Ubuntu To Pay for Upgrades To the Free Software User Experience 546
jcatcw writes "Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols reports that Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical, is using his millions to improve the Linux user experience, hiring people to work on X, OpenGL, Gtk, Qt, GNOME and KDE. He had doubted that desktop Linux could ever equal the smooth, graceful integration of the Mac OS. Now, between the driving pace of open-source development, and Shuttleworth's millions, it might be happening. Why not? After all, Mac OS itself is based on FreeBSD. Desktop Linux's future is starting to look brighter."
Interesting. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Interesting. (Score:5, Interesting)
The other day though, he needed to chop up an audio file and didn't know what to do on his Mac. I didn't know either, but I do know how to do it with Audacity on Linux. So he sent me the file and then sat down with me as I did what he wanted. His only comment was "Wow, that's so easy on Linux". Granted, what he was seeing that was easy was in fact Audacity, not Linux, and I'm sure there is an easy to use app under Mac, but it's nice to see that, although Desktop Linux is constantly getting railed on, once someone not exposed to it actually sits down and sees what can be done, they're not intimidated by it.
Re:Interesting. (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe somebody should point out that Audiacity works fine on Mac OS X, too (even without X11). I'm using it all the time for minor cropping/ogg-encoding work.
Re:Interesting. (Score:4, Informative)
In fact, it uses wXwidgets [wxwidgets.org] for it's GUI, which aims to be cross platform between windows and the *nixes. Really, more of a testament to FLOSS, if not Linux.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, the UI does suck, but when I have the choice between a sucky UI and not being able to do the task at all...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I actually really like wx GUIs. But I'm a programmer, which makes any opinions I hold on GUIs automatically flawed.
Anyone who has more than once contemplated if maybe he should forget X and just switch to a VT and screen doesn't get a vote.
Re:Interesting. (Score:5, Insightful)
I had to do that same thing the other day. I'm a Mac user, and I just used Audacity because I know it can do the job and it's free.
What's the official Mac way? Probably QuickTime Pro (which you have to pay for, which has always annoyed me). Or a third party piece of software. Actually I think you can cut bits out with QT (non-pro) but it's a bit unintuitive. I considered using Garage Band (which I'm sure could do it) but that would be overkill.
I've got to say, it was the first time I'd used Audacity in maybe two years. It was just as ugly as ever, unfortunately. It looks almost EXACTLY like the program that came with my SB16 in the Windows 3.1 days. It works, but could really use a little interface TLC, especially on the Mac (where the Linux/Windows style interface just looks even more out of place).
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
None of them know what a "Linux" is, so I don't bother clarifying
Equally often people will ask what the hell that is, of course.
Flash content (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Flash content (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can get Adobe to open source Flash, I'm sure that can be arranged.
In the mean time, the best you can do is to tell web developers to not use Flash, but open alternatives.
Re:Flash content (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately, there are a great many things Flash does for which there are no alternatives, open or otherwise.
Let me give you a recent, stupid example: We want to let users upload a bunch of things at once. We have three options:
1: Build something using multiple file upload fields. (This could be done elegantly -- by hiding one as soon as it's set, and generating a new one.) In other words, we force the user to select each file individually, and click browse again -- and the files can't start uploading until they've all been selected.
2: Accept zipfiles. Extra work for us (admittedly not much), and extra work for them.
3: Use Flash. Not only can they select more than one file in the open dialog (ctrl+click, shift+click, ctrl+a, etc), but as soon as they select one, we can start uploading it.
I want to use open alternatives. I hate Flash more than... I'm not a very hateful person, but Flash makes me homicidal. But even something as simple as that, there's an advantage to using Flash.
Re:Flash content (Score:4, Informative)
You can do this now with Gears [google.com]. For those of you not familiar with Gears, it's a browser add-on available for Firefox, IE, Safari, and Google Chrome. It adds extra functionality to browsers which will hopefully turn into standards in the future.
The latest version of the YouTube multi-file uploader uses Gears to do this. You can also look at an example implementation of a multi-file uploader on the Gears Sample Applications [google.com] page.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Whole Ubuntu/GNOME is build around concept that user is an idiot who doesn't know why he has just forked $$$ for the PC.
Are you implying they are anything but? (I kid! I kid!)
Disclosure: I am running Ubuntu/Gnome.
Re:Flash content (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously, the process to share files under Ubuntu is almost exactly the same as in Windows. You clearly just don't WANT to be able to share files under it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Are you serious?
Flash is one of the first things I DISABLE on a browser. I have it installed, only as a last resort kind of stuff.
If some casual site wants flash, I leave the site. And those flash ads just dont work. That's a plus in my book.
Re:Flash content (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Gnash actually does a pretty good job with youtube most of the time. And I've been able to play some of the older flash games as well.
It sucks in the sense that it's not completed, but they did manage to replicate the original crashing randomly on flash pages.
At present, it's the only way of getting flash on FreeBSD for amd64. I believe that flash still hasn't been ported to Linux on amd64 either. But not really using Linux, I'm far less sure of that.
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Re:Flash content (Score:5, Insightful)
A life without entertainment isn't worth living.
Re: (Score:2)
How about paying someone to fix Flash? It's what made me go back to Windows.
killall -9 pulseaudio
then install the flash10 beta for Linux.
It's pretty nice in comparison to what we've been dealing with in the past. Still not open source, but a lot better than before!
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There is still that terrible wmode bug that's been fixed in the firefox upstream but hasn't made it to the ubuntu repository. I've been following the bug in the tracker, and nobody thinks it's a high priority thing that flash will segfault firefox when using wmode.
Re: (Score:2)
Link for 64 bit version please?
I use swfdec currently. It works some of the time, and I'm grateful when it does.
Re:Flash content (Score:5, Funny)
Link for 64 bit version please?
Adobe don't believe in 64 bit. In fact i think their programmers get confused if you ask them to count to 33
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I think Adobe already gets paid
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Flash has always been annoying esp. on Lunix. I was rather pleased to find my EeePC 901 plays YouTube videos just dandy (and rfmon works on the WiFi ;)
Lunix??? (Score:5, Funny)
WTF is Lunix???? Doesn't exist, according to distrowatch.
Re:Lunix??? (Score:4, Informative)
Linux / Unix
Sorry, it's common parlance in Plan 9 world [google.co.uk]. However, I didn't know it was so insular until your post.
Where's the BSD? (Score:5, Informative)
As anyone with half a brain knows, Mac OS X is based on the Xnu kernel, not the FreeBSD one. Xnu is a combination of Mach combined with various bits lifted from FreeBSD 5.x (but is not itself the FreeBSD kernel). OS X is an updated NeXT, not a GUI-fied FreeBSD.
I can't believe the editors let such a blatant slip-up onto the front page. Wait, it's slashdot --practically speaking, we have no editors. ;_;
Something great, but not new (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
He's just playing the role of venture capitalist to his own venture.
Quite a broad range of things to improve (Score:5, Interesting)
X, OpenGL, Gtk, Qt, GNOME and KDE
Frankly, that's a considerable amount of work he's planning on hiring up for. This intrigues me greatly, to be honest. And, with any luck, this all comes back to the community so that not-Ubuntu users can get in on it, too.
Though I give it five minutes before we hear complaints that they're not helping out some obscure toolkit or DE. :-)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, we could complain that XFCE and Xubuntu isn't getting any help, but since it is based on GTK as well, they'll get some benefits to that work. And obviously anything that goes into X and GL drivers can't hurt any desktop environment.
Re:Quite a broad range of things to improve (Score:5, Interesting)
Mark suggested himself that maybe Gnome could/should run on QT. With the Gnome crowd wanting to move away from GTK 2 and break compatibility anyways, I say now or never.
People should be seriously looking at the merits of such a move.
Why rewrite a new GTK 3 from the ground up, especially given one of the goals of a new GTK would be QT-like theming engine that is easier to deal with, when it already exists?
Re:Quite a broad range of things to improve (Score:5, Insightful)
That isn't entirely true. Both GTK and QT have various language bindings which allow you write in a variety of languages.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There is also the licensing issue, if you want to develop a propietry (or even opensource but not GPL compatible) application then you can't use QT unless you pay trolltech a load of money.
Re:Quite a broad range of things to improve (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And thank Christ, to be honest. Linux is notorious for having terrible, clunky UI, and programmers doing it for the love of it aren't really inclined to improve the UI for people who don't love their computers and simply aren't experts. This is exactly the sort of thing Linux needs to be a truly professional alternative to the focus-tested to buggery OS X and Windows.
Why Not? (Score:2, Interesting)
As long as you have people literally in stand-offs against each other based on QT vs. GTK, Gnome vs. KDE, and the merits of this distro over that, then no. It won't become as seemless. Why? Because a lot of good programmers are tied up in projects that simply don't move the ship forward. They only decorate a room on the ship. Hey, I love Linux. Adore it! Maybe the problem is until Linux geeks get l
Re:Why Not? (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe the problem is until Linux geeks get laid more, they simply won't bother to take time to smell the flowers: i.e. pay any attention to the end-user's experience.
I have a thought! Maybe Mark should be paying hookers!? BRILLIANT!
Re:Why Not? (Score:5, Funny)
<BENDER>
In fact, forget the development!
</BENDER>
Re:Why Not? (Score:4, Insightful)
That kind of stuff has almost always been done at the distro level. Sun, Redhat, Novell, Ubuntu, etc. Independant developers tend to stick to their projects at least in the Gnome universe [gnome.org].
I wish Sun, or someone else would do more usability studies like this [gnome.org] one. That is exactly the kind of feedback we need. I find it nearly impossible to imagine the noob experience after having used Linux for the past 10 years.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Gnome + KDE (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Gnome + KDE (Score:4, Insightful)
Specifically, I thought they were going to unite their libs so that gnome and kde would be cosmetic changes of the overall GUI subsystem sitting atop X.
Some things like DCOM have already been united and shared.. It just takes a few dedicated individuals to do so.
I personally would love united libs that any gui can use while knowing that every "frozen" feature will be as such for any major versions. Let everybody use it, from GNOME, KDE, Xfce, and any other manager.
Re:Gnome + KDE (Score:4, Insightful)
It will probably never happen. Plus, the competition probably does both teams a lot of good. But let's look at the specific reasons:
And one could go on for a while regarding why these projects can't just magically join together. It's sort of like the cries of Webkit in Firefox. Read the Ars article on that subject to get a feel for trying to combine projects with similar goals but completely different designs. They just don't mesh.
Re:Gnome + KDE (Score:4, Interesting)
The two environments take entirely opposite approaches to design:
They are both an equally valid approach, but the target demographics are incompatible. It would be stupid to try and combine them.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I keep wondering when Gnome and KDE will ever join forces
Never.
KDE developers aren't interested on working on something like GNOME. If they were, they would. If KDE didn't exist, they'd create it or do something entirely different.
Ditto GNOME developers. I mentioned KDE developers first, because I'm in their camp. I like C++, I like OO and I like the elaborate, ultra-flexible coolness you can build with them, and the simplicity inherent in the complexity. GNOME developers read that last phrase and say "Huh? WTF is he smoking?". To KDE developers GNOME
Re:Gnome + KDE (Score:5, Funny)
What a wonderfully balanced opinion you have.
I can't imagine why there's such bad blood.
Re:Gnome + KDE (Score:4, Interesting)
"Millions of people disagree with you"
I'm a little skeptical there are actually millions of people even using Linux on their desktops and I imagine the number is shrinking in the face of the fact that OSX is so well done. If you split those in half between Gnome and KDE I imagine you would be down to hundreds of thousands of people who agree or disagree with him. Then further trim the number by the hundreds of thousands of Linux desktop users who probably have no strong opinion on the religious wars between Gnome and KDE. You will probably be left with maybe a hundred thousand fanatics who will wage an endless religious war on the subject while OSX wins the desktop war for discriminating users, and Windows will continue to win with people who aren't very discriminating or play games on their PC. About the only hope Linux has on the desktop is in countries like China and Brazil which hate the U.S. and its corporations enough that they don't want their PC's owned by Microsoft or Apple.
Just to prove I'm one of those doomed religious fanatics I'd have to agree with the guy that started this thread, that while GNOME has some nice work in it in places, for the most part GTK is really poor foundation to build a GUI on and GNOME ends up being a pretty poor GUI due to its weak foundation. Its really sad Qt wasn't put under a license similar to Freetype way back when, because if it had Linux would be light years ahead of where it is today on the desktop. Though as another thread here hit the nail on the head, ALSA is such a horrible audio API it is also driving a bunch of nails in the coffin.
I've always had a strong suspicion Miguel is a Microsoft mole who has been doing a really awesome job of insuring Linux will never be any good on the desktop by poisoning it from within. If I was Bill Gates I'd sure be paying Miguel a small fortune under the table to do all the damage he's done to the Linux desktop over the years.
Re:Gnome + KDE (Score:4, Informative)
That's just Ubuntu. Not that it matters, I just want the number of Linux users to go higher regardless of what the actual number is right now.
I imagine the number is shrinking in the face of the fact that OSX is so well done.
You think an OS with a pre-loaded dock which is still tied to overpriced hardware should be outdoing a completely free OS which can have a dock as well as a hundred number of other ways of starting programs? I agree that certain things need better streamlining on Linux believe me, but I don't agree with your statement if only Linux had actual consumer choice behind it and visibility. Even though it may sound cliche that doesn't mean it's not true, I largely blame Microsoft's business practices for this. I think many consumers would choose the much cheaper Linux option, if they had the choice presented. I just disagree on that one point, but appreciate your criticism.
About ALSA though, I still don't understand why it's getting so much hate when Pulseaudio has been adopted by many of the "biggest" distros and is available of course for anyone to install. From Wikipedia: In a typical installation scenario under Linux, the user configures ALSA to use a virtual device provided by PulseAudio. Thus, applications using ALSA will output sound to PulseAudio, which then uses ALSA itself to access the real sound card. PulseAudio also provides its own native interface to applications that want to support PulseAudio directly, as well as a legacy interface for ESD applications, making it suitable as a drop-in replacement for ESD. So, perhaps you should take a look at PA's API then. ^^ Would be nice to have a few standardized audio APIs though which could be used with any sound server, but for now the sound servers are the ones being flexible and modular by being able to communicate with all these different APIs, like PA can, so that's better than nothing.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I've always had a strong suspicion Miguel is a Microsoft mole who has been doing a really awesome job of insuring Linux will never be any good on the desktop by poisoning it from within.
This really does Miguel a disservice. I certainly don't agree with everything he does (possibly not even many things that he does). But before Miguel the best spreadsheet application we had was Oleo. When Miguel wrote Gnumeric it made *huge* strides for free software on the desktop.
At the time I remember people saying, "Free software can never work on the desktop because writing a good spreadsheet application is just too boring". Miguel showed that there *were* people interested in writing decent office
Re:Gnome + KDE (Score:4, Insightful)
Yawn. What don't you get? There's choice and everyone has their own opinion on what is best. What makes you any more right than them? And, frankly, what makes you think we give a shit about your two-bit opinion anyway? If Shuttleworth wants to blow his money on GNOME as well as KDE, who are you to criticize?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
+1
I think what Mark Shuttleworth is doing is EXACTLY what is needed. GNOME and KDE are both evolving, each in their own way. I've been a long time KDE user, but I now find myself able to use GNOME too and appreciate its approach. I also love the fact that I can switch between these two widely different approaches and still feel at home - they're both doing something right.
I would like to think/hope that Shuttleworth is accelarating this process by funding these projects. They are both beautiful and what we
Re:Gnome + KDE (Score:5, Funny)
I disagree. I seriously hate KDE.
KDE is dysfunctional, overwhelms me with options, looks like shit (well, that can be themed, but...) and just generally sucks.
If Gnome had been chosen instead and as much time had been spent on polishing Gnome as Mandrake/Mandriva has spent on polishing KDE, we would not have this discussion.... Mandriva (i.e. Gmandriva) would already rule the desktop.
Sadly, I see more and more development time wasted on supporting / trying to polish KDE into something usable instead of just throwing the towel into the ring and going with Gnome.
====
Sorry if this offends your sensabilities, but I just couldn't resist, and I think that is pretty much sums up the silly debate between KDE and Gnome users who are both happy with their own choices.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Gnome + KDE (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Back in KDE2, I loved it. Used it all the time. I couldnt stand GTK1 apps, like Gnome.
Fast forward to 2 weeks ago. I downloaded Kubuntu and tried it on a desktop that uses 100% linux-happy hardware. It felt worse than Vista in terms of bloat and yuck. I cant precisely describe it, but that feeling of "waaaay overboard" came to mind.
Gnome is clean and crisp, and doesnt get in the way. Ubuntu "approved apps" just work with no fiddling and gunk. That's they they're approved.. for the user experience. One can a
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the rotten thing about debating something as subjective as the preferred UI experience. Frankly I find KDE goes out of its way to emulate everything that's bad about the Windows GUI, even more so. Gnome is minimalist, which I like. The nice about Linux is that I actually have a choice. Heck, if I want to, I can install them both.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No you don't really have that choice, unless you could run all your apps using just either (not both) of the two environments.
But if you e.g. are a GNOME user, there comes a much needed application that happens to be made for KDE written in Qt and of which there happens to be no GNOME equivalent, so you have to install the KDE underpinnings and the app stands out like a sore thumb and your whole consistent desktop experience goes down the drain.
That's why fragmentation is not a good thing on the Desktop. If
Re:Gnome + KDE (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is exactly why it's good that there are two major desktops. You get to use KDE. I get to use Gnome. For me Gnome is superior because it aligns better with the way I work. I don't care that it doesn't have a gazillion options because I'm not going to be twiddling them anyway.
You can twiddle to your hearts content on KDE.
Isn't choice wonderful?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Ubuntu (i.e. Kubuntu) would already rule the desktop.
I assume you mean the Linux part of the desktop. Because nothing I have seen in the FOSS world approaches even OS X Puma in terms of usability, aesthetics or intuitiveness. There's something fundamental missing from the equation in Gnome and KDE, and that something is artists. I'm not just talking about making pretty desktops with lots of gradients and plasticky buttons. Use any Apple product for five minutes and you instantly realize that some seriously right-brained shit goes into developing these things.
An omen! (Score:5, Funny)
ALSA Drivers Please!! (Score:5, Interesting)
As an audio software developer, I have tried several times to make and port programs to Linux.
Basically, you never dare to request anything other than the default config from an alsa driver. Trying different sample rates, formats or channel configs can cause anything from an unhelpful error code to a segfault (I kid you not).
So it's hard to take Linux seriously in this context.
ALSA is a roadblock, due to being "good enough", but it's nowhere near good.
Please, ALSA, GO AWAY!!!!! (Score:5, Informative)
I've done a lot of work on audio on Linux, not for the audio itself, but because I work with satellite telemetry that's frequency-modulated in the audio band. I hate ALSA. It broke completely with the Unix philosophy.
Before ALSA, one would open audio devices just like files, acquire audio data just like reading files, play audio just like writing files. ALSA went the Redmond way, one different API for each different type of data.
Re:Please, ALSA, GO AWAY!!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Amen to everyone who bashes alsa here, I agree wholeheartly.
I think it's high time for a rewrite, maybe they get it right the third time...
It's really amazing how thoroughly they managed to screw up something so relatively simple (when compared to other areas of the kernel).
Every time my box decides to re-shuffle the order of my soundcards (re-promoting the onboard sound to default), or decides to remain silent for the rest of the session after I plugged/unplugged my USB headset, or requires me to play trial&error with barely documented and obscure config files (asoundrc/openalrc) to *maybe* get sound in a game working it reminds me of why 2008 is probably still not the year of linux on the desktop...
To be fair, yes ALSA "works" most of the time and even out of the box. The distro-hackers managed to beat the hardware-detection into submission so that pretty much any liveCD will give you sound (at least on one of your cards...) right away. Just never try to get fancy, like going beyond adjusting the Master-volume. You're in for a world of pain.
Straight from Shaney's mouth (Score:5, Funny)
"Macs were interesting because 1) they weren't Intel and 2) they weren't Unix, now they're both. Oh well."
Are his millions enough? (Score:5, Insightful)
Red Hat has invested a lot of money to improve the Linux desktop experience as well. They've made great strides, but still - they still have a ways to go, at least in the opinion of this user of both OSes. So spending more money does not guarantee they'll reach the goal.
I think, in order for Linux to really break through here, they probably need to have teams of actual designers rather than have the coders do most of the design themselves. They also probably need to "think different" and come up with their own usability/interface ideas, rather than keep mimicking Apple's (which Gnome seems to frequently do, if discussions on the developer email lists are any indication).
In any case this is a good thing, and I hope Linux continues to push forward thanks to this new investment.
Re:Are his millions enough? (Score:5, Informative)
If I had millions... (Score:2, Informative)
Meanwhile, paid staff would facilitate a way to solve p
BSD is growing (Score:3, Funny)
Sorry, I couldn't help it:
It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is growing
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Windows community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has risen yet again, now up to more than 30 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has gained more market share , this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is sending other OSes into complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by topping the charts in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Daemon to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a long and prosperous future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Windows Server because *BSD is growing. Things are looking very good for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to gain market share. Red ink flows from Redmond like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most loved of them all, having gained 93% more core developers. The sudden and pleasant release of the long developed 5.0 only serves to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is growing.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 70000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 70000/5 = 14000 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 7000 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (70000+14000+7000)*4 = 364000 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the release of OSX, cool new technologies and so on, FreeBSD is expanding into more desktops than ever. FreeBSD has become more than the sum of its parts.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily gained in market share. *BSD is very powerful and its long term survival prospects are very bright. If Windows is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to improve. The progress achieved is nothing short of a miracle. For all practical purposes, *BSD is alive and kicking.
Fact: *BSD will kick your ass
Simple start (Score:2, Insightful)
X? OpenGL? really? Will some of the simpler more annoying stuff that is broken right now be addressed as well? How about we start with some simple stuff like getting Flash with audio not crash Firefox 98% of the time. I don't care that you can fix that by installing Flash 10 beta, or some extra library, the fact is that it does not work out of the box. Not only that, the fix (as explained by the hundreds of other users who had the problem) involves jumping to the command line and apt-get'ing a new version o
Re:Simple start (Score:5, Insightful)
Thats right.
Ubuntu works fine.
Firefox works fine.
Gnome/X works fine.
Compiz works fine.
Pretty much every app works fine.
Bugs are addressed quickly on ubuntu's website.
ADOBE makes a crap version of Flash for Linux.
It's Ubuntu's fault Flash crashes. Nuh-huh
Try: The proprietary software dealer.
Re:Simple start (Score:5, Insightful)
We can fix the open source stuff if it was at fault.
We could even fix Flash if it was Open Source.
But the cold hard truth is Flash is closed source and proprietary means ONLY the creator can make changes that would increase stability. That's also the same reason why kernel debuggers wont touch a listing from a tainted kernel.
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Re:Simple start (Score:5, Insightful)
There are, what, a few thousand programmers who understand Linux systems programming well enough to debug GUI programs and post patches? It's not trivial for those programmers to fix Flash because Adobe won't let them see the source code. How is that Ubuntu's fault?
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Does this Flash problem everyone gripes about exist in only in GNOME or something? I am using Kubuntu 8.04 KDE 4.1 and Flash seems to work just as well as in XP.
+10 internets... (Score:2)
Mark Shuttleworth is... (Score:4, Interesting)
**Geek points not redeemable for any cash value.
No MS Exchange integration? (Score:4, Insightful)
No Reason Why Not (Score:4, Interesting)
There's no reason Shuttleworth can't deliver something on par with OS X. All he needs to do is concentrate on functionaliy, usability, and marketability, and not worry that much about ideology. I.e., the same things Apple worries about.
The market does not care how software is writen, it just cares about what it does and how it looks.
Not so fast ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Because I've used linux for the last 9 years, 3 years of full-time-no-windows-any-more, I have come to acknowledge the unexpected, irreversible errors that have plagued me and my choices of software in Linux.
I've noticed a move towards lack of backwards compatibility for many apps along the way in the last two years. Luckily, I have only had to rebuild a Ubuntu install once, the rest of the additions have been welcomely handled by fairly painless updates (except when Ubuntu blew up xorg on every one and one couldn't boot back to an actual functioning video screen) [...]
This move away from backwards app compatibility and support was a common trend when RedHat was growing out of its diapers and moving towards being a popular, viable Open Source option. This is some thing that eventually drove me away from using RedHat, due to essentially, cutting their core users off at the most crucial time in order to expand in to a more wide reaching market in enterprise Linux.
To understand what took place on my gnome issue, I know that I trick out the desktop in such a way that any good programmer would look at me, take my machine, and say, 'nope, you are not supposed to do that, mine now'. BUT, it works, and always has
If Ubuntu plans to keep its core supporters, stuff like this just can't happen. It's a pain to have to rebuild an entire usable desktop option so I can go back to editing Astrophotography Images in DS9. For me, it's a few curse words and a lot of time.
On the other hand, consider a fresh-off-the-windows-boat user, had this happened to them, Ubuntu would lose those customers left and right, no questions asked - back to windows - because that just doesn't happen in windows. In the 10 plus years I've actually seriously been messing with computers - again, 9 of which have been Linux (the 80s & 90s don't count), I've never seen this happen with either Windows or Mac - and it better never again, or Ubuntu will be losing a long-time dedicated user because I just can't spend my days rebuilding what some "update" broke due to lack of backwards compatibility - and no subsequent follow-up bug fix has been released
I like Ubuntu due to its simplicity on the front end, yet it comes with every thing that makes Linux good under the hood. Just don't kill it for the those who have supported your efforts.
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Um...HELLO? Your link backs up what the OP said. It's not FreeBSD.
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Re:Stop saying that Mac OS is based on FreeBSD. (Score:5, Informative)
Do you ever even read any posts? Rliegh stated clearly that the kernel is XNU which is... fuck it read it yourself.
There ain't no FreeBSD kernel in OS X. Got it? It's the userland, process model, the networks stack and the virtual file system that was taken from BSD, but the kernel and drivers are heavily influenced by Mach.
Re:Stop saying that Mac OS is based on FreeBSD. (Score:4, Informative)
In that line of argument, the Linux kernel is GNU HURD, because it ended up being a replacement for the then never delivered GNU HURD kernel, for the GNU OS.
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Yes, the only difference is that it has a radically different architecture. Apart from that, and most of the code, it's the same.
MacOS could be based on RiscOS (Score:5, Interesting)
for all that it mattered. BSD was free and worked, in 1986. That's why Jobs - when he solicited his engineer's choice - was told to use BSD 4.
MacOS is "based" on NeXT - which was derived from extending the Smalltalk-like model of Objective C to a whole series of desktop and application frameworks.
You see, Jobs and his guys were SO blown away by the GUI at PARC, that they missed the object revolution, used to create it. They were all determined to do this again, the 'right' way, without saddling Mac/Lisa compatibility to the horse.
That got engineered on later ;-)
You want further illustration of this argument? Try managing an OSX workgroup from the network with existing BSD and opensource. You effectively manage the POSIXy parts of the system, while having almost no policy or configuration management of the Finder/Application experienc through which much of the Mac user interacts. You could - in theory, with the sources available, swap a modern Linux distro under there instead of the hybrid BSD. Almost no one would notice.
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HA! Almost forgot about Mach! BSD was just a subsystem on a Mach kernel, too. More 80's-isms. Now we call Microskernels "Hypervisors" and isolated I/O subsystems "Virtual instances".
'Cos maybe they'll work this time!
Re:MacOS could be based on RiscOS (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah the ironic thing was that Apple already had an MKLinux port [mklinux.org] for their Macintosh systems, and all they really needed to do was integrate the Mac OS GUI with MKLinux and then just use the OpenStep [wikipedia.org] enhancements because they too are open sourced like MKLinux and could have saved the money they used to buy out Next and bring Steve Jobs back and just do it all better by themselves.
Instead they got Steve Jobs and Next and a much more bigger and bloated operating system than they expected to get.
The other option, besides buying up Be Inc. was to license AROS [wikipedia.org] and then build Carbon and Mac OS systems on top of that as it is already object oriented and based on the AmigaOS that IBM licensed from Commodore to give OS/2 2.0 an object oriented WPS system [os2world.com] as Commodore got there already in 1985 before anyone else did, and Apple was basically doing the same thing with OSX that Commodore did with AmigaDOS/Workbench in 1985.
The Amiga was already object oriented even going back to its 1970's roots as the Atari Lorianne project that was basically an Atari 2600 mod to turn the Atari 2600 into an object oriented GUI computer, but the Atari 400/800 projects put Lorianne on the back burner until Commodore bought out the team in the 1980's. The Amiga project predated the Apple Lisa project, and the Lorianne/Amiga team offered Apple to buy them out first, but gave Steve Jobs his idea for the Lisa computer (and later the Macintosh) and he told them no, and visited Xerox's PARC to get some more good ideas.
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But how far did MkLinux get? I just checked that site, and it's still the same as it was nearly 8 years ago. Sure, the updated dates are the same, but they never did even come out with a 1.0 release.
I actually ran MkLinux on some old Apple computers about 10 years ago, and it worked pretty well. (About 100x more reliably than Mac OS 9 of the same vintage which just crashed all the time on the same machines). However it has to be said that MkLinux was slow, something I attributed at the time to the overh
Re:MacOS could be based on RiscOS (Score:5, Funny)
Jeremiah Cornelius (137) *
People with user numbers like that always make me think of early generation vampires or very old wine.
Re:MacOS could be based on RiscOS (Score:4, Insightful)
I didn't say "simple" :-)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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You clearly do not even know what you're talking about. Please spend some time using OS X or at least do a bit of research before you try to troll again.
He probably would if he didn't have to commit 100% and buy a bloody mac to spend some time using it.
That is -my- only complaint about OSX, I don't like the hardware. I'm not talking about the 'value' or the price, I just straight up don't like it. I want a Core 2 Quad in a mini tower that will take a couple hard drives, video card upgrades, and some PCI/PCI
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This is not a troll.
It's *not* that great. It's slow, crashy and overcomplicated. It's got an ugly, messy desktop environment and it doesn't come with any decent usable software. It's got this weird browser that doesn't render stuff, doesn't have AdBlock and which usually gets replaced with Firefox. It can't play back most videos or music files without expensive shareware. It doesn't even have a usable text editor!
It's utter crap. Ubuntu is already better than Mac OSX. Please don't try to make another crapp
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This is easy to answer - he sold Thawte for $575 million.
Do you not have the internets where you are? Wikipedia, geezus.
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They better hurry up they have just three months left to make it happen :-P