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."

Comments

Interesting.

[DoctorDyna]

Since the summary mentioned it first, I've always been curious as to the logistics behind having OS X released as a desktop environment. *shrug* who knows, might be interesting.

Re:Interesting.

[IANAAC]

I have a friend who is a die hard Mac fan. I don't really know that much about Macs, other than what people who use them (all fans) tell me.

The other day though, he needed to chop up an audio file and didn't know what to do on his Mac. I didn't know either, but I do know how to do it with Audacity on Linux. So he sent me the file and then sat down with me as I did what he wanted. His only comment was "Wow, that's so easy on Linux". Granted, what he was seeing that was easy was in fact Audacity, not Linux, and I'm sure there is an easy to use app under Mac, but it's nice to see that, although Desktop Linux is constantly getting railed on, once someone not exposed to it actually sits down and sees what can be done, they're not intimidated by it.

Re:Interesting.

[am 2k]

Well, the UI does suck, but when I have the choice between a sucky UI and not being able to do the task at all...

Flash content

[Javi0084]

How about paying someone to fix Flash? It's what made me go back to Windows.

Re:Flash content

[Creepy Crawler]

Are you serious?

Flash is one of the first things I DISABLE on a browser. I have it installed, only as a last resort kind of stuff.

If some casual site wants flash, I leave the site. And those flash ads just dont work. That's a plus in my book.

Re:Flash content

[SanityInAnarchy]

Unfortunately, there are a great many things Flash does for which there are no alternatives, open or otherwise.

Let me give you a recent, stupid example: We want to let users upload a bunch of things at once. We have three options:

1: Build something using multiple file upload fields. (This could be done elegantly -- by hiding one as soon as it's set, and generating a new one.) In other words, we force the user to select each file individually, and click browse again -- and the files can't start uploading until they've all been selected.

2: Accept zipfiles. Extra work for us (admittedly not much), and extra work for them.

3: Use Flash. Not only can they select more than one file in the open dialog (ctrl+click, shift+click, ctrl+a, etc), but as soon as they select one, we can start uploading it.

I want to use open alternatives. I hate Flash more than... I'm not a very hateful person, but Flash makes me homicidal. But even something as simple as that, there's an advantage to using Flash.

Re:Flash content

[Anonymous Coward]

3: Use Flash. Not only can they select more than one file in the open dialog (ctrl+click, shift+click, ctrl+a, etc), but as soon as they select one, we can start uploading it.

Are you developing malware? Why would a file start to download simply due to a user highlighting it (aka Select)? Until the confirmation button is pressed, you should take no action on the selection. THanks for giving another reason why Flash is a buggy, insecure POS.

Quite a broad range of things to improve

[Captain Spam]

X, OpenGL, Gtk, Qt, GNOME and KDE

Frankly, that's a considerable amount of work he's planning on hiring up for. This intrigues me greatly, to be honest. And, with any luck, this all comes back to the community so that not-Ubuntu users can get in on it, too.

Though I give it five minutes before we hear complaints that they're not helping out some obscure toolkit or DE. :-)

Re:Quite a broad range of things to improve

[Enderandrew]

Mark suggested himself that maybe Gnome could/should run on QT. With the Gnome crowd wanting to move away from GTK 2 and break compatibility anyways, I say now or never.

People should be seriously looking at the merits of such a move.

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?

Why Not?

[jav1231]

"Why not? After all, Mac OS itself is based on FreeBSD. Desktop Linux's future is starting to look brighter."

As long as you have people literally in stand-offs against each other based on QT vs. GTK, Gnome vs. KDE, and the merits of this distro over that, then no. It won't become as seemless. Why? Because a lot of good programmers are tied up in projects that simply don't move the ship forward. They only decorate a room on the ship. Hey, I love Linux. Adore it! Maybe the problem is until Linux geeks get laid more, they simply won't bother to take time to smell the flowers: i.e. pay any attention to the end-user's experience.

MacOS could be based on RiscOS

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

for all that it mattered. BSD was free and worked, in 1986. That's why Jobs - when he solicited his engineer's choice - was told to use BSD 4.

MacOS is "based" on NeXT - which was derived from extending the Smalltalk-like model of Objective C to a whole series of desktop and application frameworks.

You see, Jobs and his guys were SO blown away by the GUI at PARC, that they missed the object revolution, used to create it. They were all determined to do this again, the 'right' way, without saddling Mac/Lisa compatibility to the horse.

That got engineered on later ;-)

You want further illustration of this argument? Try managing an OSX workgroup from the network with existing BSD and opensource. You effectively manage the POSIXy parts of the system, while having almost no policy or configuration management of the Finder/Application experienc through which much of the Mac user interacts. You could - in theory, with the sources available, swap a modern Linux distro under there instead of the hybrid BSD. Almost no one would notice.

Re:MacOS could be based on RiscOS

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Well, my vague recollection is that what killed microkernel performance in the 80's was the overhead of constant/multiple context switches (i.e. reloading MMU TLB's and blowing caches). There's been a lot of progress on the hardware side in the last 20 years. That's 10+ cycles of doubling transistor density. So what you have now that you didn't have in the 80's is the capability to use a small percentage of the CPU transistors for lowering the context switch overhead (which would have blown the much smaller transistor budget in the 80's) and (relatively) massive 2nd and 3rd level caches that carry across context switches. In the 80's you could do virtualization in VM on IBM mainframe because they had a much bigger transistor budget than contemporary microprocessors like the 80386, 68K, or early RISC. Now that kind of VN support that required multiple chips is available integrated into AMD64, and Intel's VT equivalent.

Re:MacOS could be based on RiscOS

[Orion Blastar]

Actually MkLinux + OpenStep = GNUStep on your favorite Linux distro. It is fun to try out and develop for.

Gnome + KDE

[InlawBiker]

I keep wondering when Gnome and KDE will ever join forces and do some real damage. But every time I wonder that out loud somebody smacks me down, as though I'm asking the English and German to join forces against tooth decay. I guess it's smack-down time again.

Re:Gnome + KDE

[idonthack]

The two environments take entirely opposite approaches to design:

• Gnome assumes the user is confused and tries to help them.
• KDE assumes the user is capable and lets them do whatever they want.

They are both an equally valid approach, but the target demographics are incompatible. It would be stupid to try and combine them.

Re:Gnome + KDE

[Creepy Crawler]

Back in KDE2, I loved it. Used it all the time. I couldnt stand GTK1 apps, like Gnome.

Fast forward to 2 weeks ago. I downloaded Kubuntu and tried it on a desktop that uses 100% linux-happy hardware. It felt worse than Vista in terms of bloat and yuck. I cant precisely describe it, but that feeling of "waaaay overboard" came to mind.

Gnome is clean and crisp, and doesnt get in the way. Ubuntu "approved apps" just work with no fiddling and gunk. That's they they're approved.. for the user experience. One can always download QT and other lib based programs. They just dont have the same feel.

Ubuntu with Gnome feels like a Mac, without the "We dont allow you to do what we dont want you to do" stuffy mac experience. I can get work done and be happy.

Re:Gnome + KDE

[BizarreDC]

I also have to disagree. Have you used OSX and Gnome ? There are some startling similarities between the two which leads me to think, as so many people love OSX including Linux and Windows users (the opposite is not so common) maybe there is a place for Gnome. I also have to add I've been using Linux for servers for around 10 years now and I've tried running KDE (including the latest incarnations) and enlightenment (wish it was a cool as I always perceived it to be) many times and always to my shame resorted back to windows. It was not until Ubuntu came to the scene with Gnome that I finally managed to make the switch on all my desktops.

Re:Gnome + KDE

[demachina]

"Millions of people disagree with you"

I'm a little skeptical there are actually millions of people even using Linux on their desktops and I imagine the number is shrinking in the face of the fact that OSX is so well done. If you split those in half between Gnome and KDE I imagine you would be down to hundreds of thousands of people who agree or disagree with him. Then further trim the number by the hundreds of thousands of Linux desktop users who probably have no strong opinion on the religious wars between Gnome and KDE. You will probably be left with maybe a hundred thousand fanatics who will wage an endless religious war on the subject while OSX wins the desktop war for discriminating users, and Windows will continue to win with people who aren't very discriminating or play games on their PC. About the only hope Linux has on the desktop is in countries like China and Brazil which hate the U.S. and its corporations enough that they don't want their PC's owned by Microsoft or Apple.

Just to prove I'm one of those doomed religious fanatics I'd have to agree with the guy that started this thread, that while GNOME has some nice work in it in places, for the most part GTK is really poor foundation to build a GUI on and GNOME ends up being a pretty poor GUI due to its weak foundation. Its really sad Qt wasn't put under a license similar to Freetype way back when, because if it had Linux would be light years ahead of where it is today on the desktop. Though as another thread here hit the nail on the head, ALSA is such a horrible audio API it is also driving a bunch of nails in the coffin.

I've always had a strong suspicion Miguel is a Microsoft mole who has been doing a really awesome job of insuring Linux will never be any good on the desktop by poisoning it from within. If I was Bill Gates I'd sure be paying Miguel a small fortune under the table to do all the damage he's done to the Linux desktop over the years.

ALSA Drivers Please!!

[Anonymous Coward]

As an audio software developer, I have tried several times to make and port programs to Linux.

Basically, you never dare to request anything other than the default config from an alsa driver. Trying different sample rates, formats or channel configs can cause anything from an unhelpful error code to a segfault (I kid you not).

So it's hard to take Linux seriously in this context.
ALSA is a roadblock, due to being "good enough", but it's nowhere near good.

Re:Simple start

[bendodge]

Does this Flash problem everyone gripes about exist in only in GNOME or something? I am using Kubuntu 8.04 KDE 4.1 and Flash seems to work just as well as in XP.

Mark Shuttleworth is...

[Brain Damaged Bogan]

the uberGeek. We should all aspire to be like that guy, he's worth millions but he chooses to give back to the community by paying for FOSS development out of his own pocket. Sure, Canonical is a business and I'm sure the publicity and improvements he's paying for will help get some more license fees, but the geek points he's scoring are worth so much more

**Geek points not redeemable for any cash value.

No Reason Why Not

[reallocate]

There's no reason Shuttleworth can't deliver something on par with OS X. All he needs to do is concentrate on functionaliy, usability, and marketability, and not worry that much about ideology. I.e., the same things Apple worries about.

The market does not care how software is writen, it just cares about what it does and how it looks.

Re:Stop saying that Mac OS is based on FreeBSD.

[MrHanky]

Yes, the only difference is that it has a radically different architecture. Apart from that, and most of the code, it's the same.

Re:Why do people go on about how great Mac OSX is?

[serviscope_minor]

This is not a troll.

It's *not* that great. It's slow, crashy and overcomplicated. It's got an ugly, messy desktop environment and it doesn't come with any decent usable software. It's got this weird browser that doesn't render stuff, doesn't have AdBlock and which usually gets replaced with Firefox. It can't play back most videos or music files without expensive shareware. It doesn't even have a usable text editor!

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.

Yes. 100% agree. Almost. I also find it slow, crashy and overcomplicated.

The DVD player crashes on bad DVDs easily, often locking up the GUI. Worse if you put a DVD in from the wrong region.

The GUI is horrible at arranging large numbers of windows. It works (ish) for macos style, but really badly if you work in X11 a lot. A proper window manager (ed fvwm2) does a much better job. I hear the latest version finally got virtual desktops...

And yes, the text editor stinks. Pretty much any modern Linux comes with vim of some sort installed by default.

Media files are a right pain. On linux, it's just an "mplayer" away from working. On OSX, not so. Unless you use mplayer. Except it doesn't sync video right and you get tearing.

I agree that ubuntu is already better than OSX. I would take an ubuntu install any day over an OSX install. Not that ubuntu isn't collecting brokenness in interesting ways, but I agree. Don't make anothe macos clone. I know how and where to get the original one and I don't want it.