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

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

[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

[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.

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?

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?

[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?

[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.

General answer

[Anonymous Coward]

because your an idiot.

Re:General answer

[mordors9]

This should be modded up as insightful.

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

[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

[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.

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!

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

[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

[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.

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.

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)?

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?

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?

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: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:Mono

[poetmatt]

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

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.

[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,

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?

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?

[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.

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?

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?

[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.

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.

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"

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.

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?