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Google Talks About Its Ubuntu Experience
dartttt writes "There was a very interesting session at the Ubuntu Developer Summit by Google developer Thomas Bushnell. He talked about how Ubuntu, its derivatives and Goobuntu (Google's customized Ubuntu based distro) are used by Google developers. He starts by saying 'Precise Rocks,' and that many Google employees use Ubuntu — including managers, software engineers, translators, people who wrote the original Unix, and people who have no clue about Unix. Many developers working on Chrome and Android use Ubuntu. Ubuntu systems at Google are upgraded every LTS release. The entire process of upgrading can take as much as four months, and it is also quite expensive, as one reboot or a small change can cost them as much as a million dollars across the company."
Bushnell also mentions that Google Drive will soon be available for Linux. Other news out of UDS: there was discussion of a GNOME flavor of 12.10, Electronic Arts reaffirmed that they "won't delay their Windows work for Linux," and Unity 2D is likely to disappear in 12.10.
With Linux desktops, it's almost better to reimage them then do a mass roll out of dist-upgrade and pray it works. Even with custom package management, it seems the upgrade scripts can be very buggy.
There is much more to ubuntu than the default desktop environment, right from their hardware support to their extensive list of software and ppas. Even then, it's always good to have a modern but simple DE for people just getting into Linux, and Unity is one of the best DEs for that. (I personally use gnome shell)
OK, I'm not sure I understand the whole "get rid of Unity 2D" thing. As I understand it, Unity 3D means it's accelerated, but VMware and other virtualization environments don't support GPU acceleration for Ubuntu yet, so that leave people who prefer to run Ubuntu in a VM without a GUI. Where's the logic in that? Not even Windows forces you to have a modern video card for hardware acceleration -- if your hardware can't do Aero Glass, Windows just switches it off.
Breakfast served all day!
I just had a new bit of Unity experience yesterday. I had tried the early horribly unstable versions but switched away very quickly. Yesterday, I did a long-overdue update of Ubuntu on girlfriend's netbook to 12.04. Here's how it went after the upgrade.
She logs in, the computer seems a tad slow (yea, Unity 3D on a netbook). Figures out the icons for launching apps are on the left panel, wants to add GIMP there. Types gimp in the search bar thing, its icon appears. Right-clicks it hoping for a context menu, instead GIMP launches. Tries again, left-click, it launches. Tries again, drags the icon to the panel, it works. Sort of - the panel gets a button for the GIMP, but there's no icon on it, it just appears blank. Next she wants to run Chrome. As she types "chro", the UI freezes and shortly thereafter there's a message that Compiz crashed. It restarts, now GIMP's button shows the icon, too. She browses the Web for a bit, then I take the computer to see if I can turn some stuff off to speed it up. I open a terminal, check performance data there, try alt-tab, doesn't work. Okay. I open the control center, go to Appearance, Compiz crashes again. Then I find online that, to change Compiz-related config, I have to separately install a settings plugin for it. It's not available by default even through Unity is the default DE. At least then I found you can switch to Unity 2D.
I was pretty open to seeing how Unity would perform now. After all, I had only used the early versions. But this experience was horrible - 2 crashes within the first 15 minutes, definite slowness, and I'm pretty sure my gf will soon be asking to switch to a different interface, she's really uncomfortable with Unity so far.
Yes, Unity 2D is what she's currently trying. Switched to that from 3D quickly because 3D simply isn't suitable for a netbook. I'm surprised some post-install scripts don't switch the default environment to 2D for computers with weak graphics cards.
I work for S2Games, and we have had native Linux clients for Savage 1, Savage 2, and currently Heroes of Newerth. It was the Linux support that originally got me involved with the company's games and eventually hired. Our OpenGL renderer is slightly lacking at the moment, but the main problem is that of business and market share, not technical reasons. Maintaining something around only 4% of the user base uses is difficult (mac and linux combined), but many of the community volunteers come from that mac/linux group. As the guy who runs the technical support, I really wish more people would play on Linux. The Linux problems are usually much easier to solve (except alsa problems). With Windows issues, there's a lot of uncertainty with firewall setups, antivirus, file permissions, and odd behavior in general. With Linux, the problem can usually be identified with a few tests. It's a viscous circle. There aren't many Linux games because not many gamers run Linux, and there aren't many Linux games because the companies don't want to have to increase build times for each patch by supporting another OS. EA taking this small first step may help break this cycle, which is only good news for Linux gaming.
is that EA has even noticed Linux.
They noticed that the browser based games they are pushing happen to work fine in Linux systems without any work at all. That's the only sort of game they are enabling. They aren't doing anything with their 3D game engine sort of stuff. Basically, Linux is a side-effect of pursuing the casual gamer market through browsers.
but you guys hand pick your hardware, you're in the minority.
Except that most people who even kind of care stick with brand names like 'Radeon' and 'nVidia' that do 'just work' in windows and linux distributions that are practical about helping with binary blobs (e.g. fedora isn't 'just work' until you add fusion, but ubuntu just works). Intel integrated as of *late* also just works (in more places) though it's unimpressively slow. In theory you can get non-AMD, non-nVidia, non-Intel graphics, but I'm hard pressed to think of a *consumer* product that does that anymore.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
The thing I hate about the launcher is how ridiculously hard it is to create a custom launcher. My use-case: I have a shell script I like to run occasionally. I'd like to have a nice clicky icon to run it from. This should be simple to do... but is sooooo isn't. Worst part is any documentation I found suggested I could create a file on the desktop, right-click that and choose a "Create launcher" open. Or something like that. Anyway, I think that option used to exist, but they dropped it from 12.04 without apparently thinking to create an alternative.
...I find myself ranting quite a lot over 12.04, but to be fair, I do like that DVD's play perfectly right from a fresh install, and I don't get any screen tearing when watching DVDs / web video. So it's not all bad. Only the bad bits are bad!
Create a .desktop file for your script: https://linuxcritic.wordpress.com/2010/04/07/anatomy-of-a-desktop-file/
The last update to Ubuntu brought advertising into my desktop. I tried to search for an application and the unity dashboard presented me with music albums from the music store.
Fucking hell.
I understand if they pack rhythmbox chokefull of advertising for their music store. I would hate it but I'd at least understand it. But when the simple task of starting an application, the most basic task of graphical shells, is used as an opportunity to advertise to me, I've had enough.
That's jumping the shark twice.
I already ditched Ubuntu for LinuxMint in my desktop but used Ubuntu in my media center. I'm changing OS next time.
But... the future refused to change.
It's not like it's a big deal just to use a different DE.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."