Ask Matt Asay About Ubuntu and Canonical

A week after the announcement that open source advocate and blogger Matt Asay is leaving Alfresco for Canonical, in the role of COO, Matt has agreed to answer your questions about his role at Canonical, his vision for the future of Ubuntu, or the prospects for open source as we begin to emerge from recession. Usual Slashdot interview rules apply. (Disclaimer: Matt is on the board of advisors for Slashdot's parent company, Geeknet.)

Comments

Juuuust switched to Zimbra

[Dunkirk]

I and my employer have been long-time Gentoo fans. We've recently switched almost everything over to Ubuntu. Also, I've just installed Zimbra at home. Because it's looking good, I am also in the process of installing it at work. I am already convinced that Ubuntu is in good hands, and Matt's appointment only strengthens this impression. What I'm concerned about is what's going to happen to Zimbra under VMware. I'm working on my management about buying the full-featured version for our Blackberry-using salesman, but please tell me that the current free version will continue to be loved.

Re:Juuuust switched to Zimbra

[commodore64_love]

I like Puppy.

It runs on my old Win98 laptop with only 0.03 gigabytes.

Re:Juuuust switched to Zimbra

[flydpnkrtn]

What does Matt Asay joining Canonical (makers of Ubuntu) have to do with Zimbra (which is now made by VMware)?

I'm trying to see the connection here... but "outlook does not look so good"

Re:Juuuust switched to Zimbra

[binarylarry]

Yeah, outlook sucks.

Re:Juuuust switched to Zimbra

[flydpnkrtn]

As I typed "outlook not so good" I figured someone would call me out on the pun :)

Adoption Stories and Influences

[eldavojohn]

Every so often I see an adoption story about so and so taking up some open source solution and sometimes I think "Wow, French government? Now it's really going to take off. This is it. It's time." And then I wait. And wait.

Are these stories at all positive for the project? I mean, you would think with states and governments using Ubuntu or Red Hat that it would catch on like wildfire if the savings are there so why isn't that happening? I know Microsoft sends out a lot of Wormtongues to stick in the ears of important people, do you plan on targeting governments in a similar manner? Does/will Canonical work on making a presence in things like the EU Commissions where we've seen corporations collecting members in their pockets?

Re:Adoption Stories and Influences

[HungryHobo]

I like linux, I like programming on a linux machine, I like learning on a linux machine but I can't really game on a linux machine and that's a big thing in the home PC market.

What are the plans to induce game makers to port their games to linux?
What moves are being made to try to encourage graphics chip companies to create good drivers for linux?

Re:Adoption Stories and Influences

[moonbender]

I think the plan is to wait for another couple of years until PC gaming has finished destroying itself with DRM and piracy. (Dons NOMEX suit.)

Re:Adoption Stories and Influences

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing is, Apple is doing quite well and they're not exactly bending over backwards to move the gaming market to their platform. Why?

I think it's because since Microsoft stepped up the competition in the game console market, the consoles are actually pretty good. I've been a PC gamer for my whole life and I just bought a PS3 last month and I'm actually quite happy with it overall. Sure, I'd rather have a mouse to control stuff with, but that's kind of negligible.

I actually think this shift towards game consoles has created an opening which Macs are clearly exploiting, and which Linux kind of is, or at least has the potential to. When most people are using their PS3 or Xbox360 to play games, they have less reason to need a Windows machine. Aside from gaming, the average user needs to be able to use the Internet, write email, use a web browser for Facebook, possibly write a paper for class every once in awhile. Some people need specialized apps (maybe Adobe stuff if you're a graphics pro, Finale or Sibelius if you're a musician, etc), but for average users what does Windows really do that you can't live without? I know people who are buying Macs now basically because they want to try out MacOS, and they know if they don't like it they can put Windows on it.

Re:Adoption Stories and Influences

[Anonymous Coward]

I like linux, I like programming on a linux machine, I like learning on a linux machine but I can't really game on a linux machine and that's a big thing in the home PC market.

What are the plans to induce game makers to port their games to linux?
What moves are being made to try to encourage graphics chip companies to create good drivers for linux?

If you took the words "graphic chip companies" and replaced them with "hardware companies"... I feel that would echo many of the complaints I hear and have about Ubuntu.

What moves are being made along those lines?

Re:Adoption Stories and Influences

[Interoperable]

Porting a game is an enormous undertaking. Writing a game to be cross-platform from the get-go by using openGL might be an option but video drivers aren't the only problem, Linux has big problems regarding consistent audio frameworks across all distributions. Games work well under Windows because Windows is inherently monolithic whereas Linux is inherently modular. The monolithic nature of the Windows API cuts costs by guaranteeing that a game will work on every Windows machine (excepting odd circumstances and anything too old for the current DirectX).

The marvelous thing about Linux is the modularity; complex tasks are handled by simple, effective tools that are appropriately strung together. It's the modularity as much as the openness that defines Linux. It's that modularity leads to very difficult game development. Reducing the ecosystem of tools and configurations to a canonical (ha ha) set might make game development viable on Linux, but would be the antithesis of the Linux philosophy.

Re:Adoption Stories and Influences

[Kjella]

A lot of the time, they're hyped well beyond reality. Like how the Norwegian government was to use ODF. Yes, all public forms will be available in HTML, PDF or ODF but the many thousands of MS Office licences used internally did not change. Microsoft marketing would sometimes be proud to learn from the OSS community.

Re:Adoption Stories and Influences

[John Whitley]

What are the plans to induce game makers to port their games to linux?

By whom? For what purpose? You're implicitly invoking The Mysterious Them (the planners), but actual people and/or organizations of people need to do the footwork. Things inhibiting game developers targeting Linux include:

1. Too small of a market. The market must be sized so as to support the development and QA effort required for the port. For a long time, Mac games would be brought over by a third-party porting shop working with the original publisher of what was usually a Windows-targeted game. This effectively provided a measure risk protection for the publisher -- with some of both risk and reward going to the porting house. It's telling that this doesn't seem to happen for Linux distros. Do even very small porting houses find it untenable to recoup costs?
2. Market fragmentation due to "Linux" not actually being a single targetable platform for gaming. A game dev shop could perhaps target one or two specific releases of specific distros, but that fragments the market further. See the previous item.

What moves are being made to try to encourage graphics chip companies to create good drivers for linux?

[sarcasm]Forecast calls for discussion turning into occasional badgering with signs of whimpering and pleading in the afternoon.[/sarcasm]

More seriously, this requires convincing the GPU makers that the investment in providing Linux drivers will have sufficient net return. Note that "sufficient" is a hurdle well beyond just breaking even. There has to be enough return to cover the opportunity costs involved for the dev effort. I.e. could those devs have been doing something other than Linux drivers that would have made the company more money? Maybe even a lot more money?

Re:Adoption Stories and Influences

[Thinboy00]

[snip]

1. Market fragmentation due to "Linux" not actually being a single targetable platform for gaming. A game dev shop could perhaps target one or two specific releases of specific distros, but that fragments the market further. See the previous item.

[snip]

Why not jump-start LSB again? Maybe change it to be more Debian-friendly, etc.

Re:Adoption Stories and Influences

[westlake]

Every so often I see an adoption story about so and so taking up some open source solution and sometimes I think "Wow, French government? Now it's really going to take off. This is it. It's time." And then I wait. And wait.

Linux arrived late to the party.

The IBM Personal Computer hit the market 29 years ago.

Commander Keen and Word For Windows 20 years ago.

The "window of opportunity" for the alternative OS was closing no later than Win 3.1.

If you want a consumer oriented OS with solid *NIX roots, you have OSX.

If you want unlimited access to both FOSS and commercial/proprietary/closed-source apps, you have Windows.

Apple sells an upscale urban life-style. Microsoft, solid, middle-class values.

While the geek trumpets Linux's ideological purity and political correctness. But at what cost?

Canonical has licensed H.264. MPEG-4 Visual Licensees It is free to do what Mozilla claims it can't. In some corners of Slashdot space, such a concession to reality would be considered treasonous.

 

Re:Adoption Stories and Influences

[Anonymous Coward]

Why support all distros? Support Ubuntu and maybe one or two other major distros. Let the consolidation begin!

Re:Adoption Stories and Influences

[Anonymous Coward]

There are at least three libraries that mask the audio problems in GNU/Linux with reasonable dependencies (for a game): OpenAL, SDL and libao (and at least the first two are also available on Windows/OSX)

Re:Adoption Stories and Influences

[ldj]

The "window of opportunity" for the alternative OS was closing no later than Win 3.1.

So you think Microsoft and Apple are the final-for-all-time winners, and there will never be alternatives to the offerings of those two companies that will hold significant (or, dare I say, dominant) market share on future computing platforms? That is what your statements are saying. Wow. You may want to either reconsider your view of the future or use a few less absolutes in your messages.

Re:Adoption Stories and Influences

[Anonymous Coward]

I just came here to see this turn into "eldavojohn asks Matt Asay 20 Really Long Questions about Ubuntu and Canonical" and am leaving satisfied.

Re:Adoption Stories and Influences

[MrCrassic]

Yeah, but it's hard to game on OS X machines too, but they still sell like hotcakes. (I suppose PBR to hipsters would be more appropriate, but I digress.)

(NOTE: From this point forward, Linux is defined as the GNU/Linux kernel and its distributions.)

As an occassional Linux user (i.e. I can work with bash when I need to and can get around), there are so many issues that Linux as a whole (i.e. NOT just Ubuntu or Red Hat) need to hurdle over.

For one, Linux in itself still has a pretty geeky perception to the public, and that will hinder its penetration into the general consumer market. Sure, Asus has Xandros for the netbook and Dell sells Ubuntu machines (which has a slightly LESS geeky perception), but these are:

1. Not perceived as the Linux we know and love, but as the stuff that came with my PC. Some people still don't know what Windows is; they only know what came on their computer. That leads to my second point...
2. People don't like it. Several of those netbook users have switched to XP or Win7, as indicated by the popularity of those instructions on the Internet. I especially don't like the Xandros that comes on the EEE, as it's update mechanism is not straightforward, the standard apt-get procedure didn't work, and trying to use the F8 restore functionality that it came with turned into me (and the person who owns this book who did the same before I did) completely formatting the user partition that it said it wouldn't format with no warnings whatsoever.

Furthermore, there's really no marketing initiative for it. The marketing's completely evident on the backend side of things, as proven by the massive uptake of Linux in the server world (which is another problem), but it's practically nowhere to be seen on the consumer end. I have yet to see any mainstream advertisement, TV, radio or otherwise, for Ubuntu or its "consumer-friendly" alternatives. Google and Mozilla may have flourished even despite not doing that, but if one is going to go by empirical evidence, Microsoft invested a LOT of money marketing earlier versions of Windows before it became so ubiquitous a brand that it no longer needed that.

The final large problem I'll mention is that Linux, at its core, is an operating system that's designed for stability and utmost performance in critical environments. While the kernel may have gotten a lot of new features added to it in recent times to make it more consumer-friendly, its identity still stands. This makes it a bit more difficult to create a consumer-oriented (or even business-oriented) operating system, as that must be designed from the ground-up. Windows is a perfect example of this, as it took them several years (and much high-profile demand) to tweak the kernel enough to make it reliable for server scenarios and several years after that to reach levels of stability on par with Linux, BSD and the like. Even with that considered, NT was a completely different kernel from 9x and it took several years to merge them in such a way that would make it compatible with the Windows non-business users know and love, and even that wasn't fully honed until the release of Windows XP just ten years ago. OS X only has a server edition to add closure to its product line; many have needed to bend over backwards to make it work or used Linux/BSD in its place. It's pure focus is on maximizing the user experience. (This doesn't consider how OS X, along with iPod, was a saving grace for Apple, since most of its core user base was introduced to Apple either through the iPod or through OS X. There are some dedicated Apple fans from the System 7, 8 or OS 9 days, but I would probably be making a safe assumption that most Apple users now would be pretty lost on those OSes.)

Linux, on the other hand, didn't really start getting serious with making a consumer-friendly distribution until Mandriva (then Mandrake) was released in 1998 (I might be wrong here), and guess where it did well? In the country that it was marketed to most

Re:Adoption Stories and Influences

[sandGorgons]

That is because the wrong countries are being targetted - economies with the cash to spend on Macs and Office 2010 and you try to sell Ubuntu ? For all its charm, one has to admit the relative lack of polish of Ubuntu vs Win7 or OSX.

The countries to be targetted actively are countries like India which has a highly active open source user base, has a exchange rate which works against proprietary software and has the highest growth of mobile and internet technologies.

And has Ubuntu, KDE or Gnome foundation based even one of their conferences in India ? Why, when i daresay there would be hundreds of universities ready to host them for free.

The positioning is wrong.

Re:Adoption Stories and Influences

[thsths]

> Linux has big problems regarding consistent audio frameworks across all distributions.

You can just say "Linux has big problems regarding audio". So many promised solutions (alsa, esound, jack, pulseaudio), and non of them works properly! Sometimes choice helps by creating alternatives (like postfix over sendmail), and sometimes it hinders by diluting resources - and the later certainly happened here.

Re:Adoption Stories and Influences

[mister_playboy]

I've been a PC gamer for my whole life and I just bought a PS3 last month and I'm actually quite happy with it overall. Sure, I'd rather have a mouse to control stuff with, but that's kind of negligible.

The stupid thing is that there is no good reason why there isn't mouse/keyboard support in PS3 games. The hardware certainly supports it.

Re:Adoption Stories and Influences

[tuxgeek]

M$ has a very aggressive anti-Linux campaign they pour money into in volumes that would put a space station on mars along with the shuttle service to get there. Their mis-information campaign is well crafted to put doubt into the minds of anyone they can influence and maintain control of the market.

I have been running the KDE variant of Ubuntu for years. It beats all the competition hands down. Mandriva, Suse, Fedora, even the BSDs .. don't hold a candle to Ubuntu. The Ubuntu platform is a windoz killer system.

I know an M$ fanboi that is so adamant against Linux that he won't even try a live CD just to see what the fuss is about. In his mind, viruses are a fact of life and something to not be concerned about. IE is the only browser worth using. This is the mindset of the typical windoz user.

This is why Linux has not taken over the industry, plain & simple.

As far as PC gaming, Windoz does this and has the market. But gaming is not what computing is about. When I want to game, I have a console designed for gaming along with a large plasma screen. My computer is used for business, accounting & development. In this regard, Windoz is a worthless platform

Re:Adoption Stories and Influences

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing that standardized audio, video, low-latency/async communication and even 3D are coming to the web. Hopefully in a not too distant future most application programmers can stop worrying about different OS platforms.

Re:Adoption Stories and Influences

[Enderandrew]

WebGL and fast internet connections may be the future.

Game publishers hate piracy and second-hand game sales. What if the only way to play a game is to subscribe to it, and have a connection to the internet?

If we all have 1000 Mbs internet and browser with WebGL support, why ship a physical disc for a game, or even allow offline play?9

The nice thing is that WebGL might make the future of gaming platform agnostic.

Re:Adoption Stories and Influences

[Enderandrew]

Use a cross-platform audio framework like Phonon. You write two lines of code to play audio, and it works on every platform.

Re:Adoption Stories and Influences

[Enderandrew]

I think the only non-Debian friendly aspect of the LSB is rpm support. Yet any Debian based distros can support .rpm packages and .deb packages side-by-side.

If we're updating LSB, why not add in provisions that consider source-based distros?

Re:Adoption Stories and Influences

[Anonymous Coward]

There is still a significant market without the games.... people are just missing it. We've got nobody interested in capitalizing on it. Why would they? Where is the motivation?

Re:Adoption Stories and Influences

[tepples]

there is no good reason why there isn't mouse/keyboard support in PS3 games.

I see your point for 1-player or online games, but one major advantage of a console is that it's likely to be connected to a TV-size monitor. Four players holding gamepads will fit, but four TV trays each with a keyboard and trackball likely won't.

Some PLAYSTATION 3 games support a keyboard and mouse. But apart from a couple MMORPGs, Xbox 360 games tend not to because to Microsoft's Xbox division, a keyboard is something on which one enters text, and a gamepad is for action commands.

Re:Adoption Stories and Influences

[tepples]

If we all have 1000 Mbs internet and browser with WebGL support, why ship a physical disc for a game, or even allow offline play?

Because I cannot foresee how we will "all have 1000 Mbs internet" soon, especially in a moving vehicle.

Re:Adoption Stories and Influences

[jedidiah]

> The thing is, Apple is doing quite well and they're not exactly bending over backwards to move the gaming market to their platform. Why?

They advertise aggressively and have their own stores.

Although, from pure numbers they are much more of an mp3 player or phone vendor than computer vendor anymore.

Despite all of the hype about their OS marketshare no longer being on life support, they are still much more successful in other areas.

Re:Adoption Stories and Influences

[jedidiah]

What "hardware companies" did you have in mind?

Video is one of those areas that is very difficult. You have a lot of churn and some very interesting features. It's also all very performance sensitive.

You even see complaints about ATI's Windows drivers. So the idea that they might not be up to snuff on Linux is not so interesting.

Re:Adoption Stories and Influences

[pugugly]

Actually, I've used all three, and I don't have to admit any lack of polish in Ubuntu. Even three years ago you would have had a point, but today?

No. There are specific areas where one or the other is more polished, and it's possible that objectively scoring each aspect of the interface would have Ubuntu in third place - but not a certainty by any means, and certainly not by much. I will concede, I would fight for said scoring to include the ease of use of the CLI, but even excluding that, Ubuntu stacks up well.

Pug

Your Version of Their Vision

[eldavojohn]

Late last year, you heralded some moves by Shuttleworth and you said:

This, I believe, is an opportunity for Canonical to tighten its focus. While Shuttleworth suggests that Silber's appointment "doesn't mark a change of direction," perhaps it should. With over 300 employees and products that span mobile, Netbooks and other personal computers, cloud computing, enterprise servers, and more, Canonical has its fingers in a lot of pots.

As COO, what are you going to do to improve the products you highlighted above? I'm not looking for a soft answer like "I'm going to promote Ubuntu on netbooks" but more so an itemized list of measurable goals, with milestones, dates and areas of focus (for instance, power minded ARM distributions). Is there anything about their vision you intend to change or influence the most?

Re:Your Version of Their Vision

[paperdiesel]

As COO, what are you going to do to improve the products you highlighted above? I'm not looking for a soft answer like "I'm going to promote Ubuntu on netbooks" but more so an itemized list of measurable goals, with milestones, dates and areas of focus (for instance, power minded ARM distributions). Is there anything about their vision you intend to change or influence the most?

Or, to put that first part in non-douche: "Do you have any specific, tangible ideas about how to improve the products highlighted above?"

You raise a good question, but dude, come on. The way you worded it made it sound like a condescending PHB preparing for a departmental meeting.

Re:Your Version of Their Vision

[Anonymous Coward]

like a condescending PHB preparing

'condescending' is redundant.

Re:Your Version of Their Vision

[gparent]

Answer: They're going to take a lot of pot.

What about WINE and Mono?

[aztracker1]

I'm curious as to what efforts will be made to keeping frameworks like Mono, Java and WINE current in existing releases. It seems that by the time a release happens these frameworks are already several versions behind. It would be nice to have an "edge" set of repositories that keep up with this in addition to backports that is.

Re:What about WINE and Mono?

[Korin43]

The frameworks aren't the only things behind. What about all of the people who think "Linux is broken" or "Linux doesn't support new hardware" because Ubuntu ships with old versions of ALSA and the kernel (so old video drivers)?

Re:What about WINE and Mono?

[rec9140]

NO! These need to be REMOVED from the distro.

mono is tainted from the start, and is nothing but a future huge legal liability.

wine is also just asking for trouble in providing possible hooks for all kinds of malware, it too needs to go.

We do not need anything but native apps on Linux.

Re:What about WINE and Mono?

[aztracker1]

I'm guessing we should remove SAMBA and FAT support while we're at it. Hope you don't like to access those USB drives. Oh yeah, you shouldn't be using h.264, mpeg (of any kind) or a number of other container formats other than Ogg + Vorbis/Theora.

Re:What about WINE and Mono?

[dshk]

Personally I don't trust in any native apps. Not even in the OS. However, I agree with you on the legal state of Mono.

Re:What about WINE and Mono?

[the_hellspawn]

sudo apt-get remove wine Duh! and the same goes with mono.

Re:What about WINE and Mono?

[randallman]

Especially on LTS releases. For most non-geeks, a major upgrade every 6 months is too much. Going from LTS to LTS is more realistic. Right now, 8.04 is the current LTS and installing new software (e.g. gtkpod, songbird) is very difficult because it too often requires upgrades of major libraries. For an OS only 2 years old, that's not good.

Ubuntu's (and other Linux distros) heavy use of dynamic libraries are a major contributor to this problem. It would be great if Ubuntu could provide updates to libraries to allow newer applications to run. I don't know how it might be done. Maybe having multiple versions or just insuring backwards compatibility. A 3 year old Ubuntu PC needs to be able to install the latest versions of software easily.

Re:What about WINE and Mono?

[Kjella]

I'm guessing we should remove SAMBA and FAT support while we're at it. Hope you don't like to access those USB drives. Oh yeah, you shouldn't be using h.264, mpeg (of any kind) or a number of other container formats other than Ogg + Vorbis/Theora.

You're not honestly comparing apples to apples here. There are protocols and formats and codecs that aren't native to Linux true, but they are either relatively simple and feature complete or the standard is open though non-free. For example let's take H.264, both ffmpeg and x264 should be able to decode any valid H.264 stream. WINE and Mono on the other hand are trying to implement some of the core features in a vast platform, they're like constant hackjobs to bugfix and update in a neverending stream of things that don't work and each new thing comes as a "surprise".

Don't get me wrong, I've fiddled with WINE quite a lot and done git bisects to find regressions and it's extremely useful in doing things on Linux that otherwise plain wouldn't work, but I also see how much of it is stubs and hacks and unknowns that they duct tape together to make it mostly work. It's never going to get done, it'll always be a crutch to lean on never a real leg to stand on. I don't in any way think they should be removed, but I see them as very much less ideal than most of the things you mention.

Re:What about WINE and Mono?

[rec9140]

Nope. Just mono and wine... no need for wine.. .Linux has plenty of native apps to handle what wine might bring, but who wants to have safe, but never lock it. mono is just bad period, and nothing but an eventual hook for legal action.

Re:What about WINE and Mono?

[rec9140]

I shouldn't have to sanitize Linux. Thats why I use Linux instead of that other OS.

Re:What about WINE and Mono?

[Lunix Nutcase]

mono is tainted from the start, and is nothing but a future huge legal liability.

Yeah like the "Java trap" that never happened yet all you people were raving about it for years and years?

Re:What about WINE and Mono?

[WarJolt]

Have you ever used the unstable branch?
I was playing around with some of the new KMS ati support, but Lucid still has way more problems them Karmic. I like to torture myself with the unstable branch(I may need help). I think old and tested is less "broken" than new and unstable.

The release cycle of Ubuntu is comparable to Windows. The current stable kernel is from September 2009. ALSA is from May 2009. If you want updated versions you can suffer with me using the unstable branch and have a few hickups that require you to reinstall or technical fixes. It not a matter of using old versions though. Windows gets support for hardware first because they have more market share. It still takes them a long time to get updates and drivers out to the public.

Re:What about WINE and Mono?

[shutdown -p now]

We do not need anything but native apps on Linux.

Who is "we", and why does it speak for me?

Re:What about WINE and Mono?

[Korin43]

Your point about Windows getting hardware support first isn't entirely true. Linux supports just about everything right about when it comes out (contrary to popular belief, this includes sound cards). Ubuntu does use old versions. Jaunty was released in May, 2009, slightly over 2 months after ALSA 1.0.19 was released. By the time Karmic came out, Ubuntu was still using 1.0.18 (by this point ALSA was at 1.0.21a). That's 4 versions behind on possibly the most important piece of software to keep up to date (because the main change in each release is new drivers and better support for new hardware). Karmic is currently on 1.0.20 (2 versions behind at release) and ALSA is at 1.0.22.1 (making Karmic 4 versions behind). If any of those numbers don't make sense to you, it's because ALSA has a very strange versioning scheme.

I gave up on Ubuntu a while ago for Arch. It just bothers me that there's no good choice as a beginner distro. Ubuntu and Debian define stability in a way that doesn't make sense for desktop users, and the rolling release distros tend to not be user friendly (at least, not computer-illiterate friendly). I really think if Ubuntu separated out "things that should be stable" and "things that should be new" and did releases that way, it would make a lot more sense. For example, any program that a Windows user would download from the internet and install (Firefox, Pidgin, OpenOffice, etc.) should always be up to date, while you can just apply security patches to an old kernel for years and no one will notice. And then they make it incredibly difficult to update if you need a newer version of something like ALSA..

Re:What about WINE and Mono?

[mister_playboy]

Wine isn't in Ubuntu by default.

Re:What about WINE and Mono?

[KiloByte]

Another question about Wine and Mono: since they do nearly the same thing, why is Ubuntu's stance on them so different? Mark Shuttleworth explicitely said he doesn't want Wine in the default install -- and it isn't there, yet Mono is aggressively promoted. Both of them implement some foreign API and emulate some of Windows-only facilities; both let you run a class of Windows .exe programs -- and none is well-integrated with the native system. Both Wine and Mono require either a helper script or some binfmt-related hacks.

Wouldn't it better to save disk space/bandwidth by using native versions of programs currently shipped using Mono (Tomboy -> gnote, ...), and drop Mono to Wine's status?

Re:What about WINE and Mono?

[Rhaban]

Nope. Just mono and wine... no need for wine.. .Linux has plenty of native apps to handle what wine might bring, but who wants to have safe, but never lock it.

Wine brings me the ability to play Tales of Monkey Island.
I'd like to know the name of the native linux app that can handle this.

Until there's a real market for games editor to develop games that work on linux, wine will be necessary for linux to be a viable choice on a personnal desktop computer for a lot of people.

Re:What about WINE and Mono?

[aztracker1]

No, I'm comparing landmines in place utilizing Patented systems created/owned by Patent warring companies. SAMBA is as patent encumbered as Mono is, as is FAT32. Both of which are also Microsoft technologies. h.264 is a submarine strike waiting to happen, though moz org's justifications are better worded than mine. Also, the suggestion is that native apps are enough. Though many of the UI applications in current linux desktops are written in Python. If we exclude non-native runtime interpreters then those would go too.

If you're saying MS tech is out, then you should pull out SMB and FAT* support. If runtimes are out, then Python, Ruby and Perl should be out too. The arguments and reasonings are flawed. MS has been very supported of Mono, including references and releases for access to MS based code as reference to Mono developers. It would be difficult for MS to sue given the number of statements and actions MS has made in support of the platform.

Personally, I'd be more afraid of the proliferation of h.264 based encodings. Let alone similar technology if you are in the US, or other IP militant countries.

Re:What about WINE and Mono?

[aztracker1]

Exactly, though to be fair, Mono has been far more open in nature from the start and the past few years MS has been putting a lot of effort into supporting the Mono developers, far earlier than Sun's activities.

Re:What about WINE and Mono?

[aztracker1]

Mono is an application framework and runtime engine. It's more like Python, Ruby, and Perl support.

They don't do nearly the same thing. Wine is an API compatibility layer for running Windows based applications natively in linux. It'd be like saying that Python for linux isn't necessary because Python for Windows can run on WINE.

Not to mention that most applications written for Linux on Mono aren't even cross platform apps first, they are Linux applications first, that happen to be written in C# and run under Mono + GTK#

Re:What about WINE and Mono?

[jedidiah]

The "java trap" (if it ever existed) never happened because the platform never
materialized as a viable means for running end user applications. There never
existed any strong motivation to be "seduced by the dark side" and start running
trap-ware user applications.

I view mono in the same way. The motivation just isn't there yet despite the amount
that certain people try to push it. The attraction just isn't there.

Wine at least has Picasa going for it.

Re:What about WINE and Mono?

[moosesocks]

And even that's not a great comparison. Microsoft have issued a legally-binding promise not to sue over C# patents in Mono. On the other hand, some of the other technologies you mentioned contain patents that are actively pursued by their holders.

Re:What about WINE and Mono?

[pugugly]

Sorry, no.

There are applications that Windows has that Linux does not natively support.
No ideological commitment to opensource is going to make these apps magically appear on Linux in an explosion of Rainbows.
That being the case, utilizing wine to give near native support for otherwise missing applications strengthens Linux by expanding it's capabilities.

Moreover, competition for users among programs naturally drives the improvement of programs. The mere fact that a 'good enough' program on Linux has to contend with competition for mindspace with an interloper from Windows drives for improvement in both programs. Given that running under wine is an inherent disadvantage, possibly even driving the interloper to go native to linux.

Removing Wine would do nothing except cripple the evolution of native Linux application development by removing competition for mindshare. It would also almost exactly duplicate Microsoft's attempt to destroy Java as a multi-OS platform in a misguided attempt to lock people into Windows.

If you intend to posit that it was a mistake for them to do it, but smart for Linux competition to be suppressed in an almost identical way, you need to present strong evidence beyond mere ideology.

Pug

How come I can't install RealPlayer on Ubuntu?

[commodore64_love]

How come NESticle and Stella (emulators) work flawlessly on Windoze but only play one-quarter of the roms on Ubuntu?

How come I can't connect to my Netscape dialup ISP?

Why can't I find a simple way to look-up my computer's RAM space, or how many tasks are running, or to kill a misbehaving process?

Why when I switch to 640x480 mode (gaming), why doesn't the desktop properties window fit (thereby leaving me stuck)?

Why, when I tried to upgrade from 8.10 to 9.04, was I told that I don't have permission to change the folders on my laptop?

Why can't I get Opera Browser installed?

Why. Is. Ubuntu Linux. So. Damn. Unfriendly? Hell my ancient Amiga 500 or Quadra Macs are easier to use.

And no this is not a troll.
It's an opinion.
Learn the difference mod. :-)

Re:How come I can't install RealPlayer on Ubuntu?

[Anonymous Coward]

it's also off-topic

Re:How come I can't install RealPlayer on Ubuntu?

[dmfarley]

have you really never heard of the gnome system monitor?

Re:How come I can't install RealPlayer on Ubuntu?

[FooAtWFU]

Right -- hear that, mods? Not a troll. Just Off-Topic. :b

(You admit that it's an opinion, after all, and this is more an interview than a promote-your-opinion discussion...)

Re:How come I can't install RealPlayer on Ubuntu?

[thetoadwarrior]

It may not be a troll but it's a sign of not knowing what you're doing. Hell, one of the first things I did when properly moving over to Linux was install Opera on Ubuntu. I don't think the process could have been any easier.

You'll need to speak to the developers of Nesticle and Stella as to why their ports may be interior.

System ->Adminitration -> System monitor will give you all sorts of stats on your CPU, memory, processes running, etc.

Not sure why the hell you need to go down to 640x480 but holding the Alt key allows you to move the window. You'll find this sort of problem on any OS. When I remote desktop into my work machine (dual screen) which is XP, if I need something that was on the second screen, it can be a nightmare to get it when Windows don't move things to fit my laptop screen.

I haven't used dial-up in ages let alone attempt to use something like Netscape ISP but searching for ubuntu netscape isp returns a few results form the wonderfully helpful ubuntu forums

Not sure about your file issue but sometimes I lose ownership of my drives when re-installing Ubuntu so I ust make my new username the owner of them and it's sorted. Look into using the cli command chown ( https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FilePermissions ) or do it through the GUI by right clicking on the the folder, clicking properties, going to permissions and modifying permissions.

Re:How come I can't install RealPlayer on Ubuntu?

[zippthorne]

why doesn't the desktop properties window fit (thereby leaving me stuck?

you're not stuck, although that does sound like bad design. Fortunately, Gnome has a solution to the general problem of poorly sized dialog boxes going off the screen for whatever reason. Hold the [alt] key and click anywhere in the window and drag. Which is a far sight better than what Apple has chosen to do with windows that go off screen: Resize automatically sometimes, only allow moving windows from the thin strip at the top, and only allow resizing windows with a small tab on a single corner.

Re:How come I can't install RealPlayer on Ubuntu?

[commodore64_love]

>>>Not sure why the hell you need to go down to 640x480 but holding the Alt key allows you to move the window. You'll find this sort of problem on any OS.
>>>

No. You don't. On Windows the desktop properties usually fits, and in those *rare* times it does not fit, you do not need to move the window because pressing "enter" will auto-select the okay button and thereby switch back to 1280x1024.

Oh and I already tried the fixes on ubuntu's forums. Did not work.

Then I was told I was stupid.

See?

Re:How come I can't install RealPlayer on Ubuntu?

[commodore64_love]

Apple also lets you press "enter" and will auto-select the okay button, so you can escape from 640x480 back to your original larger size.

Windows too. Why Ubuntu does't do the same solution indicates to me that the programmers behind the thing are the true idiots. They overlook the obvious that any common person would immediately think to do.

What is it my coworkers used to say at my old retail job? "College people have all kinds of degrees, but don't know how to change a tire, fill-up the oil, or any other thing the common idiot knows how to do."

Re:How come I can't install RealPlayer on Ubuntu?

[Anonymous Coward]

For one, I'd have to tell you to get a better ISP. Hell, that's not even Linux advice, that's common sense.

Re:How come I can't install RealPlayer on Ubuntu?

[aztracker1]

I had a lot of trouble installing on my netbook (1024x600) because most of the screens during the install weren't designed with 800px high displays in mind.

Re:How come I can't install RealPlayer on Ubuntu?

[IshmaelDS]

Holding the [alt] key and right clicking is a far better way of doing it. I'm sure your used to just pressing enter, but what if you needed to change more than one setting, you would run into more issues in windows than you would in Ubuntu as you would be able to move the screen to see and select those options. It's just a matter of training, you had to learn that hitting the enter button would do that(yes it seems intuitive now but was not always the case).

Re:How come I can't install RealPlayer on Ubuntu?

[h4rr4r]

I am gonna guess they diagnosed the problem correctly. Windows does not autoselect ok, it selects cancel.

Re:How come I can't install RealPlayer on Ubuntu?

[h4rr4r]

I have a college degree yet can do all those things, but I have enough money that I don't bother with doing it myself.

Go ahead and blame your betters for your short comings.

Re:How come I can't install RealPlayer on Ubuntu?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is better to call a spade a spade than it is to argue with it.

Re:How come I can't install RealPlayer on Ubuntu?

[commodore64_love]

WRONG.

I just opened the Desktop Properties and changed my resolution to 640x480, and then tried to change it back. When I press "enter" it autoselects the OK button, which means if I'm stuck in a lo-res mode where the window does not fit, and I can not access the OK button with my mouse, I could still do it with my Enter key. Windows has that backup. (Ditto Mac.) Linux does not. Linux leaves you stuck and frustrated.

And the Linux "ALT" key nonsense is just a prime example of non-user-friendliness. How the hell is a user supposed to guess that ALT is the magic button used to drag windows around??? I've been using computers since 1982 and never guessed that. If I can't figure it out with my almost thirty years of desktop experience, how on earth is your average factory worker/user supposed to know it???

Answer: They wouldn't. Linux is non-friendly.

Re:How come I can't install RealPlayer on Ubuntu?

[commodore64_love]

>>>I'm sure your used to just pressing enter, but what if you needed to change more than one setting

Switch from 640z480 mode to 1280x1024 FIRST (using the Windows enter/okay key), and then fiddle with the other settings later, after you are in a "safe" state that lets you see the entire Desktop Properties window.

And as I mentioned before, having a Linux ALT button doesn't do much good if the user has no idea that button exists. I have nearly 30 years desktop experience and never guessed the ALT key might be used to move a window. In all my experience with Commodore GEOS, Amiga OS, Mac OS, Sun OS, and Windows OS, I never encountered such a design where the ALT button functions as a window-moving command.

If I did not guess it, how do you expect your average user to guess it??? They never will. Which means Linux is NOT ready for mass distribution - you'd have customers tearing their hair out.

Re:How come I can't install RealPlayer on Ubuntu?

[commodore64_love]

You missed the point. The saying about college grads not knowing how to do common things is meant to indicate the college persons lack practical knowledge. - Like how to make the Userspace "escapable" even if the user gets himself in a jam. If you put yourself in a 640x480 mode where the desktop properties windows does not fit, and the "OK" button is not accessible:

- Windows provides an escape (press enter to autoselect OK).
- So too does Mac (press enter to autoselect OK).
- Linux leaves the user scratching his head, with no clue what to do (except possibly reach for his Restore CD and reinstall windows or OS X).

Re:How come I can't install RealPlayer on Ubuntu?

[commodore64_love]

Anonymous Coward wrote:

For one, I'd have to tell you to get a better ISP. Hell, that's not even Linux advice, that's common sense.

I have high-speed internet at home called Verizon DSL. Tell me - if I'm on a business trip and staying in a Knights Inn (for example), how do I run my DSL all the way from my home to my hotel room, and plug it into my laptop?

Oh that's right! I cannot.

Dipshit AC. - And don't say "get wireless" or cellular internet, because I can't afford a $1000/year bill. But the $80/year Netscape dialup I can deal with and will work anywhere the hotel provides a phoneline.

Re:How come I can't install RealPlayer on Ubuntu?

[h4rr4r]

because using alt is so hard?

Re:How come I can't install RealPlayer on Ubuntu?

[TheLink]

It's far easier for most users to use Windows 7 or XP than figure out that they could have used alt to move the window around in "Linux" till they can click the desired button.

FWIW, Windows should have something like that alt stuff, but for the Linux GUI developers to design their stuff to REQUIRE its use for 640x480 resolutions is just further evidence of how clueless they are.

I do use Linux, but not for my desktop. I did use Linux for my work desktop before, but they need to do a lot better than wobbly windows for me to consider them seriously. Just because lots of stuff moves around fancily on the screen(s) doesn't mean that it is making working more efficient or easier.

Re:How come I can't install RealPlayer on Ubuntu?

[JambisJubilee]

So you have 30 years of desktop experience, but haven't found a way to use the commands:

• cat /proc/meminfo
• top
• kill

I don't know if anyone can help you. I'm not even 30 years old and I figured out all of that shit a long time ago.

Re:How come I can't install RealPlayer on Ubuntu?

[zippthorne]

In this particular incidence, the 30 years experience is what's holding you back. A newbie would've read the manual* and done the tutorial and found the list of keyboard modifiers.

*although.. the manuals and tutorials seem to be getting thinner all the time...

But, more to the point, the state of buttons that are off the screen is indeterminate. It is unwise to use any shortcut to press them in that state, although in your specific example the defaults appear to be well-chosen in two Oses. The correct behavior is not to put the buttons off the screen, but failing that (and there will always be some software that fails that, but hopefully at least not the system settings dialogs), there needs to be a way to move the window around so you can see an manipulate all the relevant controls. Especially for a dialog that changes system settings.

Windows at least used to have this functionality, IIRC, though I haven't checked recently. Not as convenient as alt+move, though. It was more like alt+space(or was that minus) (m)ove then the mouse turns into move arrows and you can move the window by dragging. I'm not sure if it worked on dialogs, though.

Anyway, linux is the one with the correct fall-back behavior here. In either case, you rely on arcane knowledge to get you out of the predicament of improperly set display size without rebooting, but linux's arcane knowledge is the fact that you can move the window to expose the controls, while OS X's arcane knowledge is the idea that you won't screw up the system by blindly hitting enter.

Re:How come I can't install RealPlayer on Ubuntu?

[thetoadwarrior]

That's one dialog. That doesn't mean windows always does that for every application because it certainly doesn't.

Re:How come I can't install RealPlayer on Ubuntu?

[thetoadwarrior]

Windows dialogs generally focus on cancel and should so you don't fuck something up by mistake. The parent was also likely talking about the confirmation box which does indeed default to cancel. I just check now.

The alt key business is better than the MS solution of having to hold control and alt. Most people on windows don't need to know that and don't but it's there because it's used. Same on Linux.

Re:How come I can't install RealPlayer on Ubuntu?

[thetoadwarrior]

No offense but you claimed to know be able to install Opera when Opera provides a deb package you just need to double click or you can just search for it in the package manager.

It is no wonder windows machines are so insecure. People refuse to learn how to use their PC properly and when given a machine that doesn't run as root all the time and give all the options. Crammed into one menu they freak out and act as if it's impossible.

Re:How come I can't install RealPlayer on Ubuntu?

[Arkofjoy]

I hear this "I was called stupid" or "somebody posted RTFM' on so many occasions in Slashdot or ZDNET forums but have never actually seen a rude reply in a Linux forum.
I am sure it happened if you say it did but I have spent a bit of time hunting through forums to find the answer to something I have screwed up while fiddling around and never seen a rude answer. The thing I find strange is that whenever I have managed to screw something up in Windows and was hunting for a solution, Mostly I found people who wanted to SELL me a solution. Hey good for them but considering the state of my bank account, Some might think that was rude too.

Just sayin'

Re:How come I can't install RealPlayer on Ubuntu?

[tepples]

Windows dialogs generally focus on cancel

The "format drive" dialog box in Windows XP focuses Cancel, but apart from that, Windows apps tend to focus "Yes" or "OK" or the action verb, not "No" or "Cancel". Binding Enter to cancel dates from classic Mac OS, where Apple's idea of keyboard accessibility for users with disabilities was using the numeric keypad to control the mouse pointer. Everyone else just binds Esc to cancel.

Re:How come I can't install RealPlayer on Ubuntu?

[tepples]

Tell me - if I'm on a business trip and staying in a Knights Inn (for example), how do I run my DSL all the way from my home to my hotel room, and plug it into my laptop?

I think Anonymous Coward would want you to choose your hotel based on the available Internet access. If it's a business trip, your boss will pay for it.

Re:How come I can't install RealPlayer on Ubuntu?

[Anonymous Coward]

I recently left a small laptop running FreeBSD/KDE3.5 connected to my mother's home network to monitor its speed, latency, availability etc. at certain times since she was having issues.

At about 2:30 in the afternoon during this time, I received a frantic call from her asking if I could leave work and drive down because the internet wasn't working and she had a client that needed something done within the hour and nothing worked. I calmly asked her to open up the laptop and run a simple command in the terminal, which was a script (on the $PATH) that would run a few things automatically (netstat, ping, ifconfig, etc) and log the output to a file email it to me the next time it regained an IP address.

It took me longer to try and explain how to open up the terminal to run a command than to drive to her house 11 miles away and fix the problem.

DOS 7.1 died 15 years ago. Terminals and Command lines are not the GOTO for resolving a problem. If that is the answer, the person answering the question is an idiot. People no longer know how to do those things. Your answer proves how and why Linux and Ubuntu will not become a dominant player in the consumer desktop OS market.

Re:How come I can't install RealPlayer on Ubuntu?

[silverglade00]

RealPlayer for Linux. You want the .deb one at the bottom. Hold down the Alt key and move the desktop properties window. Enable the Ubuntu partners repo and sudo apt-get install opera. CTRL+Shift+Esc will let you see your memory. And now I'm bored.

Since you are a Linux user

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you ever bathe?

Re:Since you are a Linux user

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, twice daily. Thanks for asking!

Re:Since you are a Linux user

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you ever bathe?

Only with RMS.

Mono

[Anonymous Coward]

Do we really need Mono in the default installation?

Re:Mono

[omnichad]

F-Spot uses it. Enough said.

Re:Mono

[poetmatt]

along with that question is : "do we really need fspot in the default installation?"

Re:Mono

[rec9140]

Never heard of it. Enough said.

Re:Mono

[aztracker1]

Yes

Re:Mono

[aztracker1]

Considering the number of applications that use a managed/dynamic runtime. Including perl, python, ruby and others, I'd say that including said runtimes is probably better in terms of application support out of the box, over a particular application.

Re:Mono

[poetmatt]

I don't hear of a lot other than fspot and defunct tomboy, that require mono (aka .net runtimes).

Again, do we really need .net runtimes in linux, with the legal risks they create?

Re:Mono

[Anonymous Coward]

And Tomboy, I for one never use either.

Re:Mono

[I.S.Bear]

Personally I would prefer G-Spot as a default option

Re:Mono

[aztracker1]

Could you specify some realistic legal risks? Perhaps comparing them to the support for ffmpeg, fat32, ntfs, samba and other stacks that have portions covered by patent heavy corporations, even Microsoft itself?

Especially in light of MS's support of Mono development, and frameworks being released under licenses specifically allowing their use under Mono (DLR, MVC, etc).

General answer

[Anonymous Coward]

because your an idiot.

Re:General answer

[mordors9]

This should be modded up as insightful.

Re:General answer

[dan828]

Seeing "your an idiot" never fails to bring a smile to my face. Thanks for making my day just that much brighter.

Re:General answer

[Anonymous Coward]

because your an idiot.

Yeah! That's the attitude we need to make Linux user friendly!

New Linux user who got talked into using Ubuntu by his geek friend:

"Um, I'm having trouble. I was able to do it in Windows, how do I do it in Ubuntu?"

Linux/Ubuntu/Slashtard: "You're an idiot."

User: "I guess so .... for switching to Linux."

Re:General answer

[commodore64_love]

Anonymous Coward wrote:

because your an idiot.

Yeah! That's the attitude we need to make Linux user friendly!

Nice sarcasm, but you hit the nail on the head. The people who program for Linux have an elitist attitude, such that when a customer encounters a problem, rather than admit the problem exists, they blame the customer as an "idiot".

It's the same business acumen that made Circuit City so successful.

Oh. Wait.

Re:General answer

[RobDude]

I don't know.

I'm a fan of Linux in general and Ubuntu in specific....and I don't think of myself as an idiot. I'm even fairly tech savvy - I'm a full-time software developer.

And yet, even after two weeks of really, really trying to get Ubuntu running on my desktop - it wouldn't install. I had a 2-3 page thread on the Ubuntu forums detailing my problem and everything I'd done to fix it. Eventually, people stopped offering suggestions.

So, yeah, maybe he's an idiot. And maybe I'm an idiot too. And maybe all the people at the Ubuntu forums are idiots too....but sometimes things are actually pretty darn hard to accomplish.

Re:General answer

[Anonymous Coward]

The error was intentional (to lampoon the op).

Does that rune it for you?

Re:General answer

[Inner_Child]

because your an idiot.

Yeah! That's the attitude we need to make Linux user friendly!

Except there's an actual case to be made that the OP is an idiot, as much of what he considers problematic is hopelessly outdated, even in Windows. RealPlayer? Nesticle? Does Netscape even run a dial-up ISP anymore? Gaming in 640x480? This sounds like a rehashed troll post from 1996, and despite his tacked-on claims to the contrary it should be treated as such.

Re:General answer

[Anonymous Coward]

The guy wasn't an idiot for not knowing how to do stuff, but an idiot for asking a few ridiclolus questions:

1) Real Player ( no one wants it on windows, or anyother OS. If they do, they are an idiot.)
2) Main complaint about video game emulation. Any questions about games are inherently stupid. You have a ridiculously powerful machine at your fingertips the like of which we could only dream about ten years ago ... and your biggest complaint is about not being able to play games??

The rest were semi-legit questions, even if they were in part tainted by the video game question.

Re:General answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Having trouble getting things that are not well supported working isn't what makes for an idiot, posting a bunch of random offtopic questions is what makes for an idiot.

A question like "I'm still having trouble with x,y and z, do you see Canonical focusing on improving these areas?" would work just fine, but instead we get a litany of problems, composed of a mix of third party issues, obvious cases of obtuse-user-syndrome, and potential real problems.

(For instance, the first Google result for "Ubuntu task manager" is this page:

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-331065.html

I'm not using Linux/Gnome system, so I have no idea if the "System Monitor" mentioned there is a piece of shit or not, but I would bet it works fine, in which case OP really is to blame for not being able to figure it out)

Re:General answer

[Ethanol-fueled]

And for every one of your kind of story we have one kind of mine, which is that 9.10 works flawlessly out of the box on all of the computers I use. Better so, actually, because things like the wireless drivers and CUPS eliminate the need to manually install the drivers I would have to on a Windows Box.

I'm running 9.10 on a 1.6gHz 512MB laptop and the default window dressings work without skipping a beat, even after adding a little cube-action. The only problem I saw, a minor one, was the installed version of OpenOffice broke some documents, and bug reports have been filed.

Ubuntu is the Windows-killer. They're doing a bang-up job of making things easy to switch. I'm not one to shill, but I would suck Shuttleworth's cock and ask for seconds.

Re:General answer

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm even fairly tech savvy - I'm a full-time software developer.

My advice is look over your hardware more carefully as you buy it. I try to make sure every system I build can run both the latest Windows and Linux as close to flawless as possible. Every once in a long while a part will sneak past that isn't compatible, but that's usually because I was careless and just made assumptions that it would work. If you were complaining about a laptop have issues I wouldn't be overly surprised. But with a desktop you really have the option to get parts that are guaranteed to work so its not really Ubuntu's fault that its not working.

Re:General answer

[h4rr4r]

So how much did you pay for ubuntu?

Re:General answer

[RobDude]

Without some actual numbers, it's all just speculation.

I remember back when Slackware 7 came out and there were people who just as easily dismissed my install/hardware troubles.

"It works on *my* machine. You must be an idiot or have some crap hardware or something."

Now, looking back, it seems like even the most hardcore Linux fans will agree that there were a ton of issues *in the past*. And that pattern hasn't really changed, IMHO.

Every year, since as far back as I can remember (1998ish), people on the web proclaim that *THIS* is going to be the year of the Linux desktop. Typically, this claim will come with a side-to-side comparison of why Linux is better than Windows (It's easier to install! Four less clicks!) and it'll say how much more software the distro includes compared to windows (but it's not bloat because, well, we like it when Linux does it), and it'll come with admissions that, last year, things weren't as great as we said.

IE: 2003 - 'This is going to be the year for the Linux desktop. In the past, there were network issues, but now it's fixed! Plus it's super easy to use'.

2004 - 'This is going to be the year for the Linux desktop. In the past, there were video driver issues, but we've fixed that. Plus, it's super easy to use.' ....

2009 - 'This is going to be the year for the Linux desktop. In the past, we had problems with wireless networking...but we've fixed that. Plus, it's super easy to use.'

Linux is improving, certainly. I'm a fan, and I do run it. But the initial reaction from the community shouldn't be, 'WoW - you must be an idiot'. At the very least, pull the, 'Yeah well, you need to write the manufacture letters to get them to make a Linux Driver, because any problem you run into in Linux is the result of a bad driver because of the micro$uck paying companies not to make them' card. Or something.

I'm just tired of hearing, 'Oh man this works great....' then I try it and it fails. Then people admit that, okay, yeah, it doesn't actually work.

Example - 'Open Office is great it does everything Excel does, and it will open your old Excel stuff and it works great and it's free!'

I download it. I open my custom made Excel worksheet loaded with VBA code and macros and I go, 'Ummm, it doesn't seem to work for me'.

(2 pages of banter on some forum somewhere)

"Well, yeah, it doesn't support VBA. It has it's own that that is totally different and none of your worksheets that use VBA are going to work - but it's Microsoft's fault for that."

And then I say, 'Okay, that's fine, and this still seems like a great product - but why didn't you just say that, in the beginning, that it doesn't do everything Excel does?'

Example - 'Wireless works great in Linux!'

Many, many hours later, with NDISWRAPER installed and configured and pages on the forums asking for help and following mysterious instructions off the internet (many of which *could* have been malicious)...

'Yeah, it looks like, with your card, you'll only be able to get online if you disable WEP. So, you have to surf without encryption and all of your traffic is available to anyone who wants it....but I mean, OTHER THAN THAT, and the hours it took to setup, it totally just works'.

It just gets tiresome. And the name calling when you point out that something didn't work as advertised is also tiresome.

Re:General answer

[Arthur Grumbine]

And for every one of your kind of story we have one kind of mine...

I don't think that the dissatisfied-user-to-satisfied-user ratio that sentence implies is really what Canonical is shooting for. :-P

Re:General answer

[micheas]

While all of the problems you describe are true, It doesn't really explain why anything other than a Mac is popular, because the problems in windows are, overall, worse.

Linux has lots of problems with hardware, but it also has fewer problems than windows. Windows has a few specific pain points covered better than Linux, but upper management at microsoft complained about the horrible driver support for Vista.

The list of pain points in Linux are becoming well known, and well defined problems, which is probably almost as important as actual support, as the risk is much lower if you know, a, r, and x won't work, but I can think I can live with that, as opposed to well, almost everything should work let's try it out and see if it works. A tester that runs in windows that grabs the current kernel and modules from Fedora/CentOS/Ubuntu/SuSE/Debian/Slackware/OtherDistro and says - here is what will and won't work with this distribution, here is what will work if you compile in extra kernel modules, and here is what has limited support, might actually be of more use than improved hardware support (as a Linux user I am a big fan of improved hardware support, I am just not convinced that hardware support is what is the differentiator between Windows and Linux. What I suspect is that If there was an effort to get five Ubuntu DVDs into the hands of every person in Washington DC and the surrounding area, the uptake of Linux in US Government would be quite high.

Re:General answer

[commodore64_love]

A couple days of time wasted trying to fix bothersome problems.
(Where I come from, time is more valuable than dollars.)

Re:General answer

[commodore64_love]

>>>what he considers problematic is hopelessly outdated, even in Windows. RealPlayer? Nesticle? Does Netscape even run a dial-up ISP anymore? Gaming in 640x480?
>>>

NESticle == NES emulator. Surely I'm not the only one into classic gaming.
640x480 == Again, classic gaming.
RealPlayer == Needed to view various videos at tvpc.com
Dialup == Needed for use in hotels without highspeed connections. And so on. These aren't outdated problems, but things I've encountered in just the past month.

Re:General answer

[Inner_Child]

I will give you the Dialup and the low resolution, at least provisionally, but if a site requires RealPlayer in this day and age its owners should be shot. Also, NESticle was outpaced years ago by FCE Ultra. Even Mednafen is more compatible. Both make NESticle look quite terrible.

Re:General answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe instead of complaining that Ubuntu doesn't support a closed source, unsupported NES emulator you should look for one with better support?

For fucks sake, it hasn't been updated in 12 years!

Re:General answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, I'm waiting to hear the rest of the sentence. Did his an idiot do something?

Re:General answer

[shutdown -p now]

While all of the problems you describe are true, It doesn't really explain why anything other than a Mac is popular, because the problems in windows are, overall, worse.

Linux has lots of problems with hardware, but it also has fewer problems than windows. Windows has a few specific pain points covered better than Linux, but upper management at microsoft complained about the horrible driver support for Vista.

Yes, and how well did Vista do until those problems were fixed? And even afterwards?

Re:General answer

[shutdown -p now]

I'm just tired of hearing, 'Oh man this works great....' then I try it and it fails. Then people admit that, okay, yeah, it doesn't actually work.

There's other cute way to say "it doesn't work" without saying it, that I've seen in practice a couple of times on various Linux forums. Not often, mind you, but it does happen. The script goes as follows:

User: "Bah, Linux doesn't even support per-application volume levels!"

Geek #1: "It's been there for ages - just make sure your distro uses PulseAudio".

User: [upgrades / switches to a distro with PulseAudio]

User: "Um, guys, my audio is kinda lagging here... and I have some strange artifacts... also when I plug in my headphones, my speakers aren't muted automatically as they used to be. Help?"

Geek #2: "Oh, it's a known problem. Just disable PulseAudio." [provides a shell script that apt-get removes PulseAudio]

User: [runs the script] "... but ... oh wait. WTF? I just want it all to work!"

Geek #1: "It does work, idiot. Don't blame the system when you can't even do basic things."

Geek #2: "Linux is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are."

User: "Oh, just fuck off, then." [goes buys a Mac]

Re:General answer

[micheas]

Yes, and how well did Vista do until those problems were fixed? And even afterwards?

Compared to Linux on the desktop?

More than an order of magnitude better? (0.7% to 27%)

I use Linux on my desktop and have for over a decade now, and don't really see what I don't have besides Adobe Creative Suite.

Oh, and I don't have IE or Safari. which sucks for webdevelopment, but causes me to basically treat them as X grade web browsers, although I can see the reason for treated IE6 as a C grade web browser along with NS4 and IE5 (you have to downgrade for C grade web browsers because they lie about what they can do and do it wrong.)

Re:General answer

[JackieBrown]

w32codecs and win64codecs add realplayer support to mplayer

http://debian-multimedia.org/dists/unstable/main/binary-amd64/package/w64codecs.php

I am sure ubuntu has a similar package

Re:General answer

[Ace Rimmer]

[goes buys a Mac] then writes to this thread http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=322203 and gets a reply "I don't think you can do this. There may be 3rd party applications avaliable though."

Re:General answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Each time you do some work for money, you contradict that parenthetical.

Re:General answer

[CSMatt]

The EeePC 700 series has a maximum resolution of 800x480, so yes the Display Properties window is a legitimate problem even in today's world (in this case, enabling and changing the resolution of the external monitor).

Re:General answer

[tepples]

Any questions about games are inherently stupid. You have a ridiculously powerful machine at your fingertips the like of which we could only dream about ten years ago ... and your biggest complaint is about not being able to play games?

A video game industry exists. If you think a question about getting video games to run is "inherently stupid", then I'm inclined to believe that you think everyone with a job in the video game industry is "inherently stupid". Did I mischaracterize?

Re:General answer

[jedidiah]

Some things aren't as hard as some people make them out to be. The fact that some
people can't seem to be able to do them is more an indication that they have
absolutely no interest in finding out if they can be done and how they can be done.

They just start whining without even putting in any effort to see if they are full
of sh*t. Perhaps it's time for some people to dust off their view of Linux and look
at what's been going on lately.

Re:General answer

[jedidiah]

The "you're a pirate" attitude doesn't seem to be hurting Apple much.

OTOH, you are grossly misrepresenting the situation.

Re:General answer

[pugugly]

Admittedly it would help if at least three items weren't things *I* can do easily. I mean really, (s)he's complaining about how to look up memory or kill a process?

Right-click on a task bar. Add the task manager. *DONE*.

Can't connect to an ISP? Seriously? Either they're using a proprietary DUN driver, or you should be able to do this in 15 seconds (AT&T Worldnet used to actually use a proprietary driver. You did in fact have to dig the relevant info out of their tech support, but even that didn't take that long)

I *am* an idiot in Linux terms, and I can do these. When these are the *complaints*?

Pug

Enterprise Versus Desktop Emphasis

[eldavojohn]

You used to write a lot about desktop Linux distributions but now that you're COO of Canonical, the revenue comes most from enterprise support. Do you plan on trying to change that or maintain any value in pleasing the at home Ubuntu user? Your blog post talks about your kids achieving basic tasks with Ubuntu, will you still keep them in mind despite the fact your new employer doesn't see a dime from them? Any plans to make it more user friendly or make it more mainstream and less server room?

Microsoft Pac-Man : gobble! Ubuntu? gobble!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that Mark Shuttleworth has stepped aside, how long until the Microsoft coyotes come in and either implant a new CEO or insert stealth ex-employees into the fold to subvert Ubuntu or suddenly announce a new pact with Microsoft and Novell? How long can we expect Ubuntu to continue free of Redmond's grasp? Many won't speak of this, but you know the feelings are there. Just you wait, the "let's make a deal" Microsoft fairies will swarm in and around Ubuntu eventually.

: We promise we won't sue you today for the hamburger you eat from out of our interoperability kitchen, but we may always change our position once you become addicted to our hamburgers!

I know there are skins, but

[sys.stdout.write]

... I was just wondering if there were plans to move the default color scheme away from burnt orange.

It just seems that if Ubuntu wants to appeal to more mainstream users, a good approach would be to have a color scheme that doesn't look like a desert wasteland.

Re:I know there are skins, but

[zippthorne]

I heard they were making a big switch to mud brown in the next edition. As for looking like a desert wasteland, it also looks like the inside of every trendy coffee shop and Panera Bread, so you know a lot of thought went into its innovation. In fact, that's the very measure of original-ness: is it found in thousands of trendy stores nationwide? Then it's originique!

Re:I know there are skins, but

[AvitarX]

Am I the only person that likes the Ubuntu color scheme?

I think it is fantastic.

Though with transparency I prefer http://compiz-themes.org/content/show.php/Wombat+Blue?content=70900

Also, the extra buttons help too.

Re:I know there are skins, but

[sys.stdout.write]

I fully agree with your post if you remove everything before "I prefer".

Compiz should run by default, and they should have a nice, blue theme such as the one you suggest.

Re:I know there are skins, but

[Larryish]

You should check out the Ubuntu Studio theme, it is decent.

Only problem I had with it was the list colors in Filezilla were so light as to be almost unreadable. Fortunately, skins can be customized.

Re:I know there are skins, but

[AvitarX]

Fair enough, but I still prefer the orange theme of Feisty over the blue of Windows, or the grey of OSX (though 10.5 is a nice grey theme, as is KDE 4.2).

Re:I know there are skins, but

[Anonymous Coward]

You guys know you can change the color scheme to pretty much anything you want, right? ... Right?

Two things

[RichardJenkins]

Will Ubuntu continue to periodically suck my focus away from whatever task I'm doing with sociopathic notifications that refuse to leave until they're good and ready, however politely I ask.

Will Ubuntu avoid unnecessarily fiddling with applications as part of the default install [OK Pidgin/Empathy is the only case I can think of]

How much influence over Debian's future direction does Canonical have?

[Disclaimer: Big fan of Ubuntu, use it for most server installations and al personal desktops.]

Re:Two things

[Shikaku]

Will Ubuntu avoid unnecessarily fiddling with applications as part of the default install [OK Pidgin/Empathy is the only case I can think of]

Already solved: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/MinimalCD

Minimal install CD: download and install only what you need.

K-ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

The Ubuntu brand has worked well while KDE4 was working out the kinks, but as KDE is now (or becoming) better than Gnome, will there be brand name confusion, when people praise Kubuntu, and say Ubuntu is inferior?

Re:K-ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Kubuntu now. For me it is Ubuntu with KDE4. Debian Repositories and the integration work by Canonical is what seals the deal for me. Before that it was Xubuntu, by the way.

I really tried using and liking GNOMEubuntu, back when KDE4 was utter crapshit, but Gnome just sucks big time. Certainly not something I would want to use every day.

My take is most people will keep using Ubuntu with Gnome because they are retarded. They actually find it helpful when auto-hide leaves the panel exposed. That way they don't forget where it is supposed to be.

BTW, you could say I am full of bullshit and the panel can finally hide without Windows registry doppleganger magic, on the other hand, I would reply "Gnome 3".

Performance Measurements for Ubuntu?

[eldavojohn]

As over watch of operations management, what kind of performance measurements are you going to make to decide which direction Ubuntu development is heading? Number of bugs? Just cash flow? Number of supported packages?

Simply put: what are you going to improve Canonical's operations and how are you plan on measuring it to prove you're making a difference?

Ubuntu and KDE

[Enderandrew]

Will Ubuntu continue to treat KDE as a second-class citizen?

I loathe Gnome personally but don't begrude people the freedom of choice. However, with Ubuntu becoming almost synonymous with Linux, do they have a responsibility to try and put out a quality KDE desktop along with a quality Gnome desktop?

Re:Ubuntu and KDE

[rattaroaz]

As a KDE fan, and Kubuntu user, I think your comment is not quite fair. I would mod you up if I had any points, because I like the concept, but not the way you ask. The question implies Canonical doing something actively bad to KDE, and that may automatically put Matt on the defense. So I would have preferred you stated it otherwise, such as "Does you have any plans or personal hopes to invest more into the KDE SC?" Just my opinion, and I hope he addresses this.

Re:Ubuntu and KDE

[bcrowell]

I loathe Gnome personally but don't begrude people the freedom of choice. However, with Ubuntu becoming almost synonymous with Linux, do they have a responsibility to try and put out a quality KDE desktop along with a quality Gnome desktop?

Yep. Coming at this from a slightly different angle, I use fluxbox on ubuntu rather than gnome. One of the big problems in karmic is that I'm being affected by multiple new regressions that seem to arise from the lack of any serious testing on any desktop environment other than gnome. Two examples: (1) Previously, sound used to work fine for me in fluxbox. Now, sound works sometimes in Gnome, never in fluxbox. (2) This bug appears to arise because they decided to implement a new signal from the Gnome desktop to let xsplash know when it was done starting up, but nobody appears to have bothered to check what would happen in desktop environments other than Gnome, which don't implement the signal.

I understand that Gnome is the primary desktop focus of the standard version of ubuntu. But is is really that much to ask that someone at least start up the other desktop environments once to see if they work? Both of the problems above were evident to me within five minutes of upgrading from jaunty to karmic.

Re:Ubuntu and KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

Good question. Especially seeing what 4.4 is bringing to the table and how we're still in waiting mode for Gnome 3.0.

Re:Ubuntu and KDE

[Enderandrew]

I have always said part of the appeal of Ubuntu is that they have so many packages.

I also think that is a mark against Ubuntu because I don't think they have the staff to properly test all those packages, hence the buggy releases.

If you have projects like Xubuntu, Kubuntu, and the new Lubuntu, you need to either properly support them, or drop them.

Re:Ubuntu and KDE

[Enderandrew]

I think Ubuntu is actively hurting the KDE community by giving it a bad name.

When Canonical works on new features for each Ubuntu release, they work indepdently of the Kubuntu team. Kubuntu is constantly trying to play catch-up on base issues.

Even worse, they put out unstable, buggy, and sometimes flat-out broken KDE packages. Almost every I've talked to that has had really bad experiences with KDE complain about bugs and constant crashes they had when testing KDE packages from Ubuntu.

Read KDE forums, mailing lists, etc. You'll see some serious hate and vitrol from users who blame KDE devs, not realizing that the same packages on other distros work just fine. They don't realize it is their distro that is causing their problems.

I've seen several KDE devs walk away and stop contributing because of all the hate their getting. If Ubuntu wasn't putting out broken packages, it would remove a lot of this backlash.

That is not to say that 100% of KDE backlast is Ubuntu-created. Some people just don't like KDE 4.x. I didn't like the 4.0 release, and was pretty worried about the future direction of KDE at the time. But Ubuntu certainly hasn't done KDE any favors the past two years with the packages they've put out.

Re:Ubuntu and KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes please. Qt is a much better toolkit than GTK, and KDE has made strides until its 4.0 release, to the point that it's fairly easy to see that it will turn into something far superior to Gnome quickly.

Canonical, however, focuses on Ubuntu. Look at Ubuntu One, for example; yes you can install it on Kubuntu, but you get an ugly GTK app in your system tray (which is exactly that the Kubuntu team doesn't want). Well, seems like Ubuntu One will be ported to Windows before being ported to KDE: http://www.kryogenix.org/days/2010/01/22/pycon-sprint-to-get-ubuntu-one-on-windows

No Xsplash, no Ubuntu One, incomplete Ayatana notifications implementation, way more unstable/untested packages, no Software Center, no Samba configuration (need to edit the samba config file by hand), etc. Looking at Kubuntu's "Feature Parity" wiki page makes me weep: https://wiki.kubuntu.org/Kubuntu/UbuntuFeatureParity

Re:Ubuntu and KDE

[at_slashdot]

"same packages on other distros work just fine"

And why is that? How hard is to compile KDE? Do Kubuntu devs mess up packaging on purpose? I bet there's some thing going on here...

Re:Ubuntu and KDE

[socceroos]

I hope you're joking. Please tell me you're going to reply with a 'whoosh'...

Re:Ubuntu and KDE

[at_slashdot]

whoosh...

Re:Ubuntu and KDE

[Threni]

> do they have a responsibility to try and put out a quality KDE desktop

Responsibility to who?

Re:Ubuntu and KDE

[FoolishOwl]

Personally, I've been wanting to install and try out KDE on my preferred computer, but I haven't, because the menu systems will list Gnome apps and KDE apps both, in both desktops. If they could just standardize a tag that would say "gnome-only" or "kde-only", I'd be happy to install the Kubuntu desktop. Likewise for Xubuntu.

Quality Control

[davidm2005]

I have been using Ubuntu as a software developer for the past several years. I have been extremely disappointed with the most recent release of Ubuntu, 9.10, as it has been extremely buggy and seems like a step backwards to me. The conclusion of this review http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ubuntu-karmic-koala,2484-13.html also expresses a lot of my thoughts about Ubuntu 9.10. I had so many problems in using 9.10, that did NOT exist in 9.04, that I switched one of the two computers I use at work to Windows 7, for stability (yes, these are crazy days). Do you have any plans to increase quality control in Ubuntu, even if it comes at the cost of delaying the every six month release schedule?

Re:Quality Control

[bcrowell]

This is an excellent question. I've been using ubuntu since edgy eft, and I'm really dismayed by the quality of jaunty and (especially) karmic. The biggest issue is that sound, which worked for me in edgy through intrepid, started working poorly in jaunty, and is now essentially completely broken for me in karmic. I've spent a lot of time surfing ubuntuforms.org, collecting information, trying to write useful and well documented bug reports, etc. But the upshot is that there have been major, major regressions in sound for me.

Another regression that affected me after the upgrade to karmic was this one. I noticed the problem, and because it was causing me significant inconvenience I dug around in the source code and found it. As described in the bug report, there is a function called temporary_hack_for_initial_fade(). So obviously someone put a kludge in and then the kludge wasn't fixed in time for the release of karmic, so they released it anyway. This doesn't seem to speak well for the quality assurance procedures that go into a release of ubuntu.

Re:Quality Control

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Because for me it's been getting better with every release. Now the only thing that doesn't work is my fingerprint reader... I think you also need to realize that you can't extrapolate your experiences to the whole.

Re:Quality Control

[socceroos]

He's talking about pulseaudio. This explains the regressions since Jaunty. Having said this, pulseaudio integration is getting better and better - I would be very surprised if there were major issues for large portions of the community with sound in the LTS release.

Re:Quality Control

[WeatherGod]

There are two major possibilities for your issue. The first was a bug for some people when they upgraded to Karmic. For whatever reason, many people were not booting into the correct kernel. Therefore the kernel drivers would not work properly. The second possibility was that the PA-compatible kernel drivers had yet to be made for your hardware by the time of Karmic release. However, you can install 'linux-modules-backports-alsa-karmic-generic' package to obtain the backports of the absolute latest kernel modules that are being made for PA in Lucid. It is possible that your hardware has been addressed in the backports.

Of course, YMMV...

Re:Quality Control

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're concerned about this, stick with LTS releases.

Re:Quality Control

[Anonymous Coward]

How odd...I recently installed Karmic on my Aspire one after the resident XP install got toasted by something I picked up visiting myspace. The only trouble I've found so far is the webcam drivers have trouble w/ full motion video (takes stills just fine, though).

The audio works fine for me, wireless connection...no problem, heck, even got the DVD peripheral to play movies without much hassle. Still haven't tested the printer, yet...guess that's next. Most of the Windows dependent stuff I used in XP either has a Linux port already, or seems to work reasonably well under Wine. There IS an issue with an MMO under Wine, that is not present in a Windows install, do wish the developers could get that ironed out, but thankful for the Windows emulator in any case.

Overall, a very nice install experience for me. Hard to believe how far Linux has come in the last few years. It's got a long ways yet to go, perhaps, but definitely making positive progress.

Re:Quality Control

[Fr33thot]

If you want reliability, why don't you stick with the LTS releases? I know lots have been added to 9.04 and 9.10 but they are intended to be more cutting edge as a means to drive the LTS releases forward.

Revenue

[Enderandrew]

Shuttleworth is still funding Canonical. At some point however, this needs to turn into a protibable vendure to endure. How does Canonical create lasting revenue streams, and will those decisions come at the cost of usability and freedom in the distro, such as the recent decision to use Yahoo search (powered by Bing) as the default)?

Re:Revenue

[CannonballHead]

at the cost of usability and freedom in the distro, such as the recent decision to use Yahoo search (powered by Bing) as the default)?

I was with you somewhat on usability - though bing is actually pretty usable IMO - but how is using Yahoo or Bing (or any other search) instead of Google a "freedom" issue? Can't you change it?

Re:Revenue

[moonbender]

Of course you can change it. And after you change it back to Google (or whatever), which takes all of one second, it ought to remain the default even after an upgrade. Some people just get really aggravated arguing that since most people use Google now, most people would prefer to use Google in the future, and thus the change to another search engine is not in most people's immediate best interest. Which is true, and if it weren't about such a triviality, I might agree with them.

Re:Revenue

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you think having a default search engine that will financially benefit Microsoft is something that will turn off many Linux users?

And more importantly, what's to keep that income to Microsoft from being used against Linux, yet again? (I read Darla M. is buying some "patents" from the remains of SCO...)

Smarthphones

[diegocg]

Smartphones have become another computing device. There is Android, and there is MeeGoo. Ubuntu has missed the oportunity of creating a phone version of Ubuntu like Apple did with iPhone OS....what is Canonical going to do in this area? Create a phone version of Ubuntu and hope that some vendor chooses it? Support Android? Or Meego?

Re:Smarthphones

[junglee_iitk]

Mod parent up! Imagine ubuntu on a smartphone - that will lead to Linux on Desktop year...

Migration

[Enderandrew]

In the 21st century, why is it that we still don't have a simple, user-friendly tool to help both home and enterprise users to migrate their existing documents and settings while performing a Linux install?

Re:Migration

[gnud]

We do. It's called having /home on a separate partition.

Re:Migration

[moonbender]

True. But having home on a seperate partition probably isn't the way Ubuntu sets up the hard disk on a clean install.

However, you can leave /home intact even if it's not sitting on it's own partition. AFAIK the installer actually lets you do this in manual mode, just be sure to unmark the format checkbox. I think I used this once, even though it's considered a Bad Idea (I've since repartitioned). Maybe Canonical could look at why it's considered a bad idea and work out the kinks -- I don't see why it should be that problematic. Of course some additional work would have to be done to detect the users from the previous install, so that, ideally, you see your old directory on the first boot and not a blank one because you decided to use a different login.

Proprietary products

[Enderandrew]

You often praise proprietary, closed-source products on your blog (especially products from Apple and IBM). What is your stance on mixing proprietary and open products?

Distro Fragmentation

[Enderandrew]

Even as Ubuntu soars in popularity, we see forks of Ubuntu (such as Mint) pop up. Do you feel that distro fragmentation detracts from acceptance and adoption?

Re:Distro Fragmentation

[WaywardGeek]

I believe that Canonical is probably the most popular Linux distro that still has as it's primary goal helping make the world a better place. RedHat and Suse both make it difficult to fork their distros, by requiring that you remove their trademarks everywhere, and in general, they are unfriendly to forks. Ubuntu on the other hand, has been much friendlier in this regard, and there are several useful forks that make life better for their target users.

For example, I'm working with Tony Sales on a Vinux ISO, linux for blind and visually impaired, built on top of Ubuntu Lucid. Having a good and accessible base Linux to start with helps make Vinux better, and through our testing and code fixes, we can feed back improvements to Ubuntu. I certainly hope that Ubuntu continues it's openness in this regard.

Re:Distro Fragmentation

[Anonymous Coward]

Weird, I'm working with Tony Little. We're making an exercise one called Bunt the Gazelle, it's also built on Ubuntu, but embedded into exercise equipment.

Re:Distro Fragmentation

[Enderandrew]

Mozilla also requires that remove trademarks with any non-official build.

Does that mean Mozilla isn't trying to make the world a better place?

CentOS exists as a Red Hat fork, and Red Hat has never fought it.

I don't think you understand trademarks. A trademark is only valid if you fight to protect it. If you allow others to reuse your trademark however, then you can't enforce it when you want to. Novell and Red Hat are pretty much required to try and defend their trademark, just as Mozilla defends their trademarks.

I wouldn't be shocked if Ubuntu started doing the same thing. For instance, the Ubuntu forks (like Mint) don't include Ubuntu trademarks.

Re:Distro Fragmentation

[Anonymous Coward]

CentOS is basically "RedHat Home User"...
Fedora is basically "RedHat-devel"...

They are put there for a reason. In the long run, both distros end up helping Red Hat deal with bugs, support and compatibility issues that come about when a user tries to do something that a paying corporation or company wouldn't have the time or money to do.

Business apps?

[DogDude]

Does Ubuntu have any plans for trying to recruit business software makers to make Linux versions? Before Ubuntu can be useful to me, at the very least, there needs to be at least ONE functional financial package (ala: Quickbooks, Simply, etc.), for example.

Re:Business apps?

[socsoc]

Or personal financial software and tax prep. I'd to give money to someone for something better than gnucash and most people only want the big names for tax prep (sourceforge folks, thanks for coming out, but you aren't gonna convince most people).

Re:Business apps?

[Enderandrew]

They aren't Gnome-centric, but KMyMoney and Skrooge and both very promising programs suitable for personal finance, or business finance.

They both import Quickbooks data.

You can also use Quickbooks via the web these days.

I think the issue for many people in the business world is integration with existing Window systems, and/or importing data from those systems.

Can you interact well with an Exchange server? Can you import a .PST file?

Novell seems to be pushing the innovation in Mono development (being able to move over your .NET apps, which are huge in the enterprise world), OpenXchange support, OOXML support in OpenOffice, etc. Novell also seems to be spearheading the Samba4 work. Why can't we replace a Windows DC with a Linux DC and integrate nicely into the existing Windows domain structure? Why can't a Linux DC work as a backup to a Windows DC? Why can't you manage AD from a Linux client?

We berate Microsoft for a lack of interoperability. It is hard convincing a shop to switch from 100% Microsoft to 100% non-Microsoft. You need to be able to sell a smooth transition and migration, which often means interoperability.

This is perhaps the largest block to wider Linux adoption. Shouldn't this be a core focus?
I'd like to see better migration tools.

simple one here

[poetmatt]

what will you do to ensure proprietary software, proprietary licenses and related legal uncertainties/risks will not be further migrated into ubuntu? What will you do to further the goal of free software/open source? It's not safe to program anything using mono due to the obvious legal risks, for example.

The yahoo search deal (after yahoo announcing a MS partnership) and having mono (and fspot) in ubuntu are two notable issues in that sense.

Re:simple one here

[Enderandrew]

Mono is integrating into more and more Gnome apps. Given that Ubuntu is based upon Gnome, either they must start forking these Gnome apps, or embrace Mono themselves.

I understand the initial concern with Mono, but I'm not paranoid about patent lawsuits.

I don't know that Microsoft can really sue over Mono given that Microsoft has worked with the Mono team and largely given their blessing to the project. The EU has also demanded they work on interoperability. If Microsoft tried to sue over Mono patent-infringement, the EU can just drop the hammer on Microsoft again. Does MS really want that?

Re:simple one here

[Luke has no name]

The Yahoo deal is not dangerous in any way. That's FUD to the max.

I haven't read every license discussion and I'm not a lawyer, but if Debian has found it legally safe to keep Mono, then I don't see how it is truly dangerous in any way. /thread, lest we get into a Monowar.

Re:simple one here

[poetmatt]

Yahoo deal not dangerous? So let's recap.

Microsoft tried to do a hostile buyout of Yahoo. Yahoo's CEO was forced to resign and a Microsoft sponsored individual - Carol Bartz - Sponsored by Carl Icahn - replaces Yang. Now MS has a revenue deal with Yahoo, magically approved almost immediately after Carol comes in, and you don't think it's suspicious?

Next Ubuntu does a deal with Yahoo and you don't suspect anything suspicious?

The fud is you, my good sir.

Also Debian has not found it legally safe to keep Mono, lest you keep your spin in another thread, my microsoftie. Mono is legally unclear - much like any other microsoft covenant.

Re:simple one here

[poetmatt]

Why would they care? The current fine was a slap on the wrist as far as financial penalties go for MS.

Re:simple one here

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not safe to program anything using mono due to the obvious legal risks, for example.

According to the little lawyer inside you.

Re:simple one here

[socsoc]

Did you use recycled aluminum on that tin-foil hat?

Re:simple one here

[Luke has no name]

Mono is in Debian stable main. Debian software in main abides by the Debian Free Software Guidelines. If it weren't deemed "libre", it would be in non-free.

How does Canonical getting search revenue from Yahoo make Ubuntu less free? No non-free code is in the distribution due to this decision. Were Yahoo to become hostile to Canonical, Canonical could use Google again.

Yahoo/MS are unlikely to get useful reconnaissance information from getting search queries labelled as "Canonical searches".

Re:simple one here

[Enderandrew]

Twice they got slapped for something like half a billion dollars each time.

No corporation on the planet, including Microsoft, is comfortable just handing over a billion dollars in fines.

The EU can do worse than levy fines. They can demand that Microsoft stop selling their products in the EU and completely block Microsoft.

The EU is making Microsoft play nice. And in case you missed it, Microsoft is content to jump through those hoops. Microsoft has released tons of technical documentation on their protocols and standards to outside developers. They've worked hand-in-hand with the Mono and Moonlight teams. They're opening up the PST file format.

Microsoft is aimed at making a profit. That will never change. And they want to dominate every market they are in. But they are far more open than they have ever been in their history, because the EU demands it.

If Microsoft tried to sue anyone who used Mono, the EU would drop the hammer on Microsoft again.

Re:simple one here

[poetmatt]

Microsoft only, and only played nice, when they said that Windows 7 europe might be restricted due to browser issues. The rest of everything was song and dance. Remind me how long the samba case was going on?

Continue standard six month releases?

[Enderandrew]

The last few Ubuntu releases have been plagued with bugs on release. Do you support steady releases every six months, and what can Ubuntu to do improve from a quality perspective?

Yes Yes Yes Yes

[rmcd]

Quality control in Ubuntu seems like a huge problem. Every release fixes something broken and breaks something that was working. Wifi used to be broken and now it works. Power management used to work and now it's broken. It's a huge waste of time and it makes it hard to recommend Ubuntu.

Re:Yes Yes Yes Yes

[moonbender]

I've been using Ubuntu exclusively on my home desktop for a few years now; I've never used another distro for more than a couple of days. So -- are Fedora and OpenSUSE seriously different from Ubuntu in fixing some stuff while breaking other stuff?

For instance, I've also had power management issues in various releases (at the moment it's mostly working), and I've always attributed it to the fact that, well, suspend and hibernate remain a bit flaky on Linux, mostly due to problematic devices/drivers. I assume most problems have to be fixed upstream, and aren't the result of the integration Ubuntu does. With some exceptions, of course, like partially broken Pulseaudio setups.

Re:Yes Yes Yes Yes

[socceroos]

The point isn't that other Distros have the same problem, the point is that noone should have this problem. Better quality control makes for a better OS - end of story.

Re:Yes Yes Yes Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Debian (which I switched to full-time after getting sick of risky Ubuntu upgrades) is very conservative about upgrades, so you're unlikely to get upgrades that break things. The downside is that Debian repository software is almost always several versions behind Ubuntu repository software, but that's remedied easily enough by adding a "testing" repository and

sudo apt-get -t testing install foo

.
Obviously, that's more dangerous (hence why it's not default). Alternatively, you can specify a "testing" install during the installer, but again, you're back at square one with regards to upgrades breaking things.

Re:Yes Yes Yes Yes

[JackieBrown]

That only works until there is a libc update in testing. Then you have to replace your core libraries to get the newer package.

Better yet is to
apt-get build-dep foo -t testing
apt-get --build source foo -t testing

Just make sure to have stable pinned so you don't end up upgrading your packages to testing during the first step.

Re:Yes Yes Yes Yes

[moonbender]

Sure. No one should have any software problems! End of story. So what are you suggesting? Putting off a release if somebody reports a bug/regression? Sticking to old versions of a package if a regression is reported? To be honest, I'd rather have the updated package and risk a couple of bugs. It's upstream's job to make sure there are no bugs and particularly that there are no regressions; it might be part of Canonical's job to shield users from particularly bad upstream releases, but only up to a point. Maybe you should look at Debian stable?

Of course it'd be nice if they fixed all the bugs that crop up, but that's a job that's better left for the actual developers of the package. I'd rather they concentrate on good integration and facilitating bug reporting and communication between users and developers.

Re:Yes Yes Yes Yes

[socceroos]

So what are you suggesting? Putting off a release if somebody reports a bug/regression? Sticking to old versions of a package if a regression is reported?

I'm suggesting they should have better unit testing. I'm suggesting that these basic functions should be tested release by release and made sure to consistently work. I'm not saying they need to perform miracles on areas where Linux just doesn't cut it - but the amount of regressions that Ubuntu suffers from release to release needs to be addressed - even if that is backporting of newer releases.

Actually never mind....

[RichardJenkins]

Probably best not to pay attention to a guy who can't count to three.

The GNOME community is fragmenting.

[Anonymous Coward]

More importantly, we see GNOME falling further and further behind KDE. We need to know exactly when Matt will be pushing for GNOME to be deprecated in favor of KDE (or even XFCE). He really doesn't have a choice; GNOME needs to go, and it needs to go very soon.

Even if it wasn't as great as everyone was expecting, at least KDE managed to get their 4.0 release out the door quickly, and have been making great improvements on it since then. We see them innovating, and creating a desktop environment that keeps getting better and better. Their underlying toolkit, Qt, keeps improving rapidly thanks to the efforts of Nokia and others.

GNOME, on the other hand, has been spinning its wheels for years. It has no real leadership, and we aren't seeing any innovation out of them. GTK+ is basically in maintenance mode.

We're seeing the GNOME community fragmenting, and quite badly. Some people still advocate using C, others are saying that Mono is the way to go. And yet others are pushing for Vala. Frankly, the internal strife will tear the GNOME project apart, much like happened to XFree86. I, for one, sure hope that Ubuntu has moved away from GNOME far before then.

Re:The GNOME community is fragmenting.

[Enderandrew]

I do think that Qt is a better framework to build upon, but I think there is room for the Gnome desktop.

They have different goals and philosophies. I think KDE 4.4 right now is a far more advanced desktop than Gnome 2.x, but the work on Gnome 3 and Gnome Shell shows that they do have an eye towards the future.

However, given that even many diehard GTK developers seem to have serious issues with GTK, and there is some dissent over how to proceed with GTK 3 in the future, why not at least consider a future Gnome built upon Qt?

It would make it far easier to apps to fit in naturally with both Gnome and KDE desktops. Qt ships with a Clearlooks engine out of the box. You could build a Gnome desktop on top of Qt that has the design and appearance Gnome developers strive for, with better portability and better performance.

If such a huge migration were ever going to happen or work, Ubuntu would have to spearhead it.

Re:The GNOME community is fragmenting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would be the point of a "GNOME" desktop built on Qt?

While XFCE and LXDE both aim to be lightweight and efficient, GNOME and KDE have always aimed at providing the most complete environments possible. And like we both agree, in KDE we already have a high-end desktop environment built upon Qt. I don't know what GNOME could do differently. KDE is already excellent in virtually every way.

Today, the only differentiation I see between GNOME and KDE is that GNOME has stagnated for several years, and is basically where the open source desktop state-of-the-art was in 2005. It only feels "different" from KDE in that it's horribly outdated by modern standards.

The GNOME 3 and GNOME Shell efforts are feeble attempts at keeping up with KDE. Neither has enough momentum to counter KDE, let alone survive more than a couple of years at the most.

Re:The GNOME community is fragmenting.

[andreasg]

I want my reversed dialog button order. :-(

Re:The GNOME community is fragmenting.

[Kjella]

However, given that even many diehard GTK developers seem to have serious issues with GTK, and there is some dissent over how to proceed with GTK 3 in the future, why not at least consider a future Gnome built upon Qt?

The problem is C vs C++. It pretty effectively rules out any real sharing of code bases and means that to write Gnome/Qt, you are pretty much starting from scratch. I think KDE just tried that and it was a long and nasty road. I don't think that many enough would embrace Qt/C++ to see it through and it'd never work quite the same, the danger is that you'd only get a bleak shadow of what Gnome should be and get all kinds of flamewars going.

Unfortunately,

Re:The GNOME community is fragmenting.

[Anonymous Coward]

We're seeing the GNOME community fragmenting, and quite badly.

Indeed, but KDE is infuriating. The user interface sucks.. full stop.

I, for one, sure hope that Ubuntu has moved away from GNOME far before then.

In the event this happens they need to ensure that Xubuntu stays up to speed, otherwise many of us will switch distros, or *gasp* buy a Mac.

Seriously, I appreciate that you prefer KDE, and I acknowledge that Gnome has serious issues, but for many of us (quite possibly more than half of linux GUI users depending which poll you believe) hate KDE's interface with a passion.

Re:The GNOME community is fragmenting.

[Enderandrew]

I believe Qt supports flipping them as you wish now.

Re:The GNOME community is fragmenting.

[rec9140]

"Indeed, but GNOME is infuriating. The user interface sucks.. full stop." Fixed that.... KDE is by the FAR AND ABOVE the SUPERIOR X WM...till KDE 4.x, when they screwed it up, possibly been repair. I seriously don't appreciate that you prefer a tainted and inferior X WM, and don't agree with any poll that includes a tainted WM to start.

Re:The GNOME community is fragmenting.

[moonbender]

I (honestly) agree with most things you're saying and I think Ubuntu should switch to KDE once they've gotten around to creating a nice UI with all that innovation and technology. So around version 5, I guess. Cause right now, with the combination of vanilla Gnome, (Gnome-)Do and Compiz I have never been happier with a windowing environment. It looks good and gets the fuck out of my way most of the time. OTOH in the office we use KDE4 and it looks horrible and plays much the same. Looking at my phone, one of Nokia's current "flagships", I guess having them as a corporate sponsor doesn't really help designing pleasant UIs...

Then again, chances are the Gnome UI will only get worse as time goes on -- what I've seen so far from Gnome Shell wasn't exactly promising (I'm keeping an open mind, though). So maybe the balance will tip towards Qt earlier...

Re:The GNOME community is fragmenting.

[nine-times]

More importantly, we see GNOME falling further and further behind KDE.

I think it depends on your goals. I'm not surprised when a programmer says they like KDE because it's very flexible, but I think if I were setting up Linux for my mom, I'd use Gnome. It's simpler, and I think most people would find the UI conventions to be more clear. Maybe it's just me, but when I use KDE, I tend to feel like they're giving me 50 options that I don't care about and I can't find the 1 option I do care about. If I find it confusing *at all* then there'd be no hope for my parents.

That's not to say that I'm a huge fan of GNOME. It always seems a bit slow, and somehow it always feels like a lot of wasted space. Some of it can be fixed with better themes and configuring the panels, but distributions seem to always come with a panel at the top and bottom, using huge fonts everywhere. I tend to prefer Xfce, but on the other hand it doesn't seem as well-integrated as GNOME does. Maybe that's just because distributions are putting more effort into making sure GNOME is well-integrated?

Mostly I don't like GNOME or KDE or Xfce because they're all so... conventional. I'm really pretty interested in seeing someone bring some new UI approaches instead of copying Windows's "task bar + notification area + start menu" approach. People make fun of Apple's dock, but it works pretty well once you get used to it. I haven't used an OLPC's Sugar or Moblin so I can't say how well they work, but I admire that they're trying to develop new UI conventions. In fact, if there's anyone out there working on something like that and you want some feedback, I'd love to check it out. (Of course, keep in mind that the UIs that I think look neat are Sugar, Moblin, and OSX. If you show me something that's super-useful for arranging terminal windows, I might not be too excited.)

Re:The GNOME community is fragmenting.

[AvitarX]

Where is GNOME really letting down?

Not a troll, I am curious. I find compiz fantastic, stable, and fast. The KDE4 compositing (haven't used since 4.2 or 4.3 I think) to be slow (in FPS), and crashy.

Sure KDE has widgets, but they are also slow, and with compositing would sometimes crash, causing it to reload into non-composited WM. The folder widget scrolls VERY slowly, destroying the benefit of such a system.

The features in KDE are nice, but just not smooth yet.

And, no k3b, as the gnome equivalent gains ground.

Re:The GNOME community is fragmenting.

[shutdown -p now]

The GNOME community is fragmenting

It does?

More importantly, we see GNOME falling further and further behind KDE.

No, really, it does?

All I see is that KDE is fragmenting, because 3.x is outdated by now (but quite a few people stick to it because it works), and 4.x is still not fully stable or feature-complete (yes, I've tried the most recent version).

Re:The GNOME community is fragmenting.

[Anonymous Coward]

haha
the mods are clearly on coke here. I posted the above as an obvious troll (and modded myself up a bit), and a balanced reply gets modded into oblivion.

Re:The GNOME community is fragmenting.

[Larryish]

C vs C++?

Just do a find-and-replace, d00d!!!@

With a hex editor!!1

Re:The GNOME community is fragmenting.

[sandGorgons]

For a very long time, the network manager in KDE did'nt work very well - it is in KDE 4.4 that the networkmanager Plasmoid was even included ... and I do not know whether it is enabled by default.

I want to love KDE but there are exactly two things that hinder me:
1. basic usability - network manager, desktop look configuration (Cashew... really ? Desktop Plasmoid for icons ?)
2. Native browser - move to Webkit already. Who uses KHTML seriously ? QT Chromium and I'm in...

Re:The GNOME community is fragmenting.

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE needs to be kept out of the open source distribution. The desktop itself is very good and perhaps the most technically advanced today but it suffers from NIH syndrome and developer lock-in which leads to "okay" applications and zero portability:

Since by targeting KDE you have to use Qt which is a very good cross-platform toolkit, there is no reason to write separate UIs for every platform (which is the proper way to do multiplatform). Unfortunately, KDE uses specific libraries which are unavailable for other platforms than Linux, making your apps portable "as soon as they have ported KDE to Windows". And even if you wanted to make non-KDE frontends, Qt makes it difficult by being quite invasive (it expects you to use its own collection types, for instance). Which is why there is not a single KDE app that runs on anything but KDE.

Also, since you pretty much have to use C++, Qt and KDevelop, this means only the developers setting out specifically to write a KDE app will do it, while the people who want to write a good program are more likely to use something else. This is why all the truly remarkable applications use GTK: see Transmission and Inkscape.

(Also I think that the GNOME community isn't nearly as vulnerable as you make it out to be because many who develop for GNOME don't see themselves as GNOME developers but that's another discussion. I also agree that XFCE is better than GNOME.)

Re:The GNOME community is fragmenting.

[Inner_Child]

"Indeed, but GNOME is infuriating. The user interface sucks.. full stop."

In your opinion, that is.

Fixed that....

Seriously, how long is this fad of people taking something that someone says and twisting it to their own preference going to last? It's really goddamn old already.

KDE is by the FAR AND ABOVE the SUPERIOR X WM...till KDE 4.x, when they screwed it up, possibly been repair.

Since KDE4 is the current version and the only one in wide use, any praise you may have stored to heap upon its predecessor... doesn't really matter, does it?

I seriously don't appreciate that you prefer a tainted and inferior X WM, and don't agree with any poll that includes a tainted WM to start.

Since you recognize that it's a preference, why does it matter if you appreciate it? And for that matter, who made you grand high lord and poobah of determining what's tainted or inferior?

Re:The GNOME community is fragmenting.

[Enderandrew]

I've gotten the KDE kwin compiz-like effects running on pretty old hardware with only 32MB of video ram. It all depends on the video driver.

The issue with some people is that Qt 4.x exposed some areas (especially with Nvidia video drivers) where they had really poor performance. Oddly enough, most of these issues were 2D painting issues exposed with a compiz-like framework.

I don't think I've ever had kwin crash on me once in the KDE 4.x series, which I've used for over two years. But again, going back to my original point, Ubuntu seems to be out some really terrible KDE packages. If you experienced heavy instability, I wonder if you were using a Ubuntu package.

Part of what I like about KDE is how fast it is, even on old hardware. The Qt painting issues with certain video drivers is unfortunate, but one that needs to be largely fixed at the driver level.

Re:The GNOME community is fragmenting.

[Enderandrew]

Porting from one framework to another means a hefty rewrite regardless. It isn't one Gnome can entirely ignore moving forward. They're trying to mitigate it, but not really addressing the shortcomings in GTK currently. The initial switch to GTK 3 will be mainly deprecating some features of GTK 2, but many people are calling for a much more radical rewrite of GTK at some point.

There is a lot of development in Gnome land that is moving to Mono and C# anyway. So it isn't like they are firmly determined to remain with C forever.

KDE & LXDE

[MonsterTrimble]

I have a few questions as a loyal *buntu user:

1) Do you feel Kubuntu's 'Operation Timelord' is a step in the right direction for the distribution? If so, why do you feel it was allowed to slip far enough to warrant a complete overhaul?
2) Do you see Kubuntu & Xubuntu becoming purely community-supported distros with Canonical focusing solely on Ubuntu desktop & server?
3) With Xubuntu's memory & CPU requirements being on par with Ubuntu's and Mark Shuttleworth's invite 'to become a self-maintained project in the Ubuntu community' (according to lxde.org), does this signal an end to Xubuntu as a whole or at the very least the 'lightweight' *buntu distribution?

Re:KDE & LXDE

[bmcage]

Yes, qood questions.

Money

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be making a lot of money in your new position. Can I borrow some, and when would you need me to pay it back?

Is there a time to fork?

[nine-times]

Sorry, I know my viewpoint is going to anger and annoy some people, but I've been thinking about the relative lack of success of Linux on the desktop lately. By "relative lack of success" I don't mean to bash the quality of Linux, but only that it doesn't seem to be very widely used in spite of being pretty good for a lot of purposes. So first, my obvious question would be, to what do you attribute the relative lack of success, and what plans do you have, if any, to do something about it.

To be a little more specific (and to answer my own question a little bit) it seems to me that a fair amount of the problem isn't the OS itself, but the associate applications. For example, lots of people have complained about GIMP for reasons ranging from lack of specific functionality to an unconventional UI, and even to the awkward connotations of the name "GIMP". Even having personally gotten some graphic designers to try the GIMP, I have yet to know any professional designers who find it adequate. I'd like to use Linux, but don't find I can come close replicating an equivalent workflow to what I have available using tools like Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, and Sound Forge. (those are the applications I'm personally stuck with, though I'm sure other people have other applications on their personal lists.)

Sorry if this is a vague or offensive question, but I'd really like to know, is there a plan to attack those kinds of issues at any point? I feel like Ubuntu (and other Linux distros) have done a pretty good job in polishing the installation procedures and the "look and feel" aspect of things, but does there come a time when you say, "We need a serious Adobe CS competitor for our OS to be competitive on the desktop, so let's make that happen"? If so, what happens then?

Sorry, I know people are going to tell me that I should just use the GIMP and if it doesn't do what I need, I should rewrite it. Sorry, I don't have the programming skills and and I don't have the money to single-handedly fund development of all the applications that I'd need to switch to Linux. I'd be willing to buy them once they were developed, or even make modest contributions to a project that I thought would actually deliver on what I needed, but I'm not a software developer.

Really, honestly, I'm not trying to be offensive to FOSS developers. I'm just speaking as someone who, for both practical and ideological reasons, would love to switch away from using Windows, but I keep finding that I can't. I use Debian and Ubuntu when I can, and have even contributed money to FOSS projects. So ultimately my question is, does Ubuntu have as one of its goals to enable someone like me to finally make the switch to Linux? If so, what's the plan? What can I do to help?

Re:Is there a time to fork?

[selven]

OpenOffice.org is getting quite good for most purposes lately, and that seems to be where the attention is focused. As for advanced image/sound/video/CAD editing applications, with a few partial exceptions here and there (eg. Blender), Wine seems to be the way to go. Wine is also moving forward pretty fast with Google pushing it as the means through which they release Linux versions of all their desktop software.

Re:Is there a time to fork?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

To be a little more specific (and to answer my own question a little bit) it seems to me that a fair amount of the problem isn't the OS itself, but the associate applications.

Clearly the larger the install base for an OS, the more applications are likely to be developed for it, but additionally the ease of developing, marketing, and getting those applications to the end user plays a big role. I know the current Canonical roadmap includes an App Store built into the package manager, to facilitate developers marketing and delivering applications to end users, similar to what Apple has done with the iPhone App Store. Ubuntu can also capitalize upon nonproifit collaborative development by acting as a facilitator and contributor to application development needed by larger organizations needing software and with a budget for development.

That said, I think Canonical should do more than just that. The App store in the application manager should be a priority, but to be realistic unless Ubuntu gains a lot of market share, this is going to be a big uphill battle. Several strategies could help alleviate this problem:

• Create a good, easy, cross platform development environment so developers can target Ubuntu and another OS (Windows or OS X) simultaneously with first rate applications that work well with both. This would mean either embracing WINE in a big way (since MS is not going to play ball) or making a partnership with Apple to create a more interoperable format for applications that run on both Linux and OS X.
• Create an in house application development program that targets multiple platforms and makes better applications on other platforms than are available. Don't make a Photoshop clone for Linux. Make a Photoshop clone for Linux, Windows, and OS X, that is better for some group of users than Photoshop is. Maybe this means more feature-ful, or maybe it just means much cheaper while still good. This group can make commercial software and make a profit, while targeting application niches that are holding up Linux adoption.
• Find partners - One of the reasons linux adoption is low is because Linux pre-installs are very rare. Hardware partners that need a free OS and some knowhow to customize it also have the money to pay for application development and other partners who might be willing to target that market.

Even having personally gotten some graphic designers to try the GIMP, I have yet to know any professional designers who find it adequate.

I've worked as a professional graphic designer and as a part-time graphic designer in startups. I do use both Linux and GIMP and it is not only adequate but superior for some tasks. Sadly, this is not all tasks. I mostly have used it for batch processing of images where automating the work via scripts was important. Of late, I use it even less, since OS X has some nice, built in scripting that works well with Photoshop, Pixelmator, and GraphicConverter.

...but does there come a time when you say, "We need a serious Adobe CS competitor for our OS to be competitive on the desktop, so let's make that happen"? If so, what happens then?

This is an interesting question, but I don't think Ubuntu is there yet. A lot of low hanging fruit is available before the professional graphic design niche is worth targeting. Home users and Corporate Workstations are the two biggest of these. The former is mostly there sans a market for good games and reworking the application manager to facilitate generic commercial software. The latter will probably be best entered into by targeting government and education first and letting the market share do more of the work instead of Canonical trying to brute force it.

It's nice to read a post from someone who can intelligently point out real problem spots and ask good questions. Hopefully some of your post makes its way to Mr. Asay so we can hear his take.

Re:Is there a time to fork?

[Kjella]

So ultimately my question is, does Ubuntu have as one of its goals to enable someone like me to finally make the switch to Linux?

Yes. The trouble is, if you frame it that way then Linux has to dislodge every incumbent market dominating piece of software which is well beyond the capability of Shuttleworth. I think it's actually beyond the capability of the whole open source community. Even things like Firefox which is one of the grand champions of open source only got 25% market share, the old ways sit hard.

Microsoft won't budge but the other companies, they're just looking for a business case and you'll have Adobe CS - the real thing - on Ubuntu. Of course, this is the old chicken and egg problem. Well, I think the only way out of that is not trying to win every niche. There's many, many people that need only basic software, but they're also the kind of user you can't require a degree in CS to administrate their box - those groups are almost mutually exclusive.

I don't think Shuttlworth has so many other ways to go than the one he's going, trying to polish it up so new users can use it and trying to create one big target that hopefully some commmercial companies will start to pick up on. Don't think they'll support ten different distros, it'll be like server software. If you want support, you're running our configuration. If it runs anyway, great for you but not our problem when it breaks. If you think all people will ever need is OSS, then we'll be at 1% another ten years.

Re:Is there a time to fork?

[nine-times]

I know the current Canonical roadmap includes an App Store built into the package manager

Thanks for this bit of information. I use Ubuntu, but I'm largely ignorant about stuff like this.

This would mean either embracing WINE in a big way...

If they do that, they should be sure to develop WINE to the point of being transparent. If you lose features, experience bugs, have to figure out work-arounds, and have to hunt for files inside of foreign directory structures, then it's not going to be a good solution. Ideally, you even want applications to use native UI conventions. For cross-platform development done right, I think the best examples I'm aware of are Mozilla's applications. You can use Thunderbird and Firefox on Linux, OSX, and Windows and in each case they seem (pretty much) like they were built for that platform.

Don't make a Photoshop clone for Linux. Make a Photoshop clone for Linux, Windows, and OS X, that is better for some group of users than Photoshop is. Maybe this means more feature-ful, or maybe it just means much cheaper while still good.

I'd agree with that. Especially when you look at CS4, there are lots of Photoshop features that most people aren't going to use. I think you could focus on getting the most common features into a stripped-down lightweight editor and have lots of people prefer it to Photoshop. Years ago, I used to use Paint Shop Pro instead of Photoshop just because it loaded much faster. (I haven't used it in years, but my impression is that it has become weird and bloated since Corel to it over.)

Still, it's worth noting that you might have to come somewhat close to cloning Photoshop in order to provide enough functionality that you could sit a random graphic designer in front of it and trust that he'd have everything he needed.

Find partners - One of the reasons linux adoption is low is because Linux pre-installs are very rare. Hardware partners that need a free OS and some knowhow to customize it also have the money to pay for application development and other partners who might be willing to target that market.

One of the things that set me on this line of thinking was wondering about the implications if someone tried to do what Apple did, but without the closed-source layer. Apple took a bunch of FOSS, put a closed-source GUI on top of it, and sells that installed on all their hardware. So if you were to start a hardware company that rolled its own Linux distro as the default OS for all your computers, assuming you wanted to keep the whole thing under the GPL, what would be a smart way to go about that? Would you have to replace X.org, develop a new DE, come up with different kinds of configuration tools, etc.?

Thinking that through, I concluded that the big problem wouldn't be the OS itself, but would be the applications. Unfortunately, it seems to me (though I could be wrong) like hardware vendors who pre-install Linux are mostly just putting an existing distribution on their computers, and distributions are mostly including the applications from others without heavy modification. That means that the people with a financial interest in seeing Linux be feature-rich on the desktop aren't directly involved in application development.

Of late, I use it even less, since OS X has some nice, built in scripting that works well with Photoshop, Pixelmator, and GraphicConverter.

If I needed automation in my graphics workflow, I usually just turned to Imagemagick anyway. I use Photoshop when I want a friendly GUI. But ultimately, I'm not a graphic designer. I'm just a guy who's tried to talk graphic designers into trying the GIMP out.

This is an interesting question, but I don't think Ubuntu is there yet. A lot of low hanging fruit is available before the professional graphic design niche is worth targeting. Home users and Corporate Worksta

Re:Is there a time to fork?

[nine-times]

There's many, many people that need only basic software, but they're also the kind of user you can't require a degree in CS to administrate their box - those groups are almost mutually exclusive.

Ubuntu really isn't hard to set up or keep running. I would say that it's no harder to Install than Windows, and in many cases you have a greater likelihood that all of your hardware will be identified without need of additional drivers. At least that's been my experience, which is why I suggest that the problem now is less about the OS and more about the applications.

I've thought for some time that the biggest threat to Microsoft would be if Adobe released their own Linux distribution which their Creative Suite would fully support. They have enough money and influence to get good hardware support, they have both the technical expertise and the UI design knowhow to make something very usable. Maybe it's only because of the industries I've worked in (some of which have been technical), but it seems like a lot of people I've supported professionally and a lot of people I've known personally really only use their computers for web browsing, email, MS Office, and Adobe products. Given the shots that Microsoft has taken at Adobe (creating audio/video applications, XPS, and Silverlight) and Apple's recent pot-shots at Flash, I'm surprised Adobe hasn't at least gotten the ball rolling on this one. Or maybe they have, but it just isn't public yet.

Re:Is there a time to fork?

[moonbender]

Your post boils down to the usual complaint that application XYZ isn't available on Linux. It's true, many aren't. For many of them, there are alternatives that are at least good enough for most people. For many others, particularly custom and specialised software there are no alternatives apart from running them in Wine.

There isn't any easy way to change this, and there is no way at all for Canonical to change this; it's not even their job to try, IMO. It's also not that big of a deal. Your graphics designer friends are probably the very last people who'd be willing to drop Photoshop in favor of the GIMP, for a variety of reasons, simple UI entrenchment among them. Most people aren't graphic designers, and the GIMP's feature set far exceeds what most people need. And while the interface might need some work -- and is, in fact, being worked on -- you're deluding yourself if you think Photoshop's interface was that much more intuitive. To a novice user, both applications are cryptic.

As for you, well, you only allude to your workflow. There are applications that cover MS Office, most of what Adobe's CS does; I don't know about Sound Forge. If you think they don't cover everything you do with them, maybe Linux isn't for you as of yet. I'm not sure what Canonical can do about that, short of financing development of a whole bunch of professional applications, which really isn't within their abilities.

Re:Is there a time to fork?

[nine-times]

Well it's bad form to reply to yourself, but I just realized that I kept the original subject of "Is there a time to fork?" That was my original question, but I deleted it from my post because I couldn't think of a reasonable way to formulate the question. Since the question is out there, though, I'll give it another shot.

The success of FOSS software depends on cooperation, but there can still be conflicting interests. The goals that Ubuntu has for OpenOffice are probably not quite the same as the goals that Oracle has. Redhat's vision for the future of Gnome may be different from Ubuntu's. The strength of a diverse software ecosystem is offset somewhat by the weakness of lacking a coherent and unified vision.

I was wondering whether the people at Ubuntu (or other distributions) felt that strain, and whether they ever found themselves at odds with the developers of applications, such as wanting to see a change made that the original developer was resistant to. Was there ever a temptation to fork applications or part of the OS, hoping that enough of a community followed to make the fork viable.

Part of the reason I've wondered is because of cases like OSX and Android, where there has been some success with companies starting from an open source base and going their own way. Granted Apple and Google have quite a lot of resources to throw into these projects.

So I've been wondering: Is there ever a time to fork something and go your own way? How drastic does the situation need to be for that sort of option to be considered?

(Yes, I do understand that there are downsides to forking. Otherwise I wouldn't be asking.)

Re:Is there a time to fork?

[socsoc]

GIMP and Scribus really cannot compare to CS4, or CS for that matter. I'd love to move my print and web based shop over, but even the FOSS guys only give it trials to humor me. It's so far from production print work. Hell, in my personal photography use with a point and shoot digital camera, I still prefer Photoshop over GIMP.

Re:Is there a time to fork?

[nine-times]

Your post boils down to the usual complaint that application XYZ isn't available on Linux.

I don't see why that anyone should be dismissive about this "usual complaint". People here on Slashdot often misunderstand the complaint and get defensive. The complaint isn't " application XYZ isn't available on Linux," but rather "there isn't an application on Linux that lets me do task ABC as quickly and easily as I can using application XYZ on Windows." If it's true, then it's a valid complaint.

But that's not what my post was about. I wouldn't even say my post was a complaint. I asserted my belief that what was preventing more widespread Linux adoption is no longer deficiencies in the OS or DE, but has more to do with the functionality and friendliness of actual applications. I then asked whether Ubuntu intended to do anything about it, and if so, what?

I really don't want to get into a fight or a flame war or even argue about a particular application. I will say, though, that when both amateurs and professionals are overwhelmingly choosing expensive proprietary options when free alternatives are readily available, it seems awfully counter-productive to stubbornly insist that it's all delusion and "simple UI entrenchment". It seems a bit like trying to win friends by claiming that anyone who doesn't like you is a retarded.

Re:Is there a time to fork?

[westlake]

Your post boils down to the usual complaint that application XYZ isn't available on Linux. It's true, many aren't. For many of them, there are alternatives that are at least good enough for most people. For many others, particularly custom and specialised software there are no alternatives apart from running them in Wine.

The problem is that "good enough" FOSS app for Linux will be routinely ported to Windows or begin as a native Windows app. There is no compelling reason to migrate.

Re:Is there a time to fork?

[bmcage]

Even having personally gotten some graphic designers to try the GIMP, I have yet to know any professional designers who find it adequate. I'd like to use Linux, but don't find I can come close replicating an equivalent workflow to what I have available using tools like Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, and Sound Forge. (those are the applications I'm personally stuck with, though I'm sure other people have other applications on their personal lists.)

If you really give some money from time to time, donate for the developer that will work full time on krita, see http://krita.org/

I think Koffice needs quite a way before being on par of MS Office. Personally, I don't use windows since 2003, but then, I'm mainly a programmer, and the apps for other things are more than sufficient for my needs.

Re:Is there a time to fork?

[moonbender]

Writing a 1000+ character reply is hardly dismissive. You've got a valid complaint (or whatever, not here to mince words), but Canonical won't be able to help you, because they don't have the resources to do anything about it. If you're used to a particular pro application that's platform-locked to Windows, well, what is supposed to happen? I guess the application developers would be the ones to talk to, not a Linux distributor. But like I said, application availability and compatibility is a huge barrier to Linux adoption, even though

Your belief that a lack of Linux adoption is due to a lack of application friendliness would need some more arguments and/or examples. FWIW, I disagree, I believe the apps that are useful to most users aren't worse in terms of UI than their Windows counterparts. The primary app, the web browser, seems about the same.

I think GIMP is a bad example because the application is not relevant to most users, and professionals in a field are (for good reason) fiercely loyal to their tools and are extremely unlikely to switch, least of all for a petty sum of a couple hundred bucks. Of course this is also due to interface entrenchment, there is just no doubt about that (you misquoting me as if I said it's only due to that seems hostile).

Re:Is there a time to fork?

[Elektroschock]

How much would it cost to make Adobe CS fully supported by Wine?

Re:Is there a time to fork?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Writing a 1000+ character reply is hardly dismissive. You've got a valid complaint (or whatever, not here to mince words), but Canonical won't be able to help you, because they don't have the resources to do anything about it.

I thought one of Canonical's big pushes was in helping application developers improve their applications free of charge, to help address this very problem by making applications more usable and competitive compared to offerings on other OS's. I don't think it is fair or productive to speak for them and say they aren't going to do anything to promote more applications moving to Linux, unless you are an official representative of Canonical.

Your belief that a lack of Linux adoption is due to a lack of application friendliness would need some more arguments and/or examples.

That would be ideal, of course, but it is a commonly held opinion, in fact one Shuttleworth seems to share since he was so upset by the poor usability of many applications he offered free usability testing to developers under the condition they would actually make use of the data.

It's not that you don't have a point and that Canonical despite any effort they put in may be unable to make a significant difference in the number and quality of applications offered. It's just that on the other hand, they might have some good ideas for incentivizing application developers and may well be working towards that. Maybe it is a very good question for Mr. Asay.

Re:Is there a time to fork?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've thought for some time that the biggest threat to Microsoft would be if Adobe released their own Linux distribution which their Creative Suite would fully support.

I wouldn't count on much out of Adobe. They're focused on Flash versus HTML5 versus Silverlight right now. They also have one of the biggest cases of Not Invented Here syndrome in the industry. If anything Adobe has been becoming more Windows-centric over the last decade, despite the decline in Windows market share. As an Adobe customer, I expect nothing innovative out of Adobe and despair of even getting them to fix obvious bugs in software they bought out from competitors and are now allowing to slowly die while not creating any alternatives.

Red Hat -- Ubuntu Transition, and a request

[Luke has no name]

Has Ubuntu Server considered directly challenging Red Hat through competitive marketing? Is RHEL seen as a direct competitor with Ubuntu? I know Ubuntu Server has put a lot of work into being a cloud computing platform; has any extensive thought gone into more explicitly targeting traditional Linux server/RHEL deployments as they are seen now (Java application server stack, web stack, etc.?)

And a suggestion: With the upcoming LTS release, please hire documenters, pay volunteers for quality documenting work, SEND PROGRAMMERS TO DOCUMENTING SCHOOL. I don't believe I'm the first to say that quality, thorough documentation of all tools and use cases of a piece of software is as critical to the usability of software as the quality of the software itself. Community/volunteer documentation can be handy and cheap.

But, I believe this LTS cycle (and the first year post-release) is an excellent time to stabilize, update, and expand on all official documentation. Everything in the following list should be documented accurately and thoroughly. Test every line of instruction!

• Installing Ubuntu Server in every way possible
• Customizing installation ISOs for server and alternative installs to meet an enterprise's needs (Preset network configuration, packages, etc.)
• Package management (e.g. pinning packages in a custom-deployed install) as well as setting up and modifying a custom repository/package mirror
• Deploying Ubuntu over the network (Installation)
• Securing Ubuntu using ufw/AppArmor (though FireHOL > ufw, had to say it)
• Using important core programs present in Ubuntu that aren't present in many other distros at the moment, such as GRUB 2. Upstart, which is supposed to entirely take over for SysV, has very poor documentation, and it's a critical thing for Sysadmins to understand! I don't care if the syntax is developing. If it's in the LTS, GET IT DOCUMENTED.
• Common uses of Ubuntu Server and detailed configurations of each (Web, Java App Server, Email, DNS, Load Balancing, DHCP, etc.)

I know some of this is already fairly well documented. I know some of this is usually left to upstream documentation, or to the community, or to skilled authors like Kyle Rankin and Benjamin Mako Hill (The Official Ubuntu Server Book). However, Ubuntu is useless by itself. Software is useless if businesses of any size cannot figure out how to set up and configure the software and distribute it easily. If you want small/medium businesses with semi-skilled IT workers, and large enterprises with RHEL or Microsoft-accustomed IT staff to be able to deploy Ubuntu Server (so you can make money), you need to make it clear that your ease-of-use is not questionable, and that Ubuntu Server fits the job better than the competition you clearly have.

Re:Red Hat -- Ubuntu Transition, and a request

[Luke has no name]

Just to make it clear, there is a question in that first paragraph. I'm just hoping Matt/Canonical/Ubuntu Server takes note of the comment I made below it.

It don't mean Jack

[Anonymous Coward]

According to The Register, "...Alfresco he'd helped the company to 18 straight growth quarters, with Alfresco's most recent quarter - ending February 28 - the company's biggest ever"

Yeah, well as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown lead the Great Britain to 49 straight quarters of growth before becoming Prime Minister when Tony Blair fled.

Believe me, it don't mean Jack.

Debian

[syousef]

Everyone knows Ubuntu is an ancient African word for "I can't configure Debian". How come you can't configure Debian but were able to create a whole other distro?

Re:Debian

[tepples]

Answer: He hired a bunch of people who were able to coax Debian into configuring itself.

KDE and the problem with that "disease"

[rec9140]

1) When will you release a truly up to the job KDE Release, or even better, FIRE the ENTIRE KUBUNTU dev team and hire Boo and the dev's from KMint aka Linux Mint KDE CE.

They clean up Kubuntu's crap distro each and every release and make it PERFECT, KDE 4.x aside, PERFECT! ! !

KDE needs to be the DEFAULT and only main desktop.. Offer lxde, xfce etc. for the tasks and areas they are suited for, gnome needs to go!

2) When will you REMOVE mono and gnome and miguel who is tainting your distro with his programs and DE? mono has no place in any distro, period. mono and miguel need to go! Now is the time! New COO, New X DE, clean house and get the disease out of the distro!

3) How do you plan to make software installs easier for users to encourage migration from that other os?

4) How are you going to curb the "google is your friend" and the "When are you going the fix or feature code then?" attitudes that hamper desktop Linux adoption.

5) Whats you plan and vision for Linux in general and Ubuntu specifically for the next year, 5, 10 years?

How big an effort is hardware support ?

[obarthelemy]

We're seeing more and more vendors trying to target their OS not only to specific devices, but to very specific components (vid cards, resolutions, network cards...), following in Apple's footsteps. What percentage of dev time does Canonical spend on driver and config support ? Do you think it makes sense for the 'official' distros to alleviate the burden at the cost of some users no longer getting official support ?

Freedom, second?

[TheModelEskimo]

Matt, you were intensely criticized by members of the Free Software community for your critical stance facing "vague concepts" like software freedom and "no vendor lock-in." Reading your blog, it seems to me like you are still a fan of focusing on "high quality software at a compelling price" rather than these other concepts. How will this position affect your work with Canonical and more specifically, its relationship with freedom-first software advocates?

Re:Freedom, second?

[Statecraftsman]

Second. I have to second that this question be asked. Matt seems to want to stay away from the ethical side of free software and just focus on the new hotness factor of "open source". It's kind of funny because I would hear about his posts since he generally included the exact phrase "free software" but when I would read his posts, there was nothing behind it so it seemed like keyword stuffing.

I'm not all that surprised but I am saddened that Canonical who claims to have a "free operating system for your desktop or laptop" seems to be moving away from user freedom as a core value. They have no problem with binary blobs in the kernel and their own service Ubuntu One is proprietary. I would like to hear how Matt sees Ubuntu returning (or not) to a focus on freedom.

Re:Freedom, second?

[TheModelEskimo]

Saddened is a good word for it. I thought it was sort of awkwardly incongruent when Canonical rolled out Ubuntu One. They could have made their entry so much more unique by positioning it with respect to some of the core values that free software rides on. That's the sort of creativity they'll need in order to compete with the likes of Dropbox, unless they intend to lock down the entire Ubuntu platform at some point.

I guess we haven't learned our collective lesson about software freedom when there's a Cloud involved...

Re:Freedom, second?

[Statecraftsman]

You might be interested in my podcast in the latest ep of which we talk about a fifth freedom...freedom of data access and user mobility(i.e. not to be locked in to a network/Cloud service). I've been meaning to write something more on this.

Re:Quality Control or lack of

[hilldog]

Indeed! I have never had random black screen crashes and buggy wifi connections with any version of Linux as I have had with karmic. It has taken a month of tweaks, upgrades, back porting and such to get a 'nearly' stable machine. Karmic is Ubuntu's Vista.

Mobile platform plans

[abhikhurana]

What are Canonical's plans for mobile platforms? With Maemo, another Debian based distro, now available for smartphones, would Canonical also get involved with either that or maybe develop a completely new Distro?

With the desktop Linux market being extremely small and server markets being dominated by Red Hat and Novell, mobiles probably are the sweet spot for Canonical, with its strong focus on usability. Additionally, the lack of standardisation means that users are more willing to experiement with interfaces. So what is the relative priority of Mobile, Netbook, Desktop and Server platform in Canonical's roadmap?

What does a COO do?

[vlm]

What exactly does a COO do, at an organization like Canonical? I don't mean vague organizational goals, like make us wealthy and cool, but specifics.

I do not mean rephrase the wikipedia entry for COO, but how would you APPLY the wikipedia entry for COO at Canonical?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_operating_officer

Datclaimer

[Anonymous Coward]

>(Disclaimer: Matt is on the board of advisors for Slashdot's parent company, Geeknet.)
Revealing the interests of parties involved is good journalism. But unless the author feels this means they consequently have no obligation to objectivity or accuracy, it isn't a disclaimer - it's a disclosure.

Arsenal

[bugg_tb]

He supports Arsenal.... so he can do as he pleases :)

What makes Ubuntu different or better..

[msimm]

What will make Ubuntu different or better then any other well maintained Linux distribution? How can Linux distribution truly compete by offering minor modifications of the same basic set of software?

Ubuntu and high reliability data storage

[gregben]

As the years pass, one thing becomes more and more obvious:

It's all about the data, and keeping it intact.
For me (running Ubuntu/Debian on around 20 machines)
the most frustrating thing right now is the lack of Sun's
(now Oracle's) ZFS or equivalent filesystem. Do you have
plans to address this by obtaining the right to incorporate
ZFS into Ubuntu at the kernel level, or to fund the development
of an alternative like BTRFS?

Enterprise Goals for Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

We have heard much about Ubuntu's desktop goals toward social networking. Eucalyptus is excellent and will mature excellently. We havent heard any goals for the server product.

Linux total backup; imagine something that could be a backup system; backing up the entire server platform into a livecd or virtual disk format; while also being able to roll back to the image.

Active Directory competitor: Need more?

Walking the Walk

[HRbnjR]

Alfresco takes what is essentially an unstable snapshot of the publicly available and GPL'd Community Edition, branches it into a private source repository, stabilizes that private codebase, and makes stable point releases of the commercially licensed Enterprise Edition from that. Sure, fixes from Enterprise Edition are eventually rolled back into the unstable Community Edition trunk, but there is never a stable point release made for the GPL licensed Community Edition. So, if our company wants open source (ie GPL) code for all the products we use in production, we can't get it from Alfresco!

Alfresco partner companies are banned from providing services to clients against the open source Community Edition.

If I fix a critical bug by patching the code for my licensed copy of Enterprise Edition, then I can no longer receive support from Alfresco for the product.

If I try to take part in the open source community and send patches for the product upstream to Alfresco, they either languish untouched:

https://issues.alfresco.com/jira/browse/ETWOTWO-1125
https://issues.alfresco.com/jira/browse/ALFCOM-2810
https://issues.alfresco.com/jira/browse/ALFCOM-3301

Or are just flat out closed with no reason given (despite being obvious problems):

https://issues.alfresco.com/jira/browse/ALFCOM-3308

So, it seems to me Mr Asay, that although you really like to talk the talk, and although you might just meet the basic legal requirements to qualify as Open Source, when it comes to the spirit and community surrounding Free Software, I don't think you really understand how to walk the walk?

how do you guys plan on making money?

[Anonymous Coward]

what's your business model going to be?

A technical question...

[chaoskitty]

Hello,

I have a question about the results of asking a question. I administer a few Ubuntu VMs and I want to simply turn off screen blanking (please note I didn't say anything about running X). How does one simply turn off screen blanking with regards to the standard text login window? Note that setenv and friends aren't the answer because I want screen blanking off always, not just when someone is logged in.

But this isn't about that question specifically. While I still want the question to be answered, what I feel is a more important point is this: the answer is horribly difficult to find. Extensive Googling hasn't provided one. Posting on the Ubuntu forums hasn't provided any help. man pages and digging around in configuration files hasn't demystified anything. This is just an example (but I think it's a good example) where someone decided, "hey, this might be a good idea", but never documented it anywhere nor discussed it publicly.

This, I think, is a growing problem with GNU/Linux distributions. While each attempts to make things easier for the casual Windows convert, the overall cohesiveness of each distro diminishes.

Do you see this as a problem? Do you plan to make changes to the way decisions about Ubuntu are made and, just as importantly, documented? Do you plan to make Ubuntu more cohesive and better organized?

Thanks,
John Klos

Re:A technical question...

[akh]

Try putting the following in /etc/rc.local

setterm -blank 0 -powersave off

Ubuntu vs Windows vs Google

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in 2006, Ubuntu was in a strong position. Microsoft was mired in XP and Windows Mobile was just an afterthought. Then Vista came out to widespread disappointment. Netbooks created an important new market that Vista couldn't serve. Ubuntu had two years to do something amazing. Then Windows 7 came out. Then Google released Android. Then they announced ChromeOS. Now Microsoft have announced Windows Mobile 7 and it looks great. There doesn't appear to be much room in the consumer market any more. Is Ubuntu going to even try to fight the big boys now? Or is it going to take the standard Linux route of retreating back into the bespoke corporate world?

On Management

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used GNU/Linux for over 18 years in both a personal and professional capacity. In high school I compiled my first Linux kernel on an old 386. Over the years, I've exchanged emails with Richard Stallman, Matthias Ettrich, and other notable free/open source personalities. I've also developed a significant open source application myself. Further, I've used Ubuntu on both servers and desktops and advocated for its use by many people.

Just giving you a sense of where I'm coming from. My personal opinion of what is holding Ubuntu back is the management organization, or lack thereof, around various open projects. Intimately connected to this is the lack of an elegant and straightforward business model around funding open source software, including training, marketing, documentation, support, etc. Marketing and sales are often what both compel users to use software that they may not at first know they need, and often drive feedback back into the development process as far as what new direction to take the software on behalf of the users.

As much as the GPL focuses on the "freedom to modify the code", this is targeted first and foremost at developers. Outside of an academic need to learn and modify a program's code, most people would never want to *need* the freedom to modify the code, as it implies that for some reason the software doesn't do what they want. They would often rather, even if they do know how to code, have the organization behind the software add the capability to the software without having either to roll up their sleeves and do it themselves or get someone else to do it (on a contract basis), much less "beg" on some mailing list.

So my question is, what can really, truly be done to change the perspective of FOSS away from developers or technical users who use the software, and on to end users of the software, whether individuals or businesses? Most users don't even know what a web browser is. I've seen your blog posts about the simplicity of Apple and making technology as transparent as possible in peoples' lives.

Can anything be done to change the culture around who the target demographic is for users of open source software, for many of whom the whole notion is actually a huge liability rather than a benefit, if they even understand what source code is?

Don't get me wrong, I've been a very true believer for many, many years. I'm just feeling a bit despondent with the trends moving at an ever accelerating pace away from an individual's having any hope of control over their computing experience and context. While that control implies having access to the source code if you absolutely need it in a "worst case scenario", more often than not, it implies having an organizational and management structure around projects that both service the customer's existing needs and anticipate needs they didn't even know they had. An economic ecosystem around the software that includes economic transactions and the implied relationship between buyer and seller with respect to expectations on both sides I think is a big part of this.

Can you see any way to duplicate this effect within the FOSS community while simultaneously changing the culture around who the software is serving, besides an "itch"?

Thanks!

David Thomson

suprasphere ___ a_t ____ gmail

Why is the ubuntu colour scheme so fugly!

[tomhudson]

Seriously, what were you guys thinking? The Great Pumpkin only comes once a year.

Everyone made fun of XP and the Fisher-Price theme ... but Ubuntu is worse. It looks like it was thrown together by a bunch of Hallowe'enies.

"Oh, but it's earth colors, like autumn!" Sure, pick the time of year when everything DIES! That sends a great subliminal "use-me-be-happy" message.

Fall colors - remind people that Old Man Winter is right around the corner, it's only going to get worse for the rest of the year, slush and ice and heating bills and salt stains on your boots and coat and clothes and the dogs dragging dirt in from the freshly sanded sidewalks all over the comforter and ice storms and dead cats frozen in snowbanks flying through the air as the municipal snowblower sucks them up and ... you get the picture.

You want companies to take you seriously, you don't have your reps wear a bow tie so they don't look like Bozo the Clown, and you don't make your prime product offering look like the artwork from a pumpkin pie box.

If you have to do a pie-themed color scheme, order a pizza pie and use that for inspiration. Everyone likes pizza. Or do apple pie - American Pie! Even the Band Campers can relate to that! Or cherry pie. There are so many nerds in basements who dream of cherry ...

It's not just ugly - it's fugly-ugly. Even in Soviet Russia.

It is ugly on the screen. It's so ugly it's obscene.
It is ugly every day. It is ugly like old whey.
It is ugly on a boat. It is ugly with a goat.
It is ugly like brown turd. It is ugly as a nerd.
It is ugly, don't you see? It is ugly like green pee.
It is ugly, all the way. It is ugly, Matt Assay!
I will not use it on a boat. I will not use it with a goat.
I will not use it at the fair. I will not use it in my hair.
I will leave it with the nerds. They like it colored like brown turds.
I will leave it, Matt Assay, It makes my eyeballs bleed all day.

In summary, you only get one chance to make a good first impression, and that color scheme works great - for your competitors.

Re:Why is the ubuntu colour scheme so fugly!

[WeatherGod]

Actually, I like it. I think it works great with a sunset (sunrise?) photo I have for my background.

To each their own. Don't assume that it is the worse possible color scheme because there have been worse.

Re:Why is the ubuntu colour scheme so fugly!

[FoolishOwl]

I'm partial to Ubuntu's default color scheme as well. It also stands out in comparison with the wedding cake color scheme of OS X, or the sky blue color scheme of almost every other OS I've seen.

I started out with Ubuntu 8.04, Hardy Heron, and I loved the default wallpaper depicting a stylized heron. Intrepid Ibex's wallpaper was also good, but Jackalope and Koala just had abstract images that weren't much more than gradients. I'd like a really interesting graphic featuring a Lynx for the next one.

Re:Why is the ubuntu colour scheme so fugly!

[Anonymous Coward]

In summary, you only get one chance to make a good first impression, and that color scheme works great - for your competitors.

Yes, won't you base all your software decisions on color?

Re:Why is the ubuntu colour scheme so fugly!

[tomhudson]

In summary, you only get one chance to make a good first impression, and that color scheme works great - for your competitors.

Yes, won't you base all your software decisions on color?

Definitely, if I'm expecting people to use the software 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, I'm going to try to make it so it doesn't look like a cheap Halloween pumpkin.

Kubuntu 9.10 is really good

[kbahey]

I had the same pain with Kubuntu 9.04: very buggy, many things broken, it was a real struggle. The most annoying thing was notifications were broken: a message would get "stuck". Many widgets did not work (weather for example) either.

Luckily, Kubuntu 9.10 solve all of these issues, and now I have a stable desktop again.

I normally stick with LTS releases, but the KDE 4.x vs 3.5 issue made Kubuntu 8.04 a non-LTS release. Once an LTS is released, I will stay with that.

Will PulseAudio be FORCED on us in 10.4 like 9.10?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using Ubuntu since 5.10. Sound used to work well for me, including reasonably low latency and mixing. In recent years, I've had to remove PulseAudio from every install I do, because it increases audio latency, uses more resources on my limited hardware, and sometimes breaks program functionality altogether (like Orca).

In 9.10, if you attempt to remove PulseAudio, your volume control breaks. If you try to change the sound system in preferences/sound, it refuses to open, too. This is really unacceptable.

I can tell you that the average user does not care about routing audio over the network, or combining 2 stereo sound cards to make a surround system. We just want the audio to come out of the speakers as fast as possible while using the lowest amount of resources possible. That is all.

Pulseaudio may help some folks, and that's fine. I just don't want this thing shoved down my throat.

What can Canonical do to reduce fragmentation?

[elh_inny]

I think that fragmentation is a huge issue for linux distributions.
When you're seeking support, the potential community and support companies are split between hundreds of distros and different versions too.
Is there anything you are planning to do gather Linux users under one umbrella?

Sincere question: Why this obsession with outdated

[Anonymous Coward]

I have just one question: What is Ubuntu's rabid obsession with distributing outdated software packages?

Certain software (Firefox, Sun's Java, Flash Codec, PHP, GCC, the linux kernel itself) should always be the latest stable version available from the main source itself. Yet Ubuntu lags behind by six to twelve months? All this talk of checking for stability etc is nonsense, since how much code do Ubuntu people actually read (or can even modify) in Firefox, PHP or Sun's Java codec? Just give us users the option to upgrade to the latest stable version within 24 hours it is made available. Let us decide which version we want to run. This is one of those rare things Windows does right, Ubuntu should not be ashamed to copy the right ideas no matter where they come from. These software are commonly used for web development and browsing, so there are clear security and performance benefits by using the latest versions.

I do not want to use Java 6.0.15 when I know Sun has made the 6.0.18 available on their website. I do not want to run Firefox 3.5 when I know Firefox 3.6 is so much faster. I do not want to run PHP 5.2 when the PHP changelog demonstrates anyone not using the latest stable version is an idiot. I do not want to rely on some random, untrusted person's "PPA". Nor do I want to download the source and compile. No, I do not want to wait for six months for next Ubuntu version either; six months is ages when security and performance are concerned.

Matt, are you going to change the culture of laziness and start giving us latest version of commonly used software (preferably within 24 hours of release)? I just want to be able to stay in GUI, run the Upgrade Manager and get the latest stable releases. Please, I beg you, is this too much to ask for? Because otherwise Ubuntu is the perfect Linux distribution for me.

Targeting Education

[mhall119]

What are your plans for getting educational institutions like schools to switch to Ubuntu, the way Microsoft and Apple have historically captured mind share in the past? There is a lot of work being done by volunteers in Edubuntu to make it easy to deploy and manage a school-wide network of workstations, but so far very little support from Canonical in turning that product into an initiative.

Official Oracle Support?

[carlivar]

I don't know about the Linux hobbyists out there, but I've seen time and time again the one reason Ubuntu is not used in a professional environment: Oracle database support.

The way I understand it, Oracle Database only supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux. That's reason enough for most places to exclusively run RHEL or a combination of RHEL and CentOS. Because the distros are so different (especially software packaging) it doesn't make sense for a company to run both.

So my question is: do you think Oracle will ever officially support Ubuntu?

Listening to the Users

[salemboot]

There are many outstanding bug reports. Waiting for upstream is not a good solution. How will you address issues and ensure customers can come to rely on your company?

Re:Quality Control or lack of

[outlander]

I guess I'm an exception....I've been using it since edgy on a Dell D610 and it works mostly fine. Sound in karmic isn't great and was a bear to configure, but other than that, it's been good enough for me - it's not black-screened ever, and this is with pretty significant use.

It's hopeless?

[westlake]

It's that modularity leads to very difficult game development. Reducing the ecosystem of tools and configurations to a canonical (ha ha) set might make game development viable on Linux, but would be the antithesis of the Linux philosophy.

That implies the development of any mass market consumer application will be extraordinarily difficult under Linux. You will be struggling with problems that were solved in OSX and Windows no later than the mid-nineties.

Re:It's hopeless?

[jedidiah]

You mean like a common game development framework, a common 3D rendering framework and a common audio framework.

These either predated Linux entirely or were developed in the 90s for Linux specifically to address porting games.

Find another excuse.

Alfresco is not open source

[Anonymous Coward]

The same way as he used to push the hidden proprietary-ness of the Alfresco stack?

Alfresco isn't really open source --if you want support from any of the Alfresco vendors, you have to pay for the commercial version first. That includes the upgrade headaches and all that goes with it. You can't get Alfresco support on the open source version. Period.

Posting anonymously since my project affiliation might make this sound like a personal attack, we were badly burnt by Alfresco in the past, so yes -- I'm a bit bitter. But really, look into how Alfresco is structured. It has little to do with the spirit of open source, and the free version lags behind the commercial version at all times.

Re:Will PulseAudio be FORCED on us in 10.4 like 9.

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you remove the Linux kernel too? It might work for some people, but I want the FreeBSD kernel and its ZFS support.

FLOSS, proprietary and Upstream

[msclrhd]

I would like to ask Matt what his intentions are for using and improving FLOSS tools and technologies in Ubuntu, as opposed to tools and technologies derived from proprietary platforms, and his plans for contributing changes/working with upstream projects (e.g. contributing/improving artwork like in the Wine project).

Some examples:
    * RedHat help the nouveau project and are helping to get it to a decent working state so that it can act as a viable alternative to the nVidia binary drivers -- what are Ubuntu doing in this space to help people with binary-only driver support, specifically by helping the open source communities provide better support for this hardware?
    * IIUC, the Ubuntu art team are using Photoshop to do the artwork instead of free tools like Gimp and Inkscape -- does Ubuntu intend to make use of free tools and help out where necessary (e.g. in the push to improve the Gimp UI)?
    * The decisions around mono and the steady influx of more mono-based applications into Ubuntu instead of using applications build on the Linux/FLOSS stack for its default application set.
    * What is the status of the various improvements of things like the "papercuts" initiatives to the upstream projects?

Re:Sincere question: Why this obsession with outda

[JackieBrown]

You really aren't running the correct disto if this is what you want.

And you discounted the legitimate way around this by stating you do not want to use someone's PPA that is designed to give you the latest packages while your core system remains part of the standard release.

And the option to upgrade within 24 hours of an upstream change is unreasonable.

About WINE

[ElusiveJoe]

The stable version is 1.1. The next stable version will be 1.2. Everything in between is considered a development release.

Regressions, not just KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using ubuntu since, I'm thinking, 4.10 or something. It was the best distro available and great for the relative newbie to linux I was then. I was sick to death of the probnlems of Mandrake and RPM's that never seemed to install properly, and ubuntu was a godsend.

But it's been on a downhill slide since 7.10. I still sort of think that, or maybe 6.06, was the best release. That's quite a long track record of inconsistency, regressions, and distro specific bugs. From the beginning of these nuisances when they decided to completely overhaul the init handling to this last fiasco with an essentially permanent bug in the disk i/o of 9.04 (which was nearly the last straw for me) it seems every new release I hope and hope and am, within days, am disappointed all over again. I just don't know which distribution I want to embrace in its stead. About the best I can say for ubuntu now is I'd prefer it to any release built on the hell of RPM that I remember... and to me, that ain't saying much.

I so wish they would spend one release cycle with nothing more "new" than the latest kernel and stable libraries. Ubuntu already has lots of nice features; strip out the ubu-centric bullshit of mono, go back to gthumb and focus on making the core of the desktop - like nautilus and firefox and evolution - the most rock solid they can be.

Re:Sincere question: Why this obsession with outda

[Anonymous Coward]

You really aren't running the correct disto if this is what you want.

I chose Ubuntu since I am a bit of a Linux newbie, and with Ubuntu being so popular finding help was easy. Which Distro would you recommend?

Thanks for helping.

Stability of the platform

[Elektroschock]

Linux users are used to a situation where a kernel or distribution or software module update kills their basic hardware support, like sound, graphics etc.

What role do you see for automated testing environments and hardware labs to ensure higher quality?

--

Why are Ubuntu's KDE packages so bad? Why aren't beta versions debug enabled by default?

No need for WINE?

[mangu]

Linux has plenty of native apps to handle what wine might bring

In another thread someone was asking about games. That's a chicken or egg question, why should game companies invest to support Linux if the market is so small? How can Linux grow in the home computing market without games?

Wine is the way out of that dilemma. Having a way to play Windows games on Linux machines will remove one of the obstacles against Linux adoption. Tuxracer is not good enough for everybody...

mini-Turing test: the system-wide do-not-fly list

[epine]

Every time I see "the desktop" debated, there seems to be a group retreat into the logic of one-size-fits-all. I don't think *anyone* will ever manage to make a desktop operating system that suits all purposes.

Windows is designed to be convenient in many respects, but what was the opportunity cost to the web as a whole to support the idiosyncrasies of IE6? Could that effort have delivered more user value employed elsewhere? Hell yes. Monolithic design is good for the gaming ecosystem, but you pay for it in so many other ways.

I've never thought the value system of Linux was particularly desktop-centric. That always struck me as a bolt-on by people who crave affiliative affirmation. For me, the fundamental value system of Linux is as a method of software distribution and collaboration. If it also plays Flash--supposing you even want that--that's a cherry on top. 99% of the content I consider important can be had without Flash. For me the desktop is *not* a glorified media player. My goal on a computer is to interact with the desktop as little as possible. I prefer my screens plastered with applications so that the desktop can't be seen.

My biggest hardship with Ubuntu has been the default policy that you're stuck with whatever version of your favourite tool made the cut in the last release cycle.

I was working on a Windows system at work three days a week, and Ubuntu at home the other two (or three) days a week, accessing the same code base, and needing to run many of the same tools. I was constantly running into problems where some task could be completed on the Windows side by upgrading to the latest version of tool X, only to discover when I pulled the workspace onto my home network, that Ubuntu was stuck on some older version. I often wished it were easier to ask Ubuntu to install the experimental upgrade of some tool alongside the official version. Many times I only needed limited functionality from the experimental version for a small sub-project of some small sub-workspace.

Occasionally I fought to pull something in from some non-standard package source, usually with a fair amount of frustration, and not always with ultimate success. Problems get hairy in a big hurry if things don't mesh. I didn't choose Ubuntu for the pleasure of reverse engineering dpkg.

I find Ubuntu easy enough to work with if I'm prepared (on a semi-permanent basis) to lag six to nine months behind the latest major update of many highly popular tools. When I had to force Ubuntu to run something newer than whatever validated build came with my current install, I often lived to regret trying.

This is problematic on several levels. Ubuntu is often far enough behind that the upstream sources aren't terribly interested in your bug reports. Given the nature of my work, I generally prefer to run closer to upstream than what Ubuntu manages to package. Yet I don't want to live on a daily basis in testing. What I want is an easy way to live one foot in, one foot out.

There's a saying in sports that when you finally break into the major league, keep doing whatever it was that brought you. Stay with your strength and build your game from there. Too many discussions of The Desktop lose sight of this maxim. It's tempting to look around the locker room at what everyone else is bringing and deciding that "I need to be more like them". Desktop envy a good way to get busted back down to the minor leagues. You don't stick in the major leagues because you click in the clubhouse. Most discussions of the desktop feel like evaluating the roster by how great they are to hang with between games.

Areas where Linux could kick the snot out of XP on the field of battle are things like having a consistent, system-wide user-selectable spell checker. I've heard rumours of progress in this direction.

Spell checkers are typically tragic. Many times I work with text from elsewhere and I couldn't care less if American/British/Canadian spellings are mixed in every sentence. For text I wr

Re:Sincere question: Why this obsession with outda

[JackieBrown]

sidux. Just check the forums before upgrading and you will always have the newest packages available.

And I don't mean you have to search forums. They have a section for this. http://sidux.com/PNphpBB2-viewforum-f-29.html

Also, they roll out their own bug fixes using the standard upgrade tools (apt-get) so as long as you check before doing the upgrade, you should be safe (because if it is broke, they probably fixed it.)

I use Debian unstable myself. But if I ever get hit by a bug, their forum is the first place I check.

How will Ubuntu develop the GUI toolkit?

[bmcage]

How will Ubuntu support the Gtk toolkit development, so as not to become irrelevant as opposed to Qt and Microsoft/apple toolkit's, which all have serious company funding. Certainly in light of MeeGo, and the uncertainty this brings for company paid development of Clutter.

All serious desktop OS competitors clearly steer the GUI toolkit development. Just providing some GTK themes will not suffice.

Re:Will PulseAudio be FORCED on us in 10.4 like 9.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, there's always that version of Debian that is powered by FreeBSD.

Manuals

[Arkofjoy]

>>>>*although.. the manuals and tutorials seem to be getting thinner all the time...

Read the Manual for k-9copy the DVD back-up program

Almost Buddhist in its nature. It takes saying nothing to a higher plane.
And the first version actual turned the whole idea of a help page into a huge joke. I have never before laughed out loud while reading a help manual before.

We use Alfresco

[Anonymous Coward]

I figured most of you haven't seen Alfresco and don't have any idea about the company. Here are a few tidbits from a small company user of the free Alfresco, not the paid "enterprise" version. These are my impressions and don't reflect that of my employer.

We've used Alfresco for about 18 months. The initial "Labs" deployment had to be dropped from our testing due to HUGE bugs in the permissions code. The testing team didn't test it at all. We are still running the next non-Labs deployment without many issues at all. Even if we need to drop Alfresco and migrate to another solution, the content is still ours and we can get it all out. In the ECM space, it is important for you to own your content. Ask Microsoft about that and Sharepoint.

At an Alfresco conference last fall, it was presented that the average deployment was $200+K and Alfresco was paid about $25K for the "enterprise software and support" out of that total. The rest was earned by 3rd party partners. IME, they have always concentrated on the paying customers. An enterprise deployment in licenses begins around $25K by the time you get test, prod/failover licenses. It isn't for the small shops or a company running MS-SBS.

In a BOF meeting, I saw where a developer in a tiny company was begging for help, offering his code, and the Alfresco guys stood there silent. I asked for help with a migration to the current release, but since we'd deployed a dead code line, there is not upgrade process. I only wish the version we deployed were clearly marked as "dead line" at the time. Some kind of dev-2-dev interaction would have been encouraging even if they couldn't help at all after the conference. When we do migrate, we will lose our older versions of documents without manual steps. We will end up with all the current versions of documents with very little effort, however. The content is still ours, as it should be.

Alfresco has become an enterprise solution. I believe the Alfresco team has decided to compete against EMC/Documentum, FileNet and those huge $1M+ cost solutions instead of against MS-Sharepoint. Alfresco has certainly started with a schema that rivals Documentum and their support models AND capabilities do rival Documentum at a much smaller price.

The currently released version no longer supports Oracle as a DB in the FOSS release. The "enterprise" i.e. paid version does. This was removed in the 3.2 community release. It worked in 3.1. Why the removal? I guess they decided anyone who could afford Oracle could afford to pay Alfresco too, but I honestly don't know. Perhaps the Oracle JDBC library license changed? I dunno. Alfresco supports Active Directory and LDAP for authentication - like all corporate software should. Personally, I'd like to see OpenID supported too - since I'm not a Java programmer, I'm not in a position to contribute code. Anyone need some C/C++?

Alfresco is encouraging front-ends to link to it. Drupal and Joomla already have working connectors, but each deployment will need to be customized significantly. The default, provided, Alfresco web front end is a little clunky, but workable after you learn a few tricks. Moving a document is "cut" and "paste", not "move." I don't want to admit how long that took our users to figure out.

OTOH, Alfresco has been fine in our small deployment. It runs easily in a 512MB Xen VM - no swapping at all. That VM runs 3 other internal applications too. I suspect I could drop it down to 384MB and still have acceptable performance. The code seems fairly efficient and the architecture isn't bad at all. We use a few other pseudo-FOSS tools and have seen how bloated some of those can become (Zimbra).

At a minimum, Alfresco is a good replacement for Shared Folders out of the box. Your users don't need to know that it isn't a shared folder to use it. The CIFS implementation is fast. I saw where Adobe is providing Alfresco as a paid document service http://www.cmswatch.com/Trends/1276-Adobe-and-Al

Tablet Remix

[Anonymous Coward]

Has Ubuntu given any thought to creating a tablet remix, along the lines of the netbook remix but for tablet-based portables?

Ugly Corporate Face

[LuYu]

I attempted to visit a local Canonical office last year and was given quite a cold reception. Even though the person who invited me told me "Just come any time. You don't need an appointment," I was told he was in a meeting and not given the promised tour. The building the office was situated in was crawling with creepy, corporate security guards. The entire experience made me feel unclean. Given the fact that Ubuntu is supposed to be something for everyone, something where all people derive their identities from their relationships to one another, and the fact that Canonical is not Microsoft, what is Canonical doing to remain people friendly in meatspace?

Android on Netbooks

[cybaz]

Manufacturers are looking at Android on netbooks, do you see that as a threat? Do you plan to do any integration with Android or do you feel that it will be limited to a smartphone OS

NESticle sucks

[tepples]

NESticle == NES emulator. Surely I'm not the only one into classic gaming.

NESticle has been far surpassed by FCEUX and Nestopia. Even FCE Ultra, which is in the Ubuntu repository, is way ahead of NESticle. It takes literally four lines of code for an NES program to determine whether it's running on NESticle.

640x480 == Again, classic gaming.

I imagine that the excuse is that Free games can be ported to run natively in Linux at the native resolution of the LCD panel to which the computer is connected, and that's at least 1024x600 pixels for anything sold within the past couple years. Such a port can even upscale sprite cels algorithmically without making them look too crappy. Non-free games cannot be distributed with Ubuntu.

Dialup == Needed for use in hotels without highspeed connections.

I thought that's what phone tethering or MiFi was for. Even 2G EDGE is faster than dial-up.

Outlook not so good

[tepples]

"outlook does not look so good"

But does evolution look any better?

Re:Outlook not so good

[pugugly]

Given enough time evolution beats even the most intelligent design.

Pug

Re:Outlook not so good

[linuxgeek64]

You, sir, are a genius.

Consumer Education - mainstream adoption of Linux

[cheap.computer]

why is that a good quality operating system like Ubuntu (or other linux distros to be fair), which is given away for free not able to replace Windows or OSX.? 1. Lack of advertisement or consumer education, average joe does not know that there is an option. 2. Lack of OEM carrying Ubuntu pre-installed products, only dell does it so far. 3. Lack of apps used by people on daily basis, apps like Adobe photoshop, tax software, games etc. What are you doing in order to address these three basic hurdles in the path of Linux adoption in mainstream computer consumer market?