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Matt Asay Answers Your Questions About Ubuntu and Canonical
A couple of weeks ago you posed some questions for Matt Asay, who recently moved into the COO role at Canonical. Click below to read his answers.
Adoption stories and influences
by eldavojohn (898314)"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?"
Matt: No, we have no plans to turn Wormtongue. We do, however, have aspirations to play Frodo. :-)
Ultimately, governments (good ones, anyway) are established to reflect the voice of their citizens. At Canonical, we believe that real, lasting change happens from the bottom up, as citizens within government and IT and those served by it clamor for change. We try to help this along by working with government organizations, including open source-friendly lobbying groups, to promote free markets and expanded choice through free and open-source software, but I personally believe that individuals will make the difference.
Change can be expensive, whether in terms of cost or bother, and so as individuals or organizations we generally try to avoid it. But people are now starting to feel enough pain - be it software costs, inefficient use of hardware, viruses and other malware, etc. - that Linux and open-source software, generally, are getting plenty of attention. The cure, in other words, now outweighs the effort of applying it. Yes, Microsoft will do its part to thwart this progress,but even so I've seen broad and ever-increasing government adoption of open source. It's just that most of it doesn't get reported.
Don't lose heart and, in particular, don't lose "voice." We're being heard. The worst thing we could do is to slacken our pace now.
Revenue
by Enderandrew (866215)"Shuttleworth is still funding Canonical. At some point however, this needs to turn into a profitable venture 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)?"
Matt: First off, it's critical to understand that Canonical doesn't make decisions at the cost of usability. Ever. Usability is our cardinal virtue.
The Yahoo! deal is not at the cost of usability. Yahoo! is an excellent and wildly popular search engine with many many millions of users. We are very pleased to have reached an agreement that will pump additional revenue into the community compared to the existing default. For those worried about Microsoft's involvement with Yahoo!, it is trivially easy to switch to Google or other alternatives.
We will make more commercial for-pay services available to our users, but we will never make then a requirement to have a full experience of the Ubuntu desktop. If you don't like them don't buy them and nothing will make you need to.
We have very healthy revenue coming from our various businesses, the most visible of which is providing support for our OEM partners like Dell as they roll Ubuntu-based devices globally. Less visible, but also fast growing, include our enterprise business (providing support and other services for Ubuntu in cloud and traditional server deployments) and our Ubuntu One services for Ubuntu client users.
I like to think of our guiding principle as "make money because of the Ubuntu community, not from it." At the scale where we operate, all sorts of financial opportunities become possible, opportunities that don't require us to hold back Ubuntu bits to goad people into purchasing. As we roll new services out, I hope you'll let us know how we're doing, and ensure we never sacrifice usability for financial gain.
Freedom, second?
by TheModelEskimo (968202) "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?"
Matt: I've never considered myself at odds with the goals of freedom-first software advocates, though I sometimes disagree with the means and the timing. Some, for example, have criticized Canonical in the past for including non-free bits (codecs and such).
I'm not among that number, because I believe that if we ever want to see mainstream adoption of Linux, we need to provide solutions, preferably short-term, that map to users' requirements. How likely is it that the mainstream could adopt a Linux desktop, for example, that doesn't offer support for Flash so that people can watch YouTube videos, as just one example?
It's easy to demand that everyone be like us, right now. But that, to me, is the antithesis of freedom. I'm not interesting in forcing people to make a choice. That's no choice at all. I believe the best way is to consistently offer a better experience, and invite prospective users to try it.
Here's a personal example. In my new role, I have switched from using Mac OS X to Ubuntu Linux. I've been using a Mac since 2002 when I switched off Windows. This switch would have been painful but for the fact that Firefox runs so well on Linux, and gives me access to a range of online services (like Google Calendar) that I was using before on the Mac. It would have been doubly so if I couldn't keep using Tweetdeck and other software to which I'd grown accustomed on my Mac.
Over time, I'm sure I'll migrate to open-source alternatives, for the same reason I used Adium, not iChat, on my Mac: the open-source alternatives are often the best available.
But to force-feed "freedom" on me or anyone else is a foolish, losing proposition. Especially in the short term.
I believe that Canonical and the Ubuntu community are creating software that people will want to use, not that they have to use. In the three weeks I've been with Canonical, I've used my Mac exactly once (still moving music out of old, DRM-encrusted iTunes songs). I haven't missed it.
Your version of their vision
by eldavojohn (898314) "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?"
Matt: I don't want to offend you with a "soft-ball" answer, but it would be inappropriate for me to provide the level of detail you request, in part because much of this information is confidential to Canonical and our partners, but also because a big part of our strategy is to undergird and rely upon the community to take Ubuntu into devices that we as a company cannot or choose not to cover.
That said, two things have impressed me in my three weeks with the company. First, there are, as you point out, a lot of things going on with the very real potential for inefficiency and lack of focus.
But two, the company is remarkably consistent in what it does choose to go after. In particular, we are relentlessly focused on improving the Linux user experience. Canonical, in conjunction with the Ubuntu community, builds the industry's best Linux distribution, one that even a (former) Mac user like myself can easily digest.
We intend to take this emphasis and expertise in user design into a wide array of devices, but importantly will continue to focus on those that require a general purpose operating system. The good news is that even despite the increasing diversity of devices, the world is actually converging on fewer platforms, not more.
For areas that require expertise or focus beyond ours, we encourage our community to take Ubuntu into such opportunities, and they have. You might be surprised to learn just how many of the devices out there are powered by Ubuntu, often without Canonical involved. I see this as very healthy. It's the only way to compete with much bigger competitors like Microsoft: beat them with a bigger community like Ubuntu.
This isn't to say that we couldn't focus more. But that was already underway through Mark's and Jane's guidance. My job is to accentuate it and ensure that we stay on track.
Gaming and drivers
by HungryHobo (1314109) "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?"
Matt: You're asking the wrong man! My favorite game is Rogue, originally developed for Unix and still going strong in the guise of Qt NetHack and other variants. I'm easy to please, I guess.
As for the general gaming market, yes, gaming is a weakness on Linux, but addressing that is not a priority for Canonical. Games developers will make their decisions based on their market dynamics and those dynamics are pointing more and more towards dedicated consoles rather than the general PC market.
We work very hard with the Linux Foundation and others in the Linux community to encourage component manufacturers to either open source their drivers or make them available for Linux and with considerable success. This is not to enable gaming per so but to make Linux a peer experience on all machines.
Proprietary products
Enderandrew (866215) "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?"
Matt: Ubuntu is about choice. While we believe that an operating system is best developed with the source code openly available, that does not mean that the applications running on it need to be restricted to only those using the same development method. Our own users tell us, in large numbers, that they would like to see apps become available from the likes of Adobe and the games developers. On server the case is even more apparent where there are excellent proprietary applications that we would love to make available to Ubuntu users and we work to do that.
We can't boil the ocean. We want people to adopt Ubuntu Linux, and part of that requires us to support the applications that the mass market requires. Our focus is to continue to provide the industry's best Linux experience, and to make that Linux experience superior to any other platform. This process is well underway, and will encourage more and more application developers to port their software to Ubuntu.
Along the way, we hope that others will follow our lead and open source their software, but we intend to lead by example, not force-feed the industry. Google, for example, is arguably putting more pressure on Microsoft's closed-source approach than any amount of lobbying ever has or will. You can argue that Google is only doing this out of self-interest, to which I reply, "Exactly." Once the industry recognizes its self-interest in open sourcing software, we'll have even more from which to choose.
I love great software, whatever its license. But I joined Canonical because I believe the open-source development model can create better software than closed alternatives, and I'm determined to prove that.
Enterprise versus desktop emphasis
by eldavojohn (898314) "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?"
Matt: Actually, the majority of Canonical's revenue does not derive from providing support to enterprises, though I of course hope and expect us to continue to grow that area of our business. Our revenue will be a mix of making Ubuntu available to everyone on a wide range of hardware, from selling services direct to users (e.g., Ubuntu One), enabling hardware manufacturers to deliver a solid, supported Ubuntu experience on a wide range of devices, and from selling support and other services to enterprise IT.
Our market opportunity derives from Ubuntu's global user community, but it's a matter of making money with or around that community, not from it. All sorts of business opportunities are possible once a platform becomes ubiquitous, which business opportunities don't depend on charging users for the right to use that platform. That's a 20th-century model that we eschew.
So, yes, you'll see Canonical putting a great deal of effort into making the Linux experience even more user friendly: the more users, the better our revenue opportunities from ancillary services. It's in our interest to have millions upon millions of people happily running Ubuntu, and our unwavering focus is on improving the usability and design of Ubuntu to ensure that they do just that.
Ubuntu and KDE and GNOME
by Enderandrew (866215) "I loathe Gnome personally but don't begrudge 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?"
Matt: I'm new to the Ubuntu party, but I believe we already do this with Kubuntu. No?
Ubuntu and KDE and GNOME (cont.)
by 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. 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."
by Enderandrew (866215) "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 independently of the Kubuntu team. Kubuntu is constantly trying to play catch-up on base issues. Even worse, they [Ubuntu] 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 vitriol from users who blame KDE devs... 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 they're 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 backlash is Ubuntu-created. ... But Ubuntu certainly hasn't done KDE any favors the past two years with the packages they've put out."
Matt: I remember my first taste of the KDE/Gnome divide when I was involved in the Linux Business Office at Novell. It was fractious then and, judging from your "question," it remains so. I don't want to add to this rancorous debate, but do hope you'll continue to talk actively and openly with Canonical and the Ubuntu community to ensure your views are heard and the Ubuntu distribution remains one that you will enjoy using.
Quality control
by davidm2005 (1453017) "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. The conclusion of this review 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?"
Matt: We are not complacent about bugs or quality. Far from it. In fact, I've been surprised by the level of attention it gets within the company.
You can criticize Canonical and Ubuntu for many things, but the work of the engineers and community in making an incredible operating system for servers and desktops on a huge array of hardware available for free to all is not one of them.
Every release of Ubuntu gets more users and is used on a wider choice of hardware. This creates complexity. Making an operating system entirely independent of the hardware that it is run on is hard and it's harder again when you are trying to push the performance of that product with each release.
As for Ubuntu 9.10, I've heard people call it a buggy release but that has not been my personal experience, and it's an accusation that the data do not support. Yes, we're constantly trying to improve, as Canonical CTO Matt Zimmerman calls out. But I look at this as a very good problem to have.
Why?
Because it's a symptom of a very positive thing: growth. There are more users using Ubuntu on more hardware than any previous release. Millions upon millions of users. Importantly, with our hardware partners we are providing certified, pre-installed, and supported Ubuntu on an ever-widening array of hardware. Dell's XPS 13 is just one awesome example.
For those who prefer to go off the beaten track and install Ubuntu on alternative hardware, as I did recently with a ThinkPad X200s, there may be some manual labor involved, just as there would be if you were running Windows or Mac OS X on unsupported hardware. In my personal experience, however, everything "just works." I've yet to have a single problem. Coming from a former Mac user (motto: two buttons are too hard - just give me one button on my mouse! :-), that's high praise.
Quality control (cont.)
by bcrowell (177657) 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.
Matt: I'm sorry to hear that (no pun intended). But see my response above.
Is there a time to fork?
by nine-times (778537) "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, to what do you attribute the relative lack of success, and what plans do you have, if any, to do something about it. 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.)"
Matt: As to the relative lack of market share, it comes down to inertia. I didn't give the Linux desktop much attention until I joined Canonical. I had used it off and on over the years, but there was never a compelling reason to change.
Now that I've switched, I'm surprised by how much my ignorance of desktop Linux was coloring my opinion of it. I've been using it as my dedicated OS for three weeks, and have had only one (minor) reason to revisit my old Mac machine. I simply haven't missed it, and I thought that I would struggle.
Until someone has a compelling reason to shift, however, they're unlikely to discover this. For those picking up new machines, for example, a low-cost netbook, they won't have to overcome this inertia. Email, Internet, IM, etc. all work just as well on Linux as they do on Windows or the Mac. These are the applications we spend 99.9999% of our days in (most of us, anyway). As a result, I think we'll start to see barriers come down.
The irony in this is that these application incompatibility concerns are the exact same ones I had when I started using a Mac in 2002. Years later, application support on the Mac is much better, though still not at the same level as Windows. And yet 99 percent of the time it doesn't matter, just as it doesn't on Linux. As more applications move to the Web and as application developers improve their support for Linux (a trend I've noticed happening), it will matter even less.
In the interim, if you are happy to pay for and need these specific Windows-only applications then Windows is probably the right OS for you. Microsoft Office, however, is not a compelling reason to keep paying the Windows tax for many people. It's one of those applications that we think we use more than we actually do, and which OpenOffice (or Google Docs, if you wish) more than adequately handles.
We would love Creative Suite to be available for Linux but the open source or web-based alternatives are satisfactory for many users.
Mobile platform plans
by abhikhurana (325468) "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 standardization means that users are more willing to experiment with interfaces. So what is the relative priority of Mobile, Netbook, Desktop and Server platform in Canonical's roadmap?"
Matt: Mobile is a top priority for Canonical, especially as it looks less and less like the traditional embedded market and more and more like a general-purpose OS market. That's our sweet spot, and given our concern for and expertise in user interface design, we will be leaders in this market.
We will do a lot of work on ARM and Intel platforms this year that will see Ubuntu popping up all over the the computing landscape. Ubuntu is a platform: it is not a desktop product or a server product or a mobile product. So where there is a requirement for an OS you will find Ubuntu. You'd be surprised by the kinds of devices you already own that run Ubuntu today.
Adoption stories and influences
by eldavojohn (898314)"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?"
Matt: No, we have no plans to turn Wormtongue. We do, however, have aspirations to play Frodo. :-)
Ultimately, governments (good ones, anyway) are established to reflect the voice of their citizens. At Canonical, we believe that real, lasting change happens from the bottom up, as citizens within government and IT and those served by it clamor for change. We try to help this along by working with government organizations, including open source-friendly lobbying groups, to promote free markets and expanded choice through free and open-source software, but I personally believe that individuals will make the difference.
Change can be expensive, whether in terms of cost or bother, and so as individuals or organizations we generally try to avoid it. But people are now starting to feel enough pain - be it software costs, inefficient use of hardware, viruses and other malware, etc. - that Linux and open-source software, generally, are getting plenty of attention. The cure, in other words, now outweighs the effort of applying it. Yes, Microsoft will do its part to thwart this progress,but even so I've seen broad and ever-increasing government adoption of open source. It's just that most of it doesn't get reported.
Don't lose heart and, in particular, don't lose "voice." We're being heard. The worst thing we could do is to slacken our pace now.
Revenue
by Enderandrew (866215)"Shuttleworth is still funding Canonical. At some point however, this needs to turn into a profitable venture 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)?"
Matt: First off, it's critical to understand that Canonical doesn't make decisions at the cost of usability. Ever. Usability is our cardinal virtue.
The Yahoo! deal is not at the cost of usability. Yahoo! is an excellent and wildly popular search engine with many many millions of users. We are very pleased to have reached an agreement that will pump additional revenue into the community compared to the existing default. For those worried about Microsoft's involvement with Yahoo!, it is trivially easy to switch to Google or other alternatives.
We will make more commercial for-pay services available to our users, but we will never make then a requirement to have a full experience of the Ubuntu desktop. If you don't like them don't buy them and nothing will make you need to.
We have very healthy revenue coming from our various businesses, the most visible of which is providing support for our OEM partners like Dell as they roll Ubuntu-based devices globally. Less visible, but also fast growing, include our enterprise business (providing support and other services for Ubuntu in cloud and traditional server deployments) and our Ubuntu One services for Ubuntu client users.
I like to think of our guiding principle as "make money because of the Ubuntu community, not from it." At the scale where we operate, all sorts of financial opportunities become possible, opportunities that don't require us to hold back Ubuntu bits to goad people into purchasing. As we roll new services out, I hope you'll let us know how we're doing, and ensure we never sacrifice usability for financial gain.
Freedom, second?
by TheModelEskimo (968202) "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?"
Matt: I've never considered myself at odds with the goals of freedom-first software advocates, though I sometimes disagree with the means and the timing. Some, for example, have criticized Canonical in the past for including non-free bits (codecs and such).
I'm not among that number, because I believe that if we ever want to see mainstream adoption of Linux, we need to provide solutions, preferably short-term, that map to users' requirements. How likely is it that the mainstream could adopt a Linux desktop, for example, that doesn't offer support for Flash so that people can watch YouTube videos, as just one example?
It's easy to demand that everyone be like us, right now. But that, to me, is the antithesis of freedom. I'm not interesting in forcing people to make a choice. That's no choice at all. I believe the best way is to consistently offer a better experience, and invite prospective users to try it.
Here's a personal example. In my new role, I have switched from using Mac OS X to Ubuntu Linux. I've been using a Mac since 2002 when I switched off Windows. This switch would have been painful but for the fact that Firefox runs so well on Linux, and gives me access to a range of online services (like Google Calendar) that I was using before on the Mac. It would have been doubly so if I couldn't keep using Tweetdeck and other software to which I'd grown accustomed on my Mac.
Over time, I'm sure I'll migrate to open-source alternatives, for the same reason I used Adium, not iChat, on my Mac: the open-source alternatives are often the best available.
But to force-feed "freedom" on me or anyone else is a foolish, losing proposition. Especially in the short term.
I believe that Canonical and the Ubuntu community are creating software that people will want to use, not that they have to use. In the three weeks I've been with Canonical, I've used my Mac exactly once (still moving music out of old, DRM-encrusted iTunes songs). I haven't missed it.
Your version of their vision
by eldavojohn (898314) "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?"
Matt: I don't want to offend you with a "soft-ball" answer, but it would be inappropriate for me to provide the level of detail you request, in part because much of this information is confidential to Canonical and our partners, but also because a big part of our strategy is to undergird and rely upon the community to take Ubuntu into devices that we as a company cannot or choose not to cover.
That said, two things have impressed me in my three weeks with the company. First, there are, as you point out, a lot of things going on with the very real potential for inefficiency and lack of focus.
But two, the company is remarkably consistent in what it does choose to go after. In particular, we are relentlessly focused on improving the Linux user experience. Canonical, in conjunction with the Ubuntu community, builds the industry's best Linux distribution, one that even a (former) Mac user like myself can easily digest.
We intend to take this emphasis and expertise in user design into a wide array of devices, but importantly will continue to focus on those that require a general purpose operating system. The good news is that even despite the increasing diversity of devices, the world is actually converging on fewer platforms, not more.
For areas that require expertise or focus beyond ours, we encourage our community to take Ubuntu into such opportunities, and they have. You might be surprised to learn just how many of the devices out there are powered by Ubuntu, often without Canonical involved. I see this as very healthy. It's the only way to compete with much bigger competitors like Microsoft: beat them with a bigger community like Ubuntu.
This isn't to say that we couldn't focus more. But that was already underway through Mark's and Jane's guidance. My job is to accentuate it and ensure that we stay on track.
Gaming and drivers
by HungryHobo (1314109) "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?"
Matt: You're asking the wrong man! My favorite game is Rogue, originally developed for Unix and still going strong in the guise of Qt NetHack and other variants. I'm easy to please, I guess.
As for the general gaming market, yes, gaming is a weakness on Linux, but addressing that is not a priority for Canonical. Games developers will make their decisions based on their market dynamics and those dynamics are pointing more and more towards dedicated consoles rather than the general PC market.
We work very hard with the Linux Foundation and others in the Linux community to encourage component manufacturers to either open source their drivers or make them available for Linux and with considerable success. This is not to enable gaming per so but to make Linux a peer experience on all machines.
Proprietary products
Enderandrew (866215) "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?"
Matt: Ubuntu is about choice. While we believe that an operating system is best developed with the source code openly available, that does not mean that the applications running on it need to be restricted to only those using the same development method. Our own users tell us, in large numbers, that they would like to see apps become available from the likes of Adobe and the games developers. On server the case is even more apparent where there are excellent proprietary applications that we would love to make available to Ubuntu users and we work to do that.
We can't boil the ocean. We want people to adopt Ubuntu Linux, and part of that requires us to support the applications that the mass market requires. Our focus is to continue to provide the industry's best Linux experience, and to make that Linux experience superior to any other platform. This process is well underway, and will encourage more and more application developers to port their software to Ubuntu.
Along the way, we hope that others will follow our lead and open source their software, but we intend to lead by example, not force-feed the industry. Google, for example, is arguably putting more pressure on Microsoft's closed-source approach than any amount of lobbying ever has or will. You can argue that Google is only doing this out of self-interest, to which I reply, "Exactly." Once the industry recognizes its self-interest in open sourcing software, we'll have even more from which to choose.
I love great software, whatever its license. But I joined Canonical because I believe the open-source development model can create better software than closed alternatives, and I'm determined to prove that.
Enterprise versus desktop emphasis
by eldavojohn (898314) "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?"
Matt: Actually, the majority of Canonical's revenue does not derive from providing support to enterprises, though I of course hope and expect us to continue to grow that area of our business. Our revenue will be a mix of making Ubuntu available to everyone on a wide range of hardware, from selling services direct to users (e.g., Ubuntu One), enabling hardware manufacturers to deliver a solid, supported Ubuntu experience on a wide range of devices, and from selling support and other services to enterprise IT.
Our market opportunity derives from Ubuntu's global user community, but it's a matter of making money with or around that community, not from it. All sorts of business opportunities are possible once a platform becomes ubiquitous, which business opportunities don't depend on charging users for the right to use that platform. That's a 20th-century model that we eschew.
So, yes, you'll see Canonical putting a great deal of effort into making the Linux experience even more user friendly: the more users, the better our revenue opportunities from ancillary services. It's in our interest to have millions upon millions of people happily running Ubuntu, and our unwavering focus is on improving the usability and design of Ubuntu to ensure that they do just that.
Ubuntu and KDE and GNOME
by Enderandrew (866215) "I loathe Gnome personally but don't begrudge 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?"
Matt: I'm new to the Ubuntu party, but I believe we already do this with Kubuntu. No?
Ubuntu and KDE and GNOME (cont.)
by 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. 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."
by Enderandrew (866215) "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 independently of the Kubuntu team. Kubuntu is constantly trying to play catch-up on base issues. Even worse, they [Ubuntu] 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 vitriol from users who blame KDE devs... 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 they're 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 backlash is Ubuntu-created. ... But Ubuntu certainly hasn't done KDE any favors the past two years with the packages they've put out."
Matt: I remember my first taste of the KDE/Gnome divide when I was involved in the Linux Business Office at Novell. It was fractious then and, judging from your "question," it remains so. I don't want to add to this rancorous debate, but do hope you'll continue to talk actively and openly with Canonical and the Ubuntu community to ensure your views are heard and the Ubuntu distribution remains one that you will enjoy using.
Quality control
by davidm2005 (1453017) "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. The conclusion of this review 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?"
Matt: We are not complacent about bugs or quality. Far from it. In fact, I've been surprised by the level of attention it gets within the company.
You can criticize Canonical and Ubuntu for many things, but the work of the engineers and community in making an incredible operating system for servers and desktops on a huge array of hardware available for free to all is not one of them.
Every release of Ubuntu gets more users and is used on a wider choice of hardware. This creates complexity. Making an operating system entirely independent of the hardware that it is run on is hard and it's harder again when you are trying to push the performance of that product with each release.
As for Ubuntu 9.10, I've heard people call it a buggy release but that has not been my personal experience, and it's an accusation that the data do not support. Yes, we're constantly trying to improve, as Canonical CTO Matt Zimmerman calls out. But I look at this as a very good problem to have.
Why?
Because it's a symptom of a very positive thing: growth. There are more users using Ubuntu on more hardware than any previous release. Millions upon millions of users. Importantly, with our hardware partners we are providing certified, pre-installed, and supported Ubuntu on an ever-widening array of hardware. Dell's XPS 13 is just one awesome example.
For those who prefer to go off the beaten track and install Ubuntu on alternative hardware, as I did recently with a ThinkPad X200s, there may be some manual labor involved, just as there would be if you were running Windows or Mac OS X on unsupported hardware. In my personal experience, however, everything "just works." I've yet to have a single problem. Coming from a former Mac user (motto: two buttons are too hard - just give me one button on my mouse! :-), that's high praise.
Quality control (cont.)
by bcrowell (177657) 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.
Matt: I'm sorry to hear that (no pun intended). But see my response above.
Is there a time to fork?
by nine-times (778537) "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, to what do you attribute the relative lack of success, and what plans do you have, if any, to do something about it. 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.)"
Matt: As to the relative lack of market share, it comes down to inertia. I didn't give the Linux desktop much attention until I joined Canonical. I had used it off and on over the years, but there was never a compelling reason to change.
Now that I've switched, I'm surprised by how much my ignorance of desktop Linux was coloring my opinion of it. I've been using it as my dedicated OS for three weeks, and have had only one (minor) reason to revisit my old Mac machine. I simply haven't missed it, and I thought that I would struggle.
Until someone has a compelling reason to shift, however, they're unlikely to discover this. For those picking up new machines, for example, a low-cost netbook, they won't have to overcome this inertia. Email, Internet, IM, etc. all work just as well on Linux as they do on Windows or the Mac. These are the applications we spend 99.9999% of our days in (most of us, anyway). As a result, I think we'll start to see barriers come down.
The irony in this is that these application incompatibility concerns are the exact same ones I had when I started using a Mac in 2002. Years later, application support on the Mac is much better, though still not at the same level as Windows. And yet 99 percent of the time it doesn't matter, just as it doesn't on Linux. As more applications move to the Web and as application developers improve their support for Linux (a trend I've noticed happening), it will matter even less.
In the interim, if you are happy to pay for and need these specific Windows-only applications then Windows is probably the right OS for you. Microsoft Office, however, is not a compelling reason to keep paying the Windows tax for many people. It's one of those applications that we think we use more than we actually do, and which OpenOffice (or Google Docs, if you wish) more than adequately handles.
We would love Creative Suite to be available for Linux but the open source or web-based alternatives are satisfactory for many users.
Mobile platform plans
by abhikhurana (325468) "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 standardization means that users are more willing to experiment with interfaces. So what is the relative priority of Mobile, Netbook, Desktop and Server platform in Canonical's roadmap?"
Matt: Mobile is a top priority for Canonical, especially as it looks less and less like the traditional embedded market and more and more like a general-purpose OS market. That's our sweet spot, and given our concern for and expertise in user interface design, we will be leaders in this market.
We will do a lot of work on ARM and Intel platforms this year that will see Ubuntu popping up all over the the computing landscape. Ubuntu is a platform: it is not a desktop product or a server product or a mobile product. So where there is a requirement for an OS you will find Ubuntu. You'd be surprised by the kinds of devices you already own that run Ubuntu today.
Despite the occasional snobbish answer, this was a good Q and A. Thanks Slashdot! You guys aren't just Microsoft bashing and astro turfing after all!
Living With a Nerd
An Ubuntu topic icon!
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
But RMS's ideals forced on someone else, even if it is
something like software freedom, is still a rule; not anarchy. This
contradiction was becoming clear to me in the fall of 2005. Even as
early as my first lan party, "Why did I love to code?" I framed it,
but still, I dont understand it. It goes against my beliefs as a
true software anarchist. But there it was. Computation, processing
monolithic kernels, compiled binaries, THE SYSTEM. That's what we did. Its what
we always did. C coders kicked the shit out of C++, C++ kicked
the shit out of Python, Python kicked the shit out of Perl,
Perl took out the PHP guys, and thePHP guys
beat the living shit out of Ruby fags and the Ruby fags did
nothing. They were like the new HTMLers. What was the point? Final summation? None.
Binary drivers are a fact of life if you want a 3d video card with any real performance. Even a 6 year old Nvidia card outperforms the latest and greatest from intel. I understand the reasoning behind not including the drivers, but not including a icon on the desktop that is a "click here to download, install and enable the nvidia non free closed source evil drivers." is a must have. Either that or include a linux guru with every download so grandma sprinkles can install it herself.
Also the mediabuntu repository while easy for us that are familiar with ubuntu to reinstall at every release are near impossible for a newbie to install.. Again a icon that states," click here for media drivers if you are in a country that is not opressive and looks at such an act as illegal"
If ubuntu was able to come with nvidia, ati, and mediabuntu installed it would be very much grandma ready out of the box. They really need to find ways around those issues to get more newbie users and non techie users.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
My desktop has had the same hardware since I've been using 6.06, I feel I've had more struggles getting 9.10 set up. In the end I think it's fine and sorting it out wasn't rocket science but it wasn't as smooth as the previous release. Audio has been the biggest issue.
From this interview: I've never considered myself at odds with the goals of freedom-first software advocates
And just last September he wrote that "Free software is dead. Long live open source", where he writes:
Free software makes for great headlines ("Miguel de Icaza is basically a traitor to the Free Software community"), but it is far too demanding, and of largely the wrong things, to capture mainstream interest. ... The path forward is open source, not free software. Sometimes that openness will mean embracing Microsoft in order to meet a customer's needs. ...Free software has lost.
Dude, that's you being at odds with the goals of the freedom-first advocates. You can embrace Microsoft all you like. Meanwhile, I'm busy working to minimise the patent and FUD harm they're doing to us. Canonical have been helpful so far in campaigns against software patents. I hope there won't be a new "don't offend Microsoft" vibe that changes this.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
He just brushed away the two very important issues of the Kubuntu Desktop and sound. Now, what he was doing there is is meeting a "your distro sucks" accusation with a "does not!" reply which is to some degree fair. However that doesn't change the apparently common opinion that the Kubuntu desktop is crap, and sound is just flat out broken. I like KDE because it has more features and looks better, but it's just too damn buggy so I had to switch back to gnome just so me and my wife could use the computer. And I have NEVER had sound work properly out of the Ubuntu box. It is downright embarassing. I don't know to what extent these problems are the fault of Ubuntu as opposed to KDE, or the fault of the Linux kernel using Pulse or what. I just know that the Kubuntu desktop is highly unpolished and the sound situation is dire. These things were addressed in the Q&A because they are important and the only answer we got is "It works fine for me".
I like how he sort of blew off the sound question.
It has nothing to do with "supported hardware" it has to due to the Cluster Fuck that is Linux Audio.
I know OSS is about "choice" but there's just too many choices. And none of them work right. I'd consider myself a high level user and usually read a "How To" then understand the underlying system (such as how uBoot works on my Sheeva Plug), but I haven't in the slightest idea how the fuck linux audio works.
I can install OSSv4. And use those drivers with ALSA. Or use ALSA drivers while playing through Pulse Audio and telling all ALSA applications to go through Pulse Audio. And I don't even want to start to think about 'mapping' in ALSA.
If Canonical/Ubuntu fixes sound, it'll be one of those stories that we tell our grandchildren about.
I was disappointed with his response to the questions regarding Gnome & KDE. What I read in his response was 'We have Kubuntu. Please keep using it!'.
Ubuntu and KDE and GNOME by Enderandrew (866215) "I loathe Gnome personally but don't begrudge 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?" Matt: I'm new to the Ubuntu party, but I believe we already do this with Kubuntu. No?
Have you any idea what's going on in Kubuntu with Operation Timelord? That's as close as you can get to saying 'We're tired of Ubuntu is fucking us, so we're blowing this popstand and doing it right.'
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
Note the answers to quality question. Instead of answering (yeah, nah, whatever), this guy spews the same gross bullshit you hear from nameless corporations everywhere.
Did they chose the right guy here?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
duty to be a big may be huRting the posts. Therefore collect any spilled for the state of megs of ram runs are a few ggod tangle of fatal
Matt: First off, it's critical to understand that Canonical doesn't make decisions at the cost of usability. Ever. Usability is our cardinal virtue.
The Yahoo! deal is not at the cost of usability. Yahoo! is an excellent and wildly popular search engine with many many millions of users. We are very pleased to have reached an agreement that will pump additional revenue into the community compared to the existing default. For those worried about Microsoft's involvement with Yahoo!, it is trivially easy to switch to Google or other alternatives.
Really? So this means that Canonical is convinced that Yahoo is at least as good as Google, Bing, etc.
I'd be interested in seeing what studies support that conclusion because I couldn't find any. I could find some data suggesting the opposite though:
Could he have avoided the KDe-package-quality questions, and the Kubuntu-system app questions, any better?
Come on, those 'answers' shouldn't have even been posted. For KDE lovers, try other distros. That shouldn't be news, however.
He blew off or dismissed most of the important questions. As other commenters have said, he didn't acknowledge Ubuntu's terrible implementation of KDE, Gnome's short comings, nor the sound issue.
But the worse thing is how he completely dismissed Creative Suites and games. Whenever I ask any of my friends why they aren't on linux, they reply with one of these two. Whenever I see linux vs. windows being debated in a OS agnostic forum its these two issues I see come up the most. I can't believe Canonical is completely ignoring it.
Microsoft is FUDing, and Mark Shuttleworth called them on it:
Microsoft is asking people to pay them for patents, but they won't say which ones. If a guy walks into a shop and says: "It's an unsafe neighbourhood, why don't you pay me 20 bucks and I'll make sure you're okay," that's illegal. It's racketeering.
To fix the patent situation, we need that kind of vocal support of executives. Will we get that support from Matt?
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
I haven't been a regular Linux or Ubuntu user for a few years now. What happens if I change my hardware configuration after I've already installed Ubuntu? My past experience was that while most Linux distros were quite good at detecting hardware during their initial install, almost none of them would give me any sort of help after the fact. Introducing new hardware was an unnecessarily major pain; I knew Linux was capable of detecting it, but no one had bothered to think beyond the first-install scenario.
Is this better now? (Or was there always a solution to this that I wasn't aware of?)
I'd like to echo the sentiment of many others - ubuntu is just too buggy. The first version I used seemed to work ok, but had warnings saying that several drivers were missing, so I upgraded to the next version (9.04). It had password issues that I had to go into grub to fix, and it never worked right. I couldn't update anything because my root pw was hosed. So I waited until the next version (9.10), bought a new cd for $0.99 on ebay, reformatted the hdd, and ended up with the same issue. So I took a chance & switched to linux mint. It too worked fine at first, but after the first batch of updates, I ended up right where I started from: with a bad root password so that I couldn't upgrade anything. This time I reformatted & only installed updates with a # 1 or #2 on it and so far, it's ok. I'm a linux noob, & have been tempted to go back to windows, but at $300-$400 for a brand-new version of windows 7, I'm going to stick to linux. At least its extremely low cost ($0.99 on ebay), open office is free instead of several hundred dollars for MS office, & I don't get all the malware. Not to mention I can install it on as many machines as I want & don't have to activate or register it. But when the next linux version comes out, I"m going to wait a while to see how it goes out there before I immediately jump in.
Ubuntu users don't need to use the terminal. From the System menu choose Administration > Hardware Drivers. (I use Ubuntu 8.04 LTS here at work; newer versions might have since changed the name.)
He may not be aware of quality issues, but they certainly exist.
He is right that it is a byproduct of size. Ubuntu has massive repositories, and plenty of users to discover bugs. However, I doubt Ubuntu has the engineering experience or staff of Red Hat or Novell.
I know that choice is a good thing, but distro fragmentation has gone too far. I think the Linux community needs a few leaders to organize the fractured community and consolidate/coordinate efforts to improving quality overall.
Instead of X number of package maintainers working on Arch, and X working on Sabayon, and X working on Mandriva, and X working on Mint, and X working on Slackware, and X working on PCLinuxOS, etc. I really think the major distros need to bring the community to them.
Instead of 10 Fedora forks, why not try to integrate those community efforts into improving Fedora? And the same for Ubuntu.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
He managed to dodge some questions, in a very unsatisfying manner. Look at this:
Uhh, no. Kubuntu is far from a quality release. The questioner was trying to put this politely, Mr. Asay, and you took advantage of his courtesy to dodge the question. Try answering this one: "Why does Kubuntu suck?" Did you grasp the intent behind that one?
Second dodge of this question. This is NOT the "which is better, KDE or GNOME?" question. This is the "why does Kubuntu fall short of KDE?" question.
Slightly different question that you dodged here, now it's not "Why does Kubuntu suck?" but "Why does Ubuntu suck even when KDE is not involved?" I guess you can't twist it into a KDE/GNOME playoff this time. I notice that you've used the good ol' trick of "What problem? I don't have a problem, therefore you don't either." Unfortunately, Mr. Asay, I suspect that I'm not the only one around here who recognizes your fallacious train of thought. Maybe I can entertain you with a joke:
Q: How many Ubuntu-using Matt Asay's does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Why do you want to change the light bulb? I have an exact identical copy of your light bulb here, and it works fine for me.
Okay, next question:
Wow! That's the fifth question about the quality of your software. In a list limited to 12 questions voted to the top by a large number of Slashdotters, we spent five of those questions directly asking about quality. Do you get the sense that your community is trying to tell you something, Mr. Asay? Let's see what your response is ...
You know, I was hoping for better. I understand that you're new to Linux, and fielding questions from Slashdotters is probably not one of those essential duties that will determine whether or not you get a bonus at the end of the year. But here's your chance to directly reach out to the people who support you, but who are at the same time telling you that you have problems. You could acknowledge the problems, or at least acknowledge our questions, something like "I see that there is a lot of concern about quality. Here are our processes for improving quality: (insert blurb) I'll find out a bit more and post it on the Ubuntu forum." etc. But to say, "I personally have not had problems with my Ubuntu, so I won't answer your question ..." geez, we hashed that out on Slashdot before Canonical even existed.
Disclosure of my personal stance: Linux fan, no Microsoft on my computers since 2004. KDE fan, but Kubuntu has been disappointing. Using KDE3 on Kubuntu 8.04, waiting for Lucid (10.04) to come out so I can learn it and not have to chase after a moving target reinstalling every half a year. I believe KDE4 will be a good experience now, but am not going to find out until Lucid.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
1. Everything a user would want needs to work out of the box, even if that means bundling proprietary video drivers, Flash, etc.
2. They need a major retail presence. Red Hat had boxed copies in stores ages ago, but most users aren't comfortable replacing an OS. You need to be able to purchase a computer with Linux preinstalled from major retailers. There have been very minor experiments with this, but most retailers seemed to push customers away from the Linux models. This may change a bit with Chrome on netbooks, but Chrome is largely just a browser.
3. Linux names marketing. With fragmentation, this is difficult. Google will add some name recognition, but until the average person develops some trust with the Linux "brand", you won't see massive acceptance.
4. Migration needs to be simple. An installer should help you migrate your documents and settings over without too much pain or grief.
These goals can be accomplished partially by the community (word-of-mouth advertising, perhaps running a community GetLinux.com site akin to the GetFirefox campaign, etc), but part of this needs to come from major Linux companies like Canonical.
Until those four points are addressed, don't ever expect Linux on the desktop to be anything but a niche product.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I like the response that he gave on Ubuntu 9.10 being a buggy release. One thing I've come to realize isn't the 9.10 is more or less buggy than previous versions, but that I'm starting to use Ubuntu to do more things. I now have it installed as my main work OS, and I also have Ubuntu 9.10 Studio (which is another beast with the RT Kernel) installed at home to record my band. So in the end, I notice more bugs that I wouldn't have with earlier versions because I didn't use earlier versions as much.
With that said, if I install Ubuntu, and use all the default applications and settings, It's a solid experience (read netbook). The more I tend to install and tweak things the way I like seems to be where I start running into problems (ubuntu studio, work pc with network intensive applications and samba file shares, etc). Evolution connecting to Exchange 2007 has also been a pet peeve of mine in 9.10, as I was able to do it compiling from source with an updated connector, but 9.10 still doesn't have an update in the repository for it.
I can use Ubuntu now for much more than I could, but it still has a ways to go before I find it a totally pleasant experience.
I *HATE* bing. No, really. I HATE bing. Yahoo a wildly popular search engine? Only because the people already using it are too afraid to use anything else. Google is vastly superior in every way to Yaho's search. That move was a giant step backwards!!!!!
you guys must be total fags.
We do, however, have aspirations to play Frodo.
OK, I've read the books a few times and I'm pretty sure Frodo failed in the end and succumbed to the temptation to (attempt to) become the new Dark Lord. His short lived usurpation of power was thwarted by another would be usurper that fortunately also suffered from bad balance and/or poor spacial awareness/maneuvering skills.
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
I agree that stability of Ubuntu has gone downhill. I have given up using Ubuntu on my desktop for that reason, and it is not exotic hardware - it is a Dell which came with Ubunutu preinstalled on it!
The two biggest problems are the Intel graphics drivers and Pulse Audio. Keith Packard and others have been using the Intel drivers as a proving ground for some much needed re-architecting of the Xorg driver framework. This is important work, but it also means that using the latest and greatest versions of those drivers, like Ubuntu does, is a bad idea. Pulse Audio is buggy as shit. I'm not convinced that it is a good idea at all, but at the very least it should not be considered stable enough for mainstream use.
Ubuntu is quickly changing from a mainstream user-friendly distro to a bleeding edge distro, because they cannot resist the urge to include new features. They look at how these features would improve usability if they worked, but neglect the frustration caused by their instability. Even long term support releases have this problem.
Ubuntu is easily the quietest of the large distros when it comes to talking with driver upstreams. Really, his response, to me, translates to, "We'll let Redhat and Novell continue to front the cost of paying developers to write graphics drivers, while dragging our feet at adopting new upstream code." Frustrating.
~ C.
Usenet. In 1995, 3est. Individuals Assholes, as they
His complete dismissal of Linux as a gaming platform really disappoints me. I'm one of those people that still use Windows simply because of gaming. If Linux had support for the games I want to play, I would have been a full time Linux user years ago.
I'm not unreasonable either. I have a decent understanding of the challenges involved in making that happen on Linux, but to hear this guy just totally dismiss the thought isn't what I was hoping for. It will take time and effort to make Linux a gaming platform, and it will never happen when people like this just flat out give up on it. He tries to say that gaming is all moving over to consoles, but that is an utter falsehood, as there are still millions of us that use a PC as a primary gaming platform.
All in all the most amazing thing about this Q&A is how he readily admits that he really has only used Ubuntu for his primary OS for a few weeks now. The thought that someone as ignorant as me, about the internals on Linux, has used Ubuntu more than its new COO is just stunning.
Is it just me, or this answer:
As for Ubuntu 9.10, I've heard people call it a buggy release but that has not been my personal experience, and it's an accusation that the data do not support ...
In my personal experience, however, everything "just works." I've yet to have a single problem. Coming from a former Mac user (motto: two buttons are too hard - just give me one button on my mouse! :-), that's high praise.
really sounds like the infamous WONTFIX/WORKSFORME bug ticket closure?
As more applications move to the Web and as application developers improve their support for Linux (a trend I've noticed happening), it will matter even less.
So Ubuntu's future is as a Linux kernel with a window manager in X to run a web browser? Canonical's plans do not include broad applications support? Not even so far as to work with the Wine team in producing a migration path by getting more critical Windows apps (Quicken, Adobe CS) to the gold status?
"99.9999%" of an operating system's relevance is in messaging and AJAX supported applications? That doesn't sound like much of a game plan for anything other than Ubuntu becoming the Cadillac of embedded systems. It's as if Mr. Asay thinks the future of the operating system is irrelevance.
While this may be true, it isn't much of a business plan.
--
Toro
It seems to be buggy in the opinion of a lot of people, but according to cannonical it isn't, so quit yer bitchin.
I reverted to 9.04 because of vid issues, but even in 9.04 I can't get the microphone input on my audigy 2 to work. Seriously thinking of setting up a Windows machine for audio stuff, as regressive as that would feel. I've been using Linux for about 10 years now, and the novelty of screwing around to get stuff working wore off quite some time ago.
For day to day stuff though, I would never go back to using Windows routinely. Never, never, never. When I do have to use a Windows machine for any extended period, it makes me feel so sad that I have to uncheck boxes to show me stuff it thinks it should hide, like file extensions. It's such a horrible OS in so many ways, but it has hardware support like Linux will never have, especially when a major distro like Ubuntu says "You think there are problems? There are no problems. Don't worry. Be happy."
Loose lips lose spit.
This was not it. These were answers aimed at stockholders and loan officers. Nice , temperate, safe and no boat rocking. Linux has become big business and welcome to the real world.
In my opinion. The KDE fanboys sure feel no compunction about dissing Gnome.
Gnome is not perfect, but at least it's not the confused weirdness that is KDE. Every time a new version of KDE comes out, I hear all sorts of glowing reports so I check it out. And I wonder what is so great about this? If you like it, fine, but it's not obvious to me that it's wonderful or better than Gnome or that Gnome is "falling behind".
I'm not a Gnome fanboy or anything - I keep trying new things. But KDE is simply a different take on what a desktop should be. Kubuntu may not be exactly what the KDE fanboys want, but the incessant whining about it is boring. It will improve, especially if you provide clear and measured feedback, as opposed to vague "it sucks" type commentary. Or just go use OpenSuse - I hear that's a hot KDE distro. Whatever.
I know everybody goes on about sound (and that's understandable), but what about wireless?
I know that none of the available wifi drivers or hacks to use the windows drivers worked at all, and I ended up running ethernet by following the cable TV run. Still wireless can be a big issue when people aren't willing to take that step or live in a rented place where they can't just go and drill holes in the wall. (If that's not an obstacle to being acceptable on the desktop for home use, then I'm not sure what is.)
Anyone ever get the word on that, or is that something that's been fixed since the last time I tried. (It's been a while, but then again my only fix was to run some wires.)
" Millions upon millions of users. Importantly, with our hardware partners we are providing certified, pre-installed, and supported Ubuntu on an ever-widening array of hardware. Dell's XPS 13 is just one awesome example. "
Was curious what the XPS 13 is like. According to Dell's site, it is no longer made. I looked at the i7 XPS 17, it didn't have linux as a choice.
I'll be purchasing a new laptop for work soon, does Dell still offer Linux on laptops?
This guy sounds like a complete newbie to me. I'd rather see him asking basic question on the Ubuntu forums then guiding Canonical to success.
Check out my cross-platform apps
What I don't understand is why a major linux outfit hired a non linux guy for this important position. They are saying that on the entire globe, six billion plus people, only this mac osx guy could fill these shoes. Seems a slap in the face to all the linux people out there who could have done this job and loved it, and brought more linux experience, and that mindset, to the boardroom table.
I've had exchanges with the audio people that basically went like "sound doesn't work" "yes it does. pulseaudio is running, pulseaudio is magical and all sound works thanks to pulseaudio. this is not a bug, it's a feature." the solution? remove pulseaudio and anything that has to do with it. use --purge. and your sound will start working again
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
Xubuntu is the way foward for me...XFCE knocks both Gnome & KDE on the head, with their bloatware!
http://nathanlindsell.blogspot.com/
"...that requires us to support the applications that the mass market requires."
"I love great software, whatever its license"
Says it all really. No principles. If the mass market say that they want a cheaper Windows, then that is what Ubuntu will become, and stuff the GPL and open source, though with a smile, and blaming the user for the choice.
I don't know to what extent these problems are the fault of Ubuntu as opposed to KDE, or the fault of the Linux kernel using Pulse or what.
There's your problem: whenever sound is troubling you on Ubuntu, step one is always to uninstall PulseAudio.
Now, PulseAudio might be great. I hear it is. It just isn't on Ubuntu. So remove that from the equation, and sound should work much better.
(Speaking only from personal experience, apply salt, YMMV, etc.)
I've got intel video hardware on two of my systems - intel 865 and intel 845 (on my eeepc). Ubuntu 9.10 works, works consistently and works well - unlike every version since 7.0
now 9.10 still needs some kernel juggling to work "out of the box" on an eeepc/9.05 but for the most part it's pretty nice.
actually - hardware support is pretty much better under ubuntu that any other OS I've tried - including windows vista/32, windows XP/64, and even debian. I now wait (with manually patched beta drivers that work great *grin*) for wacom bamboo pen&touch drivers to reach production distro.
Note: I don't really think of this as a good server OS - CentOS and debian are both better for that - but it's awesome for desktop work.
governments (good ones
Ha! Good one, Matt!
Property is theft.
We will make more commercial for-pay services available to our users, but we will never make then a requirement to have a full experience of the Ubuntu desktop. If you don't like them don't buy them and nothing will make you need to.
Hey, anybody know yet what the upcoming Ubuntu fork is going to be called?
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.'
"GIMP" has always seemed like a spectacularly bad choice of name to me. I mean, they could have merely offended the disabled if they'd named it CRIP (Computer Resource for Images and Pictures), but no, they managed to do that while simultaneously invoking associations with gay S&M.
In fact, as an act of brazen partisanship in the GNU/Linux naming battle, I hereby rename the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) to be the Linux Image Manipulation Program (LIMP). That's, er, mildly better.
Wow. Your mention of Operation Timelord tells me that people at Kubuntu are responding and gives me hope. It's more informative than the response given by Asay, who should either have at least mentioned Operation Timelord or should get up to speed on the distro that he's representing.
And for those who respond that Kubuntu is not officially supported by Canonical: I think it *is* supported, but if it's not, that's even more reason to disparage Ubuntu. Geez, I hope not. But it gives me hope that maybe, just maybe, the upcoming first Long Term Support release for Kubuntu in almost four years will actually be worth the pain we went through with KDE4. Long live Kubuntu, and hope Canonical gives you the support you need to renew yourselves.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
A bit like I brush away pulseaudio
y | apt-get remove pulseaudio
Enough has been said about KDE4. Deadhorse. Dead.
I personally believe that individuals will make the difference.
But people are now starting to feel enough pain - be it software costs, inefficient use of hardware, viruses and other malware, etc. - that Linux and open-source software, generally, are getting plenty of attention. The cure, in other words, now outweighs the effort of applying it. Yes, Microsoft will do its part to thwart this progress,but even so I've seen broad and ever-increasing government adoption of open source
He believes that individuals will make the difference - but the progress he sees is in government adoption of open source.
The top-down solution.
The mandate from on high.
Nothing much seems to be happening at ground level.
In the Net Applications stats, Linux struggles to hold on to a 1% share of the global desktop. Top Operating System Share Trend [March 2 Preview]
In the W3Schools OS Platform Stats W2K held a 42% share in March 03, Linux 2%.
W2K was never a mass market OS.
This February, Win 7 had 13%, Linux 5% and W2K 0%. You could legitimately argue from these stats that Linux hasn't gained much of a grip - on the desktop - even when you look at usage by the pros.
As for the general gaming market, yes, gaming is a weakness on Linux, but addressing that is not a priority for Canonical.
The PC game is the quintessential client app.
The machine that can play games is a powerhouse for all forms of media, interaction and communication. It sets the standard. Games and gaming tech can change the way you think about the PC or the console. How you use it.
It astonishes me that basic audio play and mixing could still be problematical for the Linux user in in 2010.
All About . . . Sound Cards for Windows [July 1997]
Open Source is inherently cross-platform. The Windows port is inevitable - and it has visibility. Download.com is one click away. The quality and ease of use of the Linux repository is unknown until you install the OS.
The sample apps on the typical Linux Live CD clearly aren't setting the world on fire.
Matt. you *HAD* the PERFECT opportunity to answer the questions posed to you from hard core Linux users, and blew it...
I've been waiting for these response since the questions posting.....I am VERY DISAPPOINTED, VERY DISAPPOINTED.
1) KDE - "...to ensure your views are heard and the Ubuntu distribution remains one that you will enjoy using. "
You heard what WE, and I had to say on gnome...WE WANT KDE! KDE KDE ! KDE!
You chose to dismiss and ignore it.
I will continue to use a derivative distro, KMint, as Canoncial has made it clear they do not and will create a quality distro, a quality KDE distro, even with its move to KDE 4.x (ick).
Your own Kubnutu distro I have not been able to reliably boot in over 2 years. TWO YEARS! Theres no quality to this heap of trash! DITCH IT! You want to know what a quality KDE distro is head over to http://www.linuxmint.com/ and look at KMint. The KDE team there works wonders with what they get from Kubuntu. You should take note.
I have. My opinion, as its voice towards KDE, will be ignored.
2) Sound - "Works for me."
Again, dismissive, and not the path to take, especially for the new guy. FIX THE SOUND! DUMP pulse! I've found that your own community has done what, you Cannoncial has not, UPDATED the ALSA drivers to CURRENT version to solve the problems with the prevalent "HDA" chipsets. GET THIS DONE.
3) mono - Was not asked, so not answered...
You need to set this disease free.. Thankfully the KMint team REMOVES THIS disease and so should you. Its a shame that editors didn't wish to put the hardballs out there.
In summary, very disappointed, and I will not be looking to Canoncial for what I need in Linux, instead I will look to the KMint team to continue to produce what I want.
Disappointing, disappointing. Your chance to get off on the right foot, is gone.
1311393600 - Back to Black
what B.U.L.L.S.H.I.T.
no way! not ever!
"Why does Kubuntu suck?"
Because KDE currently sucks.
"why does Kubuntu fall short of KDE?"
Why waste time polishing a buggy heap of shit which changes upstream every five minutes when the main focus requires the limited resources Ubuntu has.
Linux fan, no Microsoft on my computers since 2004. KDE fan
Blow it out your ass fanboy, there are KDE focused distros for you.
... I think the guys that work at canonical have no idee what they are doing personally.
In order for me to switch from any microsoft OS I need:
-Direct Dirtect X Gaming support
-Backwards copatability with games
-Improvements in performance over Windows OS.
For 99% of the people the OS doesn't matter, it's what your options are for OTHER applications on the system and right now MS has a huge monopoly.
If you want mass adoption I would go the gamer route and increase your performance, if you can make games run faster with less hassle on Ubuntu I'd easily switch, but if there is no performance benefit, why bother?
Right now Microsoft has basicaly abandoned the PC game market with trying to move everyone over to consoles, imagine how FREEING it would be to have an open source OS that is also BETTER in performance for games and less hassle then windows?
If I had your kind of money I would have reverse engineered direct X and WINE doesn't count, you really need full comparability without any speed hits.
My reading of the answers is different to yours. He openly said he has only been using Ubuntu for about 100 days and that his experience with it has been great. It is obvious that he has had no experience with KDE or Kubuntu and that is what comes across in his responses. Would you rather have him fob you off with some garbage?
That Anonymous Coward babbling about how bad GNOME is then pipes up with Xfce which is based on the SAME EXACT GTK2 libs as GNOME and likely more behind than GNOME ever was given the state that Xfce was in a few years ago still FAR behind. (Last I used Xfce was on ppc notebook for a year or two after they completed yet another re-write to GTK2 and the ENTIRELY lousy shipped apps, e.g. xffm which was promptly replaced by ROXFiler(SOSUMI I like spatial file browsers and might go back to it as Nautilus is getting crufty and bloated as hell given it's poor performance), etc. I switched between this and fluxbox + my own stack trying to find the right combo of lightweight and features.)
KDE is just big and bloated, which is why I never cared much for it compared to GNOME. However, GNOME is now taking a decent whack at catching up in the bloat department itself. (Neither Qt nor GTK2 are great development libraries. They're both huge hack jobs in some form or other although Qt would be easier to fix IMO than GTK2, but I could be wrong about that as I haven't dug deeply into GTK2 arch for quite sometime. i.e. Qt worked around the lack of features available in it's early development by adding all sorts of cruft, and well GTK, apparently, someone though that it would be neato keen to wipe everyone's face in the fact that you can kind of make C OO or at least kind of behave like it although it looks ugly as hell.)
As to KDE broken, well when they released 4 it WAS broken. They had to do hurrying up and make a few more releases to get thing running smoothly, and even after that I know quite a few users who didn't care for some of the interface changes introduced and reverted to 3.x or switched to some other desktop environment completely.
substance, and less dodging of questions.
Iuse Ubuntu, and I've been disappointed by the quality of recent releases. The focus on "usability" is most concerning since functionality and user control are being removed to achieve it. They're trying to make it user friendly, but Canonical is forgetting who its users are.
The Yahoo! deal disgusts me as well, and things like it are why Idon't use the Firefox build bundled with Ubuntu (Ubuntuzilla is a wonderful thing). Matt claims that you can easily switch the default search engine back to Google, but he left out that you have to do this every time Ubuntu releases updates for its Firefox build.
Every new Ubuntu release brings me closer and closer to switching distros.
I disagree, totally. It already IS in the mainstream in three of the five major uses for computers. Linux IS the "mainstream" there, windows and mac are also-rans, but not first.. Supercomputers, regular servers, and embedded, Linux rules there, and Linux is making serious inroads in what is left, mobiles and desktops, and doing perfectly fine at it despite the work of MS and Apple to kill it off.
In short, I'd run away from any windows or mac "zealots" if I was running a linux company, they just slap don't have the mindset. I like shuttleworth OK, but I disagree with some of his stances and moves, and this is one of them.
I don't like six month release cycles being pushed on regular non-nerd desktop users as another, I think that should be for extreme hobbyists only and they should settle down and really push the long term release cycle version with much more vigor, and make it "just work", and maybe actually charge a reasonable sum for it. The six month beta level quality stuff, freebie, the long term release, costs loot.
Perpetual alpha/betaware is one of the top reasons Linux on the desktop is struggling. Just take a gander at Ubuntu forums, see how many problems they have with six month release cycles and normal folks trying to deal with it.
You may call it zealotry, but perhaps you don't grok what the real advantage and business model of open source is, and I am guessing this because of the nature of your reply, and guaranteed this dude they hired doesn't, so he is NOT a good person for this position.
And you are also saying that there are no linux first guys who have good management skills. Again, disagree *strongly*, and that's actually quite insulting to thousands of people out there who are now managing Linux oriented/using companies and shops quite well.