskernels "Hypervisors" and isolated I/O subsystems "Virtual instances".
'Cos maybe they'll work this time!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
while this is useful admirable-- if I had millions, I would consider setting up a program to pay a limited number of folks $100 for installing Linux on a desktop machine used 8+ hours a week and using it for a few months. A weekly (at least) intelligent posting to the forums would be required. You would have to apply for the program - show some of your writing on the internet (slashdot posts) as someone who really exists and can actually communicate.
Meanwhile, paid staff would facilitate a way to solve problems (watching forums, suggesting fixes, adding to a wiki) -- perhaps the organization could also offer bounties for FOSS developers to improve certain areas which are most annoying.
This guy is way ahead of me, I'm still waiting for the millions.
Maybe somebody should point out that Audiacity works fine on Mac OS X, too (even without X11). I'm using it all the time for minor cropping/ogg-encoding work.
From the article itself: "... We are hiring designers, user experience champions and interaction design visionaries and challenging them to lead not only Canonical's distinctive projects but also to participate in GNOME, KDE and other upstream efforts to improve FLOSS (Free/Libre/Open Source Software) usability."
Everything is subjective.
In fact, it uses wXwidgets for it's GUI, which aims to be cross platform between windows and the *nixes. Really, more of a testament to FLOSS, if not Linux.
What's the value of information that you don't know?
I use Audiacity on my Mac too, works fine. Links for anyone interested. http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/mac http://opensourcemac.com/
It's slow, crashy and overcomplicated.
Your first two arguments are unprovable flamebait, and the last is a matter of opinion. There are lots of people who think it's fast, stable, and just complicated enough.
It's got an ugly, messy desktop environment and it doesn't come with any decent usable software.
Again, the first is a matter of opinion, and I would think you could at least realize that you're in the minority. Lots of people think the desktop is pretty and well-organized. The last is, again, flamebait. It may not come with as much as your typical Linux distribution, but Safari, Pages, Mail, iTunes, Xcode, DVD Player, and the various iLife apps, among others, are far from unusuable or indecent. And, despite the fact that it doesn't come with as much as your typical Linux distribution, there are many thousands of free and open source programs that you can install.
It's got this weird browser that doesn't render stuff, doesn't have AdBlock and which usually gets replaced with Firefox.
"Doesn't render stuff" is, again, unproveable flamebait. Safari does just fine in rendering tests. You're also showing off your ignorance, as it does have AdBlock. Come on, that's the first link in Google.
It can't play back most videos or music files without expensive shareware.
This is just wrong and uninformed. Those are just examples off the top of my head that I like, there are plenty of other free and open source players out there.
It doesn't even have a usable text editor!
What about TextEdit and Pages is not usable?
If those are too flashy for you, just install vim or emacs. They work fine.
It's utter crap. Ubuntu is already better than Mac OSX. Please don't try to make another crappy OSX Aqua-looky-likey clone thing.
You clearly do not even know what you're talking about. Please spend some time using OS X or at least do a bit of research before you try to troll again.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
This is easy to answer - he sold Thawte for $575 million.
Do you not have the internets where you are? Wikipedia, geezus.
-knewter
I've done a lot of work on audio on Linux, not for the audio itself, but because I work with satellite telemetry that's frequency-modulated in the audio band. I hate ALSA. It broke completely with the Unix philosophy.
Before ALSA, one would open audio devices just like files, acquire audio data just like reading files, play audio just like writing files. ALSA went the Redmond way, one different API for each different type of data.
The problem with KDE is that even if you install kde-base or kde-core, you still get loads of apps. Look at Gnome's: clean, uncluttered and ready for you to add your own. That's why I wont install kde; it wont let me choose what I want or don't want.
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
People would notice when all the Mach messaging stopped working. It would break a lot of things. You would also have to find a way to emulate the I/O Kit Framework for interacting with devices, and then there's all the little additional features like volfs that provide access to information that the higher level bits use in file handling. Far from nobody noticing, IMHO, it would be a royal pain in the backside to make any other OS kernel even marginally usable (unless that kernel provides at minimum some sort of Mach messaging emulation like the NetBSD folks were working on). It would, however, be an interesting experiment.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Linux / Unix
Sorry, it's common parlance in Plan 9 world. However, I didn't know it was so insular until your post.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Do you ever even read any posts? Rliegh stated clearly that the kernel is XNU which is... fuck it read it yourself.
There ain't no FreeBSD kernel in OS X. Got it? It's the userland, process model, the networks stack and the virtual file system that was taken from BSD, but the kernel and drivers are heavily influenced by Mach.
There are two rules for success:
1. Never tell everything you know.
In that line of argument, the Linux kernel is GNU HURD, because it ended up being a replacement for the then never delivered GNU HURD kernel, for the GNU OS.
There are two rules for success:
1. Never tell everything you know.
Because when you run 32 bit apps in a 64 bit OS, many of the libraries which those apps link with need to be 32 bit. Firefox links with GTK+ for example, so you end up with 32 bit Gtk+ libraries, and all of its dependancies as well as their 64 bit libraries for your desktop loaded at the same time. It's wasteful. And when I load my 32 bit browser, the theming doesn't work. It's a pain in the ass like I said.
"Why rewrite a new GTK 3 from the ground up, especially given one of the goals of a new GTK would be QT-like theming engine that is easier to deal with, when it already exists?"
A) Gtk+ 3 is *NOT* a rewrite. It's the removal of a bunch of hold-over shit from Gtk+ 1.x that hasn't been relevant in 10 years, along with the addition of a canvas/scene graph and the sealing of object structures (to allow for forward maintainability for many years to come).
B) Gtk+ is written in C for a reason. C Libraries are compatible with pretty much every language through a series of bindings. And Gtk+ 3 will only make this easier with GObject-Introspection and real properties for all of the available struct elements. This will bring Gtk+ up to the dynamic capabilities of C#/Java, beyond that of what's possible with C++.
C) One of the new goals is NOT to make theming anything like QT's. That's a side-project and can completely be done without a change in ABI. A new theme API is under discussion, but will not require 3.x to make it happen, even if it coincides with it (or Gtk+ 2.16, whichever happens first).
All-in-all, do your research.
Yeah the ironic thing was that Apple already had an MKLinux port for their Macintosh systems, and all they really needed to do was integrate the Mac OS GUI with MKLinux and then just use the OpenStep enhancements because they too are open sourced like MKLinux and could have saved the money they used to buy out Next and bring Steve Jobs back and just do it all better by themselves.
Instead they got Steve Jobs and Next and a much more bigger and bloated operating system than they expected to get.
The other option, besides buying up Be Inc. was to license AROS and then build Carbon and Mac OS systems on top of that as it is already object oriented and based on the AmigaOS that IBM licensed from Commodore to give OS/2 2.0 an object oriented WPS system as Commodore got there already in 1985 before anyone else did, and Apple was basically doing the same thing with OSX that Commodore did with AmigaDOS/Workbench in 1985.
The Amiga was already object oriented even going back to its 1970's roots as the Atari Lorianne project that was basically an Atari 2600 mod to turn the Atari 2600 into an object oriented GUI computer, but the Atari 400/800 projects put Lorianne on the back burner until Commodore bought out the team in the 1980's. The Amiga project predated the Apple Lisa project, and the Lorianne/Amiga team offered Apple to buy them out first, but gave Steve Jobs his idea for the Lisa computer (and later the Macintosh) and he told them no, and visited Xerox's PARC to get some more good ideas.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Does Ubuntu really install Adobe's Flash player by default? I certainly don't remember seeing it in any Ubuntu I've installed.
Even so, it's not relatively trivial for me to fix the problem, and I have some experience writing C code on Linux. (I did it most recently not more than ten minutes ago.) Adobe's binary blob crashes. Unless you have magic powers, you can't reliably "fix" that without the source code.
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Gnash actually does a pretty good job with youtube most of the time. And I've been able to play some of the older flash games as well.
It sucks in the sense that it's not completed, but they did manage to replicate the original crashing randomly on flash pages.
At present, it's the only way of getting flash on FreeBSD for amd64. I believe that flash still hasn't been ported to Linux on amd64 either. But not really using Linux, I'm far less sure of that.
Gnash your teeth. Gnash doesn't work for web sites that test for and require the absolute latest Flash release, but it seems to work well enough for YouTube. It's what I'm using at home with Firefox on Ubuntu Hardy.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Um, Ubuntu has the exact same kind of networking that Windows has. You can right click on a folder, and select "Share Folder". It pops up a box asking if you want SMB or NSF. SMB IS windows networking. Select it, and one of two things will happen. If you already have Samba installed, it you will have a "Windows" share. If you don't have it installed, Ubuntu will install it, and THEN you will have a "Windows" share. For the client, all you have to do is go to the "Places" pulldown that is always on your task bar, and select "Network". You will see the "Windows" shares, just like on an actual Windows machine.
Seriously, the process to share files under Ubuntu is almost exactly the same as in Windows. You clearly just don't WANT to be able to share files under it.
I get that a lot, actually. Depending on the theme I'm using and whether I'm using KDE or Gnome (both with Compiz fusion), I get people saying either "So that's what Vista looks like... I really like it!" or "Wow. I've never used OSX before, but that looks cool".
:-)
None of them know what a "Linux" is, so I don't bother clarifying
Equally often people will ask what the hell that is, of course.
Ubuntu Linux tops 8 million users.
That's just Ubuntu. Not that it matters, I just want the number of Linux users to go higher regardless of what the actual number is right now.
I imagine the number is shrinking in the face of the fact that OSX is so well done.
You think an OS with a pre-loaded dock which is still tied to overpriced hardware should be outdoing a completely free OS which can have a dock as well as a hundred number of other ways of starting programs? I agree that certain things need better streamlining on Linux believe me, but I don't agree with your statement if only Linux had actual consumer choice behind it and visibility. Even though it may sound cliche that doesn't mean it's not true, I largely blame Microsoft's business practices for this. I think many consumers would choose the much cheaper Linux option, if they had the choice presented. I just disagree on that one point, but appreciate your criticism.
About ALSA though, I still don't understand why it's getting so much hate when Pulseaudio has been adopted by many of the "biggest" distros and is available of course for anyone to install. From Wikipedia: In a typical installation scenario under Linux, the user configures ALSA to use a virtual device provided by PulseAudio. Thus, applications using ALSA will output sound to PulseAudio, which then uses ALSA itself to access the real sound card. PulseAudio also provides its own native interface to applications that want to support PulseAudio directly, as well as a legacy interface for ESD applications, making it suitable as a drop-in replacement for ESD. So, perhaps you should take a look at PA's API then. ^^ Would be nice to have a few standardized audio APIs though which could be used with any sound server, but for now the sound servers are the ones being flexible and modular by being able to communicate with all these different APIs, like PA can, so that's better than nothing.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
But how far did MkLinux get? I just checked that site, and it's still the same as it was nearly 8 years ago. Sure, the updated dates are the same, but they never did even come out with a 1.0 release.
I actually ran MkLinux on some old Apple computers about 10 years ago, and it worked pretty well. (About 100x more reliably than Mac OS 9 of the same vintage which just crashed all the time on the same machines). However it has to be said that MkLinux was slow, something I attributed at the time to the overhead of Linux having to do everything on top of the Mach "not-very-micro"-kernel.
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
There is also the licensing issue, if you want to develop a propietry (or even opensource but not GPL compatible) application then you can't use QT unless you pay trolltech a load of money.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
You can do this now with Gears. For those of you not familiar with Gears, it's a browser add-on available for Firefox, IE, Safari, and Google Chrome. It adds extra functionality to browsers which will hopefully turn into standards in the future.
The latest version of the YouTube multi-file uploader uses Gears to do this. You can also look at an example implementation of a multi-file uploader on the Gears Sample Applications page.
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.