Shuttleworth To Step Down As Canonical CEO In 2010

LinuxScribe writes "In a blog announcement today, Canonical Founder and CEO Mark Shuttleworth revealed he will be stepping down from his CEO role to be replaced by current COO Jane Silber. Both execs do not see major strategic changes on the horizon. Silber's official blog and Linux.com each have more details on how the change will be implemented."

Comments

Thanks Mark

[Abreu]

Linux operating systems are better thanks to you and your contributions.

Re:Thanks Mark

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet everything but Ubuntu sucks even worse. I mean, if you're looking for something that doesn't require manual configuration of everything. Gentoo and its ilk are the best thing around if you 1) know what you're doing, and 2) have time to read docs and fiddle with things. If you just want a fucking OS that gets out of the way and lets you do your work...well, my recent experience with OpenSUSE and Fedora has been that they're horrendously broken. Debian's package manager is incredibly annoying if you've used something nice like Portage or Paludis. Ubuntu typically works, does WiFi networking the way it fucking obviously should be done, and allows easy addition of third-party package repositories.

There are plenty of idiot devs and stupid decisions to go around in all major open source projects, but Ubuntu has managed to scrape together something that I can install on my laptop and quickly set up as a platform for Android development. Which, sadly, is a hell of a lot more than you can say about other distros.

Re:Thanks Mark

[jim_v2000]

> I mean, if you're looking for something that doesn't require manual configuration of everything.

OpenSUSE? Mandriva? PCLinuxOS?

Re:Thanks Mark

[Anonymous Coward]

typical Linux elitism. ooohhh good for you, you run a distro thats 4x harder to install and keep running, especially for noobz. Ubuntu is the best hope for Linux to make a dent in the home market. just cause youre super cool and run gentoo doesnt mean that Ubuntu is shit.

Re:Thanks Mark

[ChrisMP1]

No, the secure repos are to make sure the packages are coming from where you think they are from. Ubuntu is still an operating system - it operates. If the user tells it to do something, such as download from an alternate repository, it can and should.

Re:Thanks Mark

[clang_jangle]

You must not be using it for anything but web browsing and email. I regularly test new versions of ubuntu, kubuntu, and xubuntu for some users I have to support. Kubuntu is still utter krap! I found it to be literally unusable on my test machine (Dell inspiron e1505 laptop).

Re:Thanks Mark

[clang_jangle]

I wouldn't be so fast to cry "elitism". Those of us who already know our way around *nix and have tried Ubuntu (or openSuse, PCBSD, etc) have been struck by how crappy our fave OS is once it gets dumbed down with automatic everything. Perhaps it's unavoidable.
I'd rather see my non-geek associates using dumbed-down, buggy ubuntu than windows, but let's face it -- those of us who use and love Debian, FreeBSD, etc just can't help but feel disappointed by the fact that we can't share our experience of vastly superior performance via these distros aimed at non-geeks. And it's a shame that for a lot of users there is no compelling argument to switch from windows. From their perspective, "it ain't broke, why fix it?".

I know, I know... "-1, Uncomfortable Truth"

Re:Thanks Mark

[master5o1]

I did exactly the same thing after hearing that the ugly gnome-shell will or might be default on Gnome 3.0. I initially installed KDE 4.3.x to get used to kde so that when gnome-shell was default I didn't have to then. Just the other day did I reinstall with Kubuntu to keep my system client -- no gnome for me anymore.

Re:Thanks Mark

[HarrySquatter]

He said it was the "best thing around" if

1) know what you're doing, and 2) have time to read docs and fiddle with things.

Nice quote mining attempt though.

Re:Thanks Mark

[HarrySquatter]

And it's a shame that for a lot of users there is no compelling argument to switch from windows. From their perspective, "it ain't broke, why fix it?".

Why is that a shame? Why can't they just use the OS they want rather than being told that they must use something else?

Re:Thanks Mark

[daveime]

No, the secure repos are to make sure the packages are coming from where you think they are from

Funnily enough, a URL serves much the same purpose. Unless I'm not actually downloading HTML content from Slashdot, and this is all a Microsoft conspiracy to infect me with the latest virus.

Re:Thanks Mark

[clang_jangle]

Because it means I have to support windows, and it means that those of us who live far from Silicone Valley will probably always have day jobs forcing us to support windows. Of course OTOH, so long as windows is the de facto standard OS it also means there's a lot more work, so it does have it's plus and minus sides. :P

Re:Thanks Mark

[HarrySquatter]

So they should switch their OS to make your life easier? That's rather asinine.

Re:Thanks Mark

[cptnapalm]

Ubuntu works really well for what it is designed to do: be an easy to setup and use Linux system.

I've got it on my desktop and laptop currently. On the laptop, I was going to go with FreeBSD, but it wouldn't install properly. I then tried to install Arch; it was a no go. Gentoo? Nope. Sabayon sounded interesting but unfortunately the installer crapped out. Ubuntu? After a simple, easy install, it works like a charm.

There are annoyances, like having no luck getting wireless networking going strictly from a command line which I had no problem with on my late, lamented UltraSparc laptop with OpenBSD.

But Ubuntu is the only one that would install without any problems.

Re:Thanks Mark

[armanox]

Guess you should thank Red Hat and Feodra for that WiFi manager, they wrote it afterall....

Re:Thanks Mark

[Anonymous Coward]

so again because you can compile all the shit you need to make Debian run like a champ means ubuntu sucks? not buying it. thats wonderful that you are that good with linux, but most people arent. Ubuntu works great for most people, i rarely hear anyone complaining about it except people like you who want credit for using debian and being smarter than all the morons using the only user friendly distro. call me a noob all you want, i like that i can pop a Linux Mint CD into a new piece of hardware and have it just work.

Re:Thanks Mark

[HarrySquatter]

Except he already said they were perfectly fine with the system as it was.

Re:Thanks Mark

[Delkster]

Apparently Ubuntu's focus towards ease of use has been good enough to add competition and drive other distributions to change their thinking and design towards something friendlier to a non-technical user (and, I dare claim, without sacrificing friendliness towards technical users). That way Ubuntu has, at least indirectly, made Linux desktop/laptop systems better.

Re:Thanks Mark

[kuzb]

A lot of the problems would go away people just ditched KDE GNOME has matured quite a bit by now. After being a staunch KDE supporter for many years, I installed GNOME recently, and am very glad that I did! It's a much nicer environment than KDE currently is. The integration between the apps is really good. It's almost better than Windows and Mac OS X, and is a lot better than KDE. The GNOME apps all work seamlessly with one another. It feels really responsive, too. I think this has to do with GTK+. It's just a better toolkit than Qt is. After using GNOME for a couple of weeks, I don't think that I can go back to KDE again. KDE just has too many bugs, not enough integration between the apps, and just plain feels sloppy these days. --- DID YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE?

Re:Thanks Mark

[petermgreen]

No. That's the purpose of an SSL certificate. URLs serve as a means to request information from a known source. They do nothing to verify where it's from.
However in the case of repositries for a distribution SSL is a suboptimal soloution for two main reasons.

Firstly implementing SSL creates a LOT of extra work for the server. That means either more processing power on the servers or special SSL accelerators either of which means a substantial increase in cost for mirror operators.

Secondly most users (at least on debian which is where secure apt originated from, I don't use ubuntu but I expect things are the same on that side of the fence) get thier distribution package from third party mirrors. If the mirror you use becomes malicious (either through being hacked or through a malicious admin) then ssl doesn't really help you.

With secure apt compromising the mirror is not sufficient, they actually have to compromise the master keys used to sign the package lists.

Re:Thanks Mark

[JSG]

Nonsense. This is the state of IT. A machine needs configuring. Just works - pah, it does not happen because no application can "just work" for everyone.

I'm happy with my WiFi config - I just edit /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf and add another stanza (I use Gentoo) but I'm also happy with the Network Manager way of doing things - [K]Ubuntu, *SuSE et al. You have the choice but it still needs configuring. On Windows, you have a fight between the OS management or the rather large vendor provided widget - hillarious.

Package management - I can't describe any package manager as brain dead. They all work pretty well. I like Portage but I also have to wedge on eix to make it usable. I have used rug 'n' zypper and various other RPM based things and they work. *buntu seems to also just work as well. So what is the problem? If you don't like a package manager then don't use it. I don't like MSI or indeed any Windows package manager and hence I don't use them, except under duress 8)

I like choice.

"1) know what you are doing" - if you don't then you should stick to crayons.
"2) have time to read docs..." - go on a course or read up on it - you can't use the Force with any application, regardless of OS or complexity. You need to learn about it somehow.

Re:Thanks Mark

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. They're not "fine", they're lazy and arrogant. They learned all they ever plan to learn years ago and now if their sorry little bag of tricks doesn't work it's "the damn computer is acting up again", and "where's that damn IT dork when I need him?" We are the janitors of the white collar world, and making us deal with windows is just adding insult to injury. Yet most of us truly love working with computers, so like battered women we stick with it.

Re:Thanks Mark

[JackieBrown]

Debian's package manager is incredibly annoying if you've used something nice like Portage or Paludis.

I don't believe Ubuntu has strayed to the point of having a different package manager

Re:Thanks Mark

[couchslug]

"I'd rather see my non-geek associates using dumbed-down, buggy ubuntu than windows, but let's face it -- those of us who use and love Debian, FreeBSD, etc just can't help but feel disappointed by the fact that we can't share our experience of vastly superior performance via these distros aimed at non-geeks."

There is a point of diminishing returns.

Ubuntu works far better than Windows for what I want, is lighter, faster, and easier to install than Windows, and if it fails to serve me I'll install something different. The "dumb" bits are easily dealt with. making Ubuntu a convenient way to get Debianesque goodness without the hassle of a traditional Debian installation and configuration.

Re:Thanks Mark

[selven]

And they're be there to be simple and convenient, and in this regard they blow conventional Windows-style installation out of the water.

Re:Thanks Mark

[Penguinclaw]

Boring.... Nothing to do AT ALL with the post. You are just trying to incite arguments...

Re:Thanks Mark

[selven]

Because they probably don't actually prefer Windows to Ubuntu, they're just too lazy to try out all the options. They have a right to be lazy, but it's still a shame that they are.

Re:Thanks Mark

[Penguinclaw]

Troll

Re:Thanks Mark

[Just Justin]

I still don't understand this argument of "vastly superior performance" with the hard to set up vs the easy to set up distros. I've been using ubuntu for a whole 2 days now. Not very long I know, but what's so much better with those other distros? Firefox opens and is useable in seconds. Openoffice opens and is useable in seconds. My computer seems a little slow from power on till the point I get to select ubuntu from the bootlist, but after that the os is up and useable within 30-45 seconds.

Ubuntu's pretty nice so far. The install was the easiest I've ever experienced. I've played around with linux distros over the years but have never kept any on my system for more than a week. Usually something doesn't work, I spend a few days trying to fix it. Then I say screw it and go back to xp where everything was already working. I mean really, Ubuntu is kicking XP's ass right now. I tested my printer. Just plugged it in and it recognized not just a generic printer, but the specific printers manufacturer and model. With XP it just recognizes a USB connection, then after 5 minutes gives up and show the little "unknown hardware" icon in the device manager. I've got a little bluetooth usb stick. With XP, it doesn't recognize it properly and I have to install all this crap off of the cd that came with it. With Ubuntu, it just recognizes it and gives me bluetooth capabilities within seconds.

The only issue I'm having with it right now is that it doesn't seem to see my SATA HD at all. I also haven't tested out my webcams yet but I hardly use them anyway. Also there seems to be no trace of my wireless card, but I had that disabled in XP since I never used it anyway.

First distro I tried was Debian. This was back around 2003. I'm sure things have changed now, but back then with the installer, it asked too many questions. It would ask you where your mouse was and then it seemed to give you a list of 20 options. Same with the keyboard, sound card, video card, and network card. I could read the list and feel confident with my selections for some of the options but not for all of them. If I remember right, after it turned on and booted up it just left you at the command prompt. I had to ask in an irc room why all the screenshots show a desktop and why all I saw was just a black screen with "login:". Someone told me I had to type startx after logging in and that seemed to work. No network connection, no sound, and the highest resolution I could go to was 640x480.

Next one I tried was Mandrake. I think this was version 8 or 9. Still around 2003-2004. Anyways that one installed more like ubuntu did today. It did let you chose which packages / programs to install. After installing it, everything worked except for the sound. I couldn't get the sound issue figured out after about a week so that was it for Mandrake.

I'm not too sure why everyone says windows XP is a resource hog compared to linux. It looks like I'm using 325mb out of 2gigs of ram on ubuntu right now. On XP that might be 500-600mb of ram used, but performance wise you can't tell the difference. Plus the ram usage builds linearly. I mean, I'd imagine if I was using 700mb of ram on ubuntu that I'd be using 900-1000mb of ram on XP. CPU wise, both operating systems seem to leave 99% of the cpu at idle power. I understand that if you only have running what you want running, that the computer has less to process and can get its task done quicker and more efficiently. But there is a line where you just can't tell or measure the difference anymore.

Maybe you meant reliability and not having the OS crash on you? For the 6 hours a day I'm on my computer it usually never crashed with XP. Now of course most of those linux people talk about having their computers running for weeks to months at a time without a restart. That's great for a server type setup, but that's just an enormous waste of energy for the home desktop user.

Re:Thanks Mark

[Anonymous Coward]

"Heavy lifting", as in doing work that taxes even the most powerful systems -- like serving high volumes of users, building entire distros from modified source for nightly snapshots, high-end pro multimedia production work, etc. The kind of work that makes life worth living in our hi tech society. No-one who does these things is using Ubuntu, openSuse, or Mandriva. "Desktop distros" are by nature meant for casual users, and are not so capable for production use. They are the linux equivalent of XP or 7 (vs MS Server). You could modify any of those for serious production use, but it's a lot more practical to just hire educated IT people to work with the proven heavyweight distros that can do it out of the box, like Debian, *BSD, etc.

Re:Thanks Mark

[mahadiga]

3rd World thanks Mark for https://shipit.ubuntu.com/login

Re:Thanks Mark

[hughperkins]

You can do that using wpa_supplicant. It's less scary than it sounds. Get rid of the existing wpa_supplicant process from /usr/share/dbus-1/services, then run:

wpa_supplicant -D wext -i ra0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf ... where ra0 is your wifi interface, and wext is invariant.

Add your networks to wpa_supplicant.conf ('man wpa_supplicant.conf').

You can control it and see what it's doing using:

wpa_cli -i ra0 status

I do agree with you though. Here are my thoughs on commandline vs gnome: Windows vs linux 'everything in linux can be scripted -> not really'

Re:Thanks Mark

[ZerdZerd]

Ubuntu is not dumbed down. It just got sensible defaults, so you don't have to configure everything.

Name one thing I can't do on Ubuntu that you can on your "un-dumbed down" Linux?

Re:Thanks Mark

[quadrox]

Based on my experience GP is more correct than Parent.

I used to hate KDE, but since the 4.3 release I must say it does a much better job of not getting in the way and just doing what it should do. The only thing that still bothers me that it takes releatively long to start up which makes it feel bloated (but not any more than gnome does). Although with my upgrade to an 77 that is hardly noticeable anymore (but an i7 should not be required to run a desktop environment well).

Re:Thanks Mark

[Anonymous Coward]

I can check development suite at the OpenSuse install

Good troll but you lost me there. Usually the process for any distro that isn't Debian based is:

1- Check a package
2- Click on install
3- Package gains critical mass and starts fusing iron atoms
4- Supernova
5- Massive package and system corruption

When that stops happening I might switch to another distro.

By the way, most of us that program at all, use C exclusively. Your deviated C++ ways are where they belong, together with Objective-C and Haskell in the massive yet solid repositories.

Re:Thanks Mark

[ld a,b]

In OpenBSD you would do:

# ifconfig wpi0 -wpa -wpapsk `wpa-psk network password`
# dhclient wpi0

The same commands you would use for a wired network ignoring wpa-specific options, which means you can find them in the same manpage. I'd love a Linux distribution with this level of user-friendliness.

Re:Thanks Mark

[quadrox]

After using gentoo for maybe three years I got fed up with all its drawbacks and tried to switch to ubuntu. Ubuntu was wonderful - everything worked pretty much out of the box and all was good.

But then came 8.04, and I have had nothing but trouble with ubuntu ever since. Sound problems, network problems (and not even wifi) and all sorts of minor bothers. It's not that I ran wierd hardware - it was all highend but fairly mainstream. All other distros I tried worked well on a technical/hardware level (but I felt they were crappy for various other reasons).

My parents and brothers have had the same experience with ubuntu as me. 7.04/7.10 was nice, but the the shit started hitting the fan.

So now I have gone and switched over to chakra/arch linux. Chakra works out of the box for the most part, but there are some configuration things you have to fiddle with (if you care). And its based on arch linux so any changes I need/want to make are bound to be simple and clear.

(My point is that none of the "major" distros work out for me - even ubuntu stinks lately. It takes a DIY distro to get a proper working system (for me at least.))

Re:Thanks Mark

[hughperkins]

Yeah, you can do something similar in debian too, at least you can put that in the /etc/network/interfaces file with a very similar syntax.

However, if you want to do anything other than connect to wpa, say: connect to a legacy wep system, or connect to an open wifi point, then that works less well.

Also, using wpa_supplicant directly is portable across other linux distributions, such as Redhat, whereas using the /etc/network/interfaces file is not.

Re:Thanks Mark

[AliasMarlowe]

Name one thing I can't do on Ubuntu that you can on your "un-dumbed down" Linux?

He can generate a kernel panic...

Re:Thanks Mark

[LordSnooty]

You need to learn about it somehow.

you need to learn that you are not the target market for Ubuntu. Are you happy for Linux to remain a niche product only used by people with careers in IT?

Re:Thanks Mark

[drinkypoo]

"1) know what you are doing" - if you don't then you should stick to crayons.

So, your argument is that you should have to be an IT professional to use a computer? Apple thinks you are very stupid. So do I. You should be able to use a computer without knowing much more than how to poke at it. You shouldn't necessarily be able to do anything with it, of course. But then, computers are finite.

Re:Thanks Mark

[Anonymous Coward]

Try WICD. You will need to uninstall Network Manager First. WICD also has a command line version.

and don't forget about iwconfig and ifconfig. I don't think Ubuntu installs them by default, but I could be wrong.

Re:Thanks Mark

[mhall119]

From what I read, the infected packages were on gnome-look.org, not a repository.

Ubuntu 9.10 makes it easier to add repositories, which contain signed packages, which you can trust as much as you trust the owner of the repository. This means that I can go to winehq.org and easily add their repository to my sources. It also means that if someone hacks into their repository server, and uploads a virus-laden package, it won't install on my system, because it wasn't signed by winehq.org.

Re:Thanks Mark

[DragonWriter]

No, the secure repos are to make sure the packages are coming from where you think they are from

Funnily enough, a URL serves much the same purpose.

A URL doesn't really do that, since hijacking a URL is trivial for anyone that sits between you and the intended server. (URLs are, in fact, one piece of the architecture of repositories, but signing keys are also used to assure the provenance of the data.)

Re:Thanks Mark

[mackyrae]

You can definitely use wireless from the CLI in Ubuntu if you know what you're doing. Which, well, that's how anything on the command line is: "if you know what you're doing." See also: "man 5 interfaces"

Re:Thanks Mark

[manifoldronin]

I wouldn't be so fast to cry "elitism". Those of us who already know our way around *nix and have tried Ubuntu (or openSuse, PCBSD, etc) have been struck by how crappy our fave OS is once it gets dumbed down with automatic everything. Perhaps it's unavoidable.

I think you are mixing up two different kinds of "dumbing it down". Compared to how some other OS chooses to dumb it down _and_ completely deny the user any access to the "inner mechanics", the way ubuntu (and most other distros to be fair) does it in most cases preserves the choice for manual tweaking. E.g., I never liked the Network Manager, so I simply got rid of it and went back to /etc/network, while still enjoying whatever other features that ubuntu did get right.

Not using an Ubuntu logo?

[WinterSolstice]

Why a Debian logo instead of the Ubuntu logo?

Re:Not using an Ubuntu logo?

[MonsterTrimble]

Because slashdot hasn't done a logo for them yet. It's only been 5 years after all...

Re:Not using an Ubuntu logo?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it's Debian's retarded love-child conceived after a drunken bender and unprotected sex with a mongoloid?

Re:Not using an Ubuntu logo?

[mister_playboy]

it's a lame attempt at being retro-cool, just like the retention of the Gates Borg icon for Microsoft.

They can screw with the slow-as-molasses Web 2.0 Javascript on a weekly basis, but downloading a icon from Wikipedia to use for Ubuntu would be too much work.

tag: giveubuntuanicon

Re:Not using an Ubuntu logo?

[Kjella]

Why a Debian logo instead of the Ubuntu logo?

Did you buy that uid because I'd normally say "you must be new here"...

Re:Not using an Ubuntu logo?

[gringer]

Did you buy that uid because I'd normally say "you must be new here"...

Anyone with a 6-figure UID is "new" on /.

Re:Not using an Ubuntu logo?

[Kjella]

Anyone with a 6-figure UID is "new" on /.

But Ubuntu is "newer" so my point was he's been here ever since it became possible to raise that question.

Re:Not using an Ubuntu logo?

[WinterSolstice]

LOL - I had just foolishly *assumed* that by now Slashdot would get their stuff together.

And sadly no, I'm not that new. I started in 2000 or so, finally registered when it became too hard to track my posts :) I'm just naive enough to think they will eventually figure it out :D

What are they up to now, 7 digits?

Re:Not using an Ubuntu logo?

[fm6]

Ubuntu is an offshoot of Debian. Not a fork, exactly, more like a companion:

http://www.ubuntu.com/community/ubuntustory/debian

Re:Not using an Ubuntu logo?

[Blakey Rat]

Slashdot hasn't made a new icon since like 2004. Even when they did the redesign a couple years ago, one of the requirements was to be compatible with all their existing (read: shitty) icons, because they were too fucking lazy to make new ones, and they don't care enough to hire someone to.

If you ever have a question about anything relating to Slashdot, just imagine what the laziest person on Earth would do and you'll have your answer.

Huh, didn't know...

[RobertB-DC]

And all this time I thought that the "canonical" executive for any open-source project was "Ty Coon, President of Vice".

Re:Huh, didn't know...

[julesh]

And all this time I thought that the "canonical" executive for any open-source project was "Ty Coon, President of Vice".

So is Shuttleworth now a non-canonical CEO?

Re:Huh, didn't know...

[yahwotqa]

Offtopic? Mods should really read GPL - I for one thought this post was funny.

Not leaving the project

[Meshach]

From the article he is not leaving the project (as the Summary sort of implies). He is switching his focus to product design, partnerships and customers.

Re:Not leaving the project

[Locutus]

thanks for summarizing and it sounds like a good move for the project.

LoB

Re:So uhm...

[rattaroaz]

I think this is a joke, but just in case, he is stepping down as CEO of Cannonical, not as SABDL of Ubuntu. So far, it looks like he will remain self appointed benevolent dictator for life, as he has made no announcements to the contrary that I saw.

Thank you

[Saija]

Mark for making possible a linux distro usable, friendly, and gather mainstream and users around the world, but i wonder if the poor quality of the late ubuntu incarnations(karmic, jaunty and that PulseAudio affair, i'm looking at you!) was something Mark was responsible(of some sorts), or at least, know of it, and i'm saying this as a former Ubuntu lover, i just loved and liked to polish, tune and debug to some extents some issues with this distro, but the adittion of that PulseAudio and the almost impossible task of remove it for the system make me switch, now i'm a OpenSuse user and i liked, now i can listen to amarok and youtube videos at the same time without the need to kill -9 some of them.
Again, thank you very much Mark for the past 3 years and i hope your new roles make this great distro return to his old quality.
</rant>

Re:Thank you

[PPalmgren]

If your writing style is any indication of your age, your enlightenment-era lawn might be the oldest on slashdot. I'll keep my distance.

Re:Thank you

[message144]

To be fair, a lot of the problems you mentioned were the result of upgrades, not clean installs.

Re:Thank you

[Cougar Town]

I wish people would give the whole PulseAudio issue a rest, for fuck sakes. This issue has been run-over like interstate road-kill.

The reasons that Ubuntu decided to go with PulseAudio have been clearly stated (see http://ossguy.com/?p=347 and the Ubuntu wiki entry it links to). I don't doubt that some users are having problems, but with any OS there are bound to be users who have problems with one thing or another. I have run Ubuntu Desktop on a wide variety of hardware and sound has just worked for me... I'm not really sure what I'm doing differently than anyone else.

Re:Thank you

[Saija]

I'm not a native english speaker by any means, as you could see, but i try to do my best with the few english skills i have, if that deserves to become me some kind of "keep him at distance" guy so be it.

Re:Thank you

[dmbasso]

These people that complain about form/syntax, disregarding completely the meaning/semantics, are pretty useless. But don't worry, the intended audience of your message was reached.

Btw, I very nice book recommendation involving this context (the superficiality of your critic): Zen & The Art of Bicycle Maintenance (odd title, but very nice book).

Re:Thank you

[rubycodez]

didn't notice audio problems in my Ubuntu machines. ha, some of us are more focused on tasks to not be running two multimedia apps at once. were you playing WoW at the same time too? kids these days.

Re:Thank you

[PPalmgren]

It was a joke. In the colonization & US revolution era, englishman used a ton of commas and it made it very hard to read and follow by today's standards. It is uncommon to see more than two or three commas in a sentence in english today, and you used 14. I was saying I'll stay away from your lawn b/c you write like a dinosaur ("get off my lawn" joke). Apparently it failed.

Re:Thank you

[blackest_k]

Pulseaudio might work on some systems but on others its broken to one extent or another. What really upsets people is that audio used to work fine and now it doesn't. /bin/sh -c "PULSE_SERVER=127.0.0.1 skype"

This allows Skype to use the system audio hardware just as well as it ever did.

Trouble is without this work around the internal microphone is a complete mystery to pulseaudio alsamixer knows its there and can switch it but pulseaudio can't.

I'm sure we will all feel better towards pulseaudio once its working properly but in the meantime its not working not in an alpha or a beta but in the release and there is no update yet.

and yes if your audio hardware us still working you did get lucky.

Re:Thank you

[Saija]

I was saying I'll stay away from your lawn b/c you write like a dinosaur ("get off my lawn" joke)

Hehehe ok, no problem, btw i'm currently 29 years old so i just wonder how much commas i'll be using when i got the "get off my lawn" age

Re:Thank you

[Saija]

I'll try to get it and give it a good few readings, thanks

Re:Thank you

[jonaskoelker]

but the adittion of that PulseAudio and the almost impossible task of remove it

apt-get remove --purge pulseaudio

Works perfectly on my box. YMMV.

..do not see major strategic changes..

[nurb432]

Famous last words we have all heard before.

Re: ..do not see major strategic changes..

[brainpicnic]

...but better than "he is leaving his position to spend more time with family and friends"...

Re: ..do not see major strategic changes..

[Kjella]

So what's the worst that could happen? They could start to suck... or go pay only like Red Hat did (yes, I know about Fedora but the earliest versions were nothing like RHL). At which point I'll check out Debian and OpenSuse and Mandriva and Fedora and maybe a few more and choose whichever sucks the least. The good stuff either comes from upstream or gets picked up by other distros, the distro is mostly who has the most polish right now, Linus and Gnome and KDE and OpenOffice and Firefox and whatnot will keep pushing out new releases regardless. If you're not committed, why worry about what might happen in the future? It works for me now, it probably will in the future but if it doesn't I'll handle it then, not now.

He is switching to customers and OEMs...

[Pecisk]

...which is all good and great, because he cares about end users - which matters most for Ubuntu Linux to succeed.

Soo.....

[crazyvas]

Will this event be labeled a "COO d'état" ?

Oww, ouch, OWW, stop the beating!

Re:Soo.....

[grcumb]

Will this event be labeled a "COO d'état" ?

No, not "a COO d'état," it will be "the COO d'état."

It is Canonical, after all.

Re:Soo.....

[Kjella]

No, not "a COO d'état," it will be "the COO d'état."

It is Canonical, after all.

I hereby promote you to bureaucrat grade 13.

Re:Soo.....

[grcumb]

No, not "a COO d'état," it will be "the COO d'état."

It is Canonical, after all.

I hereby promote you to bureaucrat grade 13.

Dammit, there goes any hope of a life outside this basement!

Re:So uhm...

[V!NCENT]

It was a joke ;)

Thanks for the information though.

Re:Jane Silber?

[Delkster]

Why would it be a guy's name? Haven't you heard of female CEOs?

Also, a Canonical blog post regarding the change says she's American.

Good

[Norsefire]

Shuttleworth is one of the biggest problems with Ubuntu. His focus on "usability" has left the OS in complete disarray; while the developers are busy fixing 100 little papercuts they're shipping a release with broken DNS resolving. What is less user-friendly: a poorly labeled checkbox in the installation screen or "breaking the internet"? Canonical and Ubuntu were good in the beginning, they righted the wrongs of Debian, brought Linux closer to the desktop and then threw all that away with some really bad decisions (update notifier popup, software update policy, shipping releases with very serious bugs). Hopefully with someone new in charge Ubuntu can try and become what it used to be, given that Shuttleworth's hubris seems to be the most major bug in Ubuntu at the moment.

Re:Good

[pinkushun]

Remember, Mark injected the 'usability' factor while the development community kept focus on technical issues. You can't scapegoat a prominent individual in a community project, because it's everyone involved that counts, even if they don't have a face on a blog somewhere.

Take for example the various Karmic regressions that left many users upset...
Me: "Sadly proprietary drivers make it hard for developers to create solid GNU/Linux drivers. Did you test your hardware on the beta? User feedback helps squashing bugs, before the final release."
User: "Um... No, why should I? It should just work."

That's not Mark's fault, or lack of decision on his part, but a real-world technical problem FOSS faces in the fight against, well, Free Open Source Software.

That will only happen when we shift from "Who's fault is it" to "What can I do to help?".

Re:Good

[True Grit]

they righted the wrongs of Debian

Debian wasn't doing anything *wrong*, merely different, because Debian was never focused on being a noob-friendly desktop Linux.

Maybe Jane will understand

[TheDarkener]

that shipping an LTS (Long Term Support) release doesn't mean "This release is just as buggy as all of the other releases were when they shipped, but we'll be updating security issues for longer". :) Don't get me wrong, I 3 Ubuntu more than most people, but this is just something that always irked me (especially since I run multiple production terminal server environments with Ubuntu LTS & LTSP)

Re:Maybe Jane will understand

[gringer]

Don't get me wrong, I 3 Ubuntu more than most people

You what Ubuntu? I'm all for Ubuntu when introducing people to Linux, (and 4 > 3) but I think I'll stick to Debian.

Re:Maybe Jane will understand

[ZosX]

Why not just run debian? I don't think a production server needs to be on the bleeding edge.....

Re:Maybe Jane will understand

[TheDarkener]

Debian stable and Ubuntu LTS are still years apart from each other as far as desktop usability goes, or at least the last time I checked that was the case..

Re:Maybe Jane will understand

[selven]

I 3 Ubuntu more than most people

Definitely. Most people I know only less than 3 it.

Re:Maybe Jane will understand

[Knuckles]

1. You're just being cute, but I'm still going to say it: if you had followed the LTS release cycles closely, you'd know it never was like that.
2. Read the Lucid release planning. Nice summary here: http://anotherubuntu.blogspot.com/2009/11/lucid-lynx-this-is-plan.html and you may also be interested in this http://fridge.ubuntu.com/node/1916 and this https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS

Re:Maybe Jane will understand

[ZosX]

That was my point exactly. I mean if you need newer libraries or something you can alway just upgrade the packages you need......

Re:Maybe Jane will understand

[mackyrae]

With Mark in charge the decision was made back in May to ship all the experimental stuff in 9.10 so it'd get an extra 6mo of testing before 10.04 LTS and to base 10.04 off of Testing instead of Unstable.

Re:Jane Silber?

[Nefarious Wheel]

Jane is a guy's name in South Africa?

"Since Jane joined the company, she and I have shared the load of coordinating between the leaders of all the key teams that make up Canonical."

Ooh, to be sure to be sure, there's a clue in that statement like it or not.

I can predict the success of Ubuntu based on one ?

[crhylove]

Dear Jane,

Will it still be an ugly Brown?

Thanks,
rhY

Re:He's a Class Act

[Rogue Haggis Landing]

he is a wonderful down to Earth man.

Except when he's in a Russian spacecraft.

On why usability *tends* to "dumb down" things

[jonaskoelker]

[...] struck by how crappy our fave OS is once it gets dumbed down with automatic everything. Perhaps it's unavoidable.

I think it's perfectly avoidable, except in practice ;)

Why does it happen? Priorities.

Ubuntu* wants to be "Just Works" for the most common usage scenarios. Debian** wants to be "Works well" for almost anything.

An emphasis on "Just Works" gives us Network Manager. It's easy to use; you just click on the essid label to connect to a wireless network, and it automatically does dhcp for you and all that nice stuff.

What it doesn't give you is the ability to say "connect to 'home-router' whenever you see it." You also can't say "Whenever you connect to 'work-wifi-net', run VPN client". This you can have from wpa_supplicant's roaming mode, but it means you have to hack /etc/network/interfaces and wpa_supplicant.conf.

But why? Because if "Just Works, easily" is your priority, you tend to not devote resources to making it work automatically with some extra fiddling in the corner cases, and instead devoting those resources towards making something else also "Just Work, easily" in the most common cases.

That's really the crucial issue, I think: priorities of goals determining the allocation of resources (mostly man hours), in Ubuntu's case away from making it "hacker"-friendly.

(*) and (**): It goes for other things than Ubuntu and Debian, I just use those as examples.

Look at gedit versus emacs; one is easy to learn to use, but limited in what it does. The other one does everything (and does it quite well IMNSHO), but takes a while to learn. One is focused on being easy to learn to use, the other on being easy to use effectively(!).

(Aside: I'm dead serious when I claim that having go-one-line-{up,down} bound to only the arrow keys makes you edit text slower, because you have to move your hands away from the letter keys to navigate. Emacs and vim both do the effective thing, at least if you put escape on caps lock, but it takes effort to discover.)

Also, technical people tend to want their computers to work exactly the right way. Most people will settle for "gets the job done" if it means they don't have to spend time learning how the "magic box" works. (not meant in a condescending way. A good friend of mine, avid gamer, calls technology he doesn't understand "magic" in a ha-ha-only-serious way.)