Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Shuttleworth Answers Ubuntu Linux's Critics

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the what's-in-a-name dept.

climenole writes "Technomancer wrote: 'Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu Linux's founder, maintains that he and Ubuntu are doing right by the Linux community and the even larger open-source community. In recent weeks, Ubuntu has been criticized for not giving Linux enough support. Specifically, the complains have been that Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, doesn't do enough for producing Linux source code.'"

16 of 382 comments (clear)

  1. Proper link by yelvington · · Score: 5, Informative

    The IT world link takes you to an interstitial ad, followed by a godawful mishmash of crap.

    Here's a link to the original post: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/517

    1. Re:Proper link by MBGMorden · · Score: 3, Informative

      This I can definately agree with. I recently attended an open source software conference. Ubuntu and Fedora sent people there (I remember that Jono Bacon was there from Ubuntu specifically).

      The Ubuntu folks seemed actually far more enthusiastic about drumming up COMMUNITY support, rather than just digging up more programmers. They were encouraging everyone to help - not just with code, but with testing and QC, and their biggest push was talking up the importance of volunteers for doing user documetation and translation work. Neither of those is coding, but both are indeed very important.

      In general, it seems the Ubuntu just "gets it" as far as making Linux easier, more cohesive, and a true platform for USERS rather than just for programming geeks (even though I belong to the latter category :D). Now, I think a few of their ideas like left side buttons and their butt ugly color schemes could be imporved upon, but eh, nobody's perfect.

      I will say this though: I've used Linux in some incarnation or another (Slackware or Gentoo for the longer durations) essentially as a toy since 1998 or so. It was something interesting to play with. It wasn't until Ubuntu came along that it really started feeling like a real platform, and it wasn't until Ubuntu that I transitioned completely over to Linux (at least at home - can't kick Windows at work but that's not in my hands).

      --
      "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
    2. Re:Proper link by Artifakt · · Score: 4, Informative

      The value of contributions to Gnome depends so much on the rest of the Gnome community, on the long standing Gnome/KDE rivalry, and other external factors. If you use contributions to Gnome as a major metric, shouldn't Canonical get some points for indirectly contributing to KDE, XFCE and such via their Kubuntu/Xubuntu connections?
              There's also Canonical's hardware certification program and their 3rd party software certification program. The hardware cert program has three tiers, and these are designed to give some needed flexibility to hardware makers and software (particularly driver software) authors.
              Ubuntu Certified is the most involved, and from Canonical's viewpoint, probably the most rigorous. OEMs submit systems to Canonical's testing facility. Certification and testing is done by Canonical's engineers.
              Ubuntu Ready is much easier for Canonical, as the OEMs self-test their systems using Canonical's certification test suite. OEMs still have to submit their results to Canonical for final review if they want to claim to be Ubuntu ready, but can also use some elements of the test software for other purposes such as internal validation. A good way to evaluate Canonical's over all contribution to the Linux community might be to include how well they have shared this and related code and how well they have modified it based on OEM feedback.
              Works with Ubuntu. This designation is used for peripherals, such as printers or USB storage devices, that don't usually need the time and associated costs of a more rigorous certification process for testing before it's reasonable to certify them. It makes it easier for makers of such peripherals to keep up with the Ubuntu 6 month release cycle.
              Canonical offers frequent symposiums and group meetings for hardware makers wanting to use this process - in fact, there's one scheduled this month.

      --
      Who is John Cabal?
    3. Re:Proper link by jo_ham · · Score: 2, Informative

      Ubuntu even runs on my 15" Powerbook G4 without issue, although it's less graceful with the fan control compared to OS X.

  2. Shuttleworth's Post by fandingo · · Score: 4, Informative

    We could link to Mark's actual blog post http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/517 instead of linking to some crappy IT World "article."

  3. Re:Ubuntu is a distro by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/GNU+Network+Object+Model+Environment

  4. Re:Ubuntu is a distro by baka_toroi · · Score: 4, Informative

    You are getting trolled. Just thought you wanted to know that.

  5. Re:Mark should answer the following question: by commodore64_love · · Score: 2, Informative

    LXDE, the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment.

    Comes with http://lubuntu.net/

    --
    "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
  6. Re:I love ubuntu except... by h4rr4r · · Score: 2, Informative

    They want to put other stuff on the right side. I just wish we could kill the whole title bar idea. It serves no purpose other than to waste space. Just put the buttons right on the same bar that says File Edit View in 90% of apps.

  7. Re:A solid distro by jedidiah · · Score: 2, Informative

    > Ubuntu will NEVER be a better Windows than Windows.

    It already is. Linux in general has been that for awhile.

    The real main problem is 3rd party vendor support.

    Although most of that success is due to WORK DONE UPSTREAM and isn't really anything that Ubuntu can claim credit for.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  8. Re:Suse is for business, Ubuntu is for Linux by nxtw · · Score: 2, Informative

    From my experience, the distro that gives less back to the community is Suse.

    Novell is one of the biggest corporate contributors (of actual code) to open-soruce projects like GNOME and the Linux kernel. They are behind probably only behind Red Hat in total contributions.

  9. Re:Ubuntu is good but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    That's a Debian peculiarity. The Debian way is quite logical and clean, and recognizes that Apache2 and Apache are separate software packages that may collide. It also supplies a nice and clean modular configuration system for Apache2 which avoids cruft, and demarcates maintainer and sysadmin configs clearly.

  10. Not really. by crhylove · · Score: 2, Informative

    Linux Mint is much easier for beginners, especially the myriad of people coming from Windows.

    It's more stable, it's faster (in cases), and has better default apps.

    Though I'd personally like to see them commit to VLC rather than the alternatives, and other default apps in addition.

    The real existing problem that I see is a lack of games for Linux that really run well, but honestly, after watching the train wreck that was GTA 4 for Windows, well, I still enjoy Urban Terror AND it runs flawlessly on almost every recent Linux.

    Still, I'd like to see a fully performing Dolphin on Linux, currently it's half the speed of it's Windows build. There's not even a commonly solid N64 emu that has updates or runs really well for most distros. You have to hunt all over Jesus for a .deb.

    That being said, BSNES, arguably the best SNES emu in existence runs as well in Linux as it does in Windows. But maybe that was under wine. Fuck it I can't remember.

    --
    I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
  11. Re:I'm a Redhat/CentOS/Fedora user by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Please, for the love of $DEITY. Red Hat is TWO WORDS.

  12. Re:Ubuntu users have more problems by socceroos · · Score: 2, Informative

    User-installed Linux != manufacturer-installed Windows. Not what you were saying - directly - but its worth pointing out.

    I have installed Ubuntu Linux on a number of clients computers, and I've done it properly. All set up to do common tasks (DVD movies, music, flash, WINE, etc) with proper remote support. These same clients have spread the word to the point where people from all over my continent are shipping me their laptops and desktops to have it installed with Ubuntu 'properly'. Kind of overwhelming actually.

    My point is, vanilla Ubuntu needs some minor tweaks (software installed) before its completely ready for Joe Blogs, but once done - they love it.

  13. Re:The Essence of the Critique by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    It's not even that. We do a decent job getting patches upstream to both Debian and upstream. Bugs and patches submitted to Debian are "sort of" measured in the Ultimate Debian Database. I say sort of because not all maintainers use debtags (some fix it in Debian itself instead, because it's less work). Look at the list of all the new DMs and DDs from the past few years, you'll see a nice percentage of those coming from Ubuntu and then working on Debian. This is a good thing.

    For general "patches from people on Launchpad" we are swamped with about 1400 some bugs. Some might be good, some might be crap, we need volunteers to help us go through these. If anyone wants to help get the patch queue down, you can help with Operation Cleansweep.

    I think in general the critique isn't with "Ubuntu is hogging all these fixes", since it's all open code and we make a concerted effort to push the stuff. I don't think we do any better or worse than any other distro (and yes, contrary to popular belief, Fedora carries patches as well for things). The main critique is that Canonical isn't doing any pure upstream development, ie. working on GNOME, the kernel, Xorg, etc. directly.