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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. ;_;
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.
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.
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.