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

[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]

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

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".

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 using an Ubuntu logo?

[MonsterTrimble]

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

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>

..do not see major strategic changes..

[nurb432]

Famous last words we have all heard before.

Soo.....

[crazyvas]

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

Oww, ouch, OWW, stop the beating!

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:Maybe Jane will understand

[selven]

I 3 Ubuntu more than most people

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