Comments on: Communicating release goals

By: Scott James Remnant » Blog Archive » Not That Edgy

Scott James Remnant » Blog Archive » Not That Edgy — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 21:26:36 +0000

[...] Mark has already touched on this in his blog, citing a conversation he had with Matt (the Ubuntu CTO). Especially noteworthy is the mention that the kinds of itches that developers get are not the same as those users get. We get itches because the installer still relies on devfs-style paths, or because it’s not possible to boot the system without race-conditions. None of these things are noticeable to the end-user. [...]

By: Danny Lombard

Danny Lombard — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 14:25:17 +0000

Hi Mark
my name is Danny Lombard I live in Johannesburg I have a project im working on to develop Africa.
I need your help to make it work but I need to make direct contact with you so if you could help me.

Danny

By: michala

michala — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 03:20:19 +0000

Hi Mark!
Thank you for all the good things you do for this place – called earth.
I really admire all the good dids and the help for Africa – the place and the people.
I am a Hebrew Teacher – and my specialty is to teach this language – if you have plans to bring teachers for Africa and try and devolve the place – I will be more then happy to help with my experience.
Any language that you learn is a tool for your mind to be developed.
I am 36 years old and serve in the army for two years – I do have a Leading experience.
All the best
Michaela

By: tecosystems » AIGLX on a Thinkpad x60s: Sweet, Sweet Eye Candy

tecosystems » AIGLX on a Thinkpad x60s: Sweet, Sweet Eye Candy — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 08:42:33 +0000

[...] Beyond the actual functionality, these projects have a higher level importance. While I’ve argued for some time that Linux has been on par with Windows in terms of the quality of the GUI – Windows XP being no great shakes in that department as far as I’m concerned – Apple’s dynamic and visually appealing OS X was clearly the leader of both by a significant margin. Neither AIGLX/Xgl with Compiz/Metacity will change that by themselves – they’re enabling technologies, remember, not beautiful in and of themselves – but for the first time Linux is getting close to having the technology necessary to match OS X. What’s needed now, in my view, are Tango-like efforts to provide polished (sorry, Mark), pretty icons, menus, themes and such that heavily leverage the capabilities the new technologies provide (transparency, flexible windows, desktop organization, and so on). It’s not that the themes currently available in the cgwd-themes package are not impressive – they are – but rather that they’re usually incomplete, and have minor little flaws or bugs (just because you have transparency doesn’t mean you should use it everywhere . While folks like me will put up with those, normal users will not. [...]

By: Dissociated Press / Oh noes! The command line!

Dissociated Press / Oh noes! The command line! — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 02:13:27 +0000

[...] Just reading Mark Shuttleworth’s response to Matt Zimmerman’s summation of the community’s expectations of the Ubuntu Dapper Drake 6.06 LTS release. One thing stuck out about Zimmerman’s comments, that’s the complaint that users still have to use the command line for some tasks. [...]

By: Ubuntu 6.10, Edgy Eft

Ubuntu 6.10, Edgy Eft — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 15:26:50 +0000

[...] It is out, it is light-brown and it is fast. Man, is it fast! Definitely worth the wait (only 4 months in this case), just as edgy as people had been expecting, based mostly on Mark Shuttleworth’s note on planning Dapper+1 (this isn’t suprprising. Surprising is only that Mark appears to have repeated a mistake he had already acknowledged half a year before in a blog entry about community disappointment over Dapper. For me, the only “feature disappointment” with Edgy is that Composite won’t work with ATI’s fglrx driver and thus Beryl won’t work (something that is the click of a checkbox away in Fedora Core 6 and Mandriva Linux 2006). No big issue though. What is of more concern, in my humble opionion at least, are some smaller quirks that have been there since at least Ubuntu 5.10 which I’d like to list here for future reference (read: when Feisty Fawn comes out). [...]

By: Paul Cubbage

Paul Cubbage — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 20:36:29 +0000

“Now we need to look PAST where Windows is today, and deliver an experience to those users that is so compelling in some places that they are willing to forgive a few of the warts.”

Moore’s “Dealing with Darwin” applies to Ubuntu as well. A clearer goal for “innovation” is to “differentiate on an attribute that drives customer preference during buying decisions
“(http://geoffmoore.blogs.com/my_weblog/ see “Top Ten Myths about Business Innovation”) Innovating elsewhere costs money and entails risk but does not create competitive advantage. Put another way, how do you innovate to create an unfair advantage against windoze? Ubuntu doesn’t need to create something for users to “forgive a few of the warts.” Ubuntu users are already happy and forgiving. Ubuntu needs something compelling that draws new users in.

By: zettberlin

zettberlin — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 15:38:10 +0000

I had switched from Suse 9.3 to dapper immediately as i mentioned the absolute outstanding performance of the system when working with sound-applications. No other system i tried before allowed to run the jackaudioserver with such extreme low latency as stable and flawless as dapper. All with the un-hacked standard-kernel and with only some trivial tuning one can apply within half an houre by drag/drop some commands from a howto.

Now i test edgy and i see that some features, needed for that, are gone,

Furthermore i see, that there are no bootmessages anymore. I like the new splash very much, but I cannot see any rational reason for not adding a nice window, that shows, what is up at startup. This is a serious matter, hiding information by default does not help anybody – as soon as a problem occurs the user sits in front of his/her box the same as any MS/Mac-consumer – helpless without a clue….

A linux-system should be cute, modern, cool-looking. But hiding important information contradicts major basics of the free-software-philosophy.

I still believe, that edgy will be my favourite linux, still i am concerned about what way the distro will go in the future.

By: Sean

Sean — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 11:34:22 +0000

Having Installed Ubuntu, a few comments I can give.
I had the same issue with the live CD, but was not too much of a problem to resolve and install properly.
The desktop is great, I am playing with the themes to see what looks best, but it is in all cases a personal choice.
Nice to have most hardware work without any problems, my camera, phone, scanner and other USB devices just work, none of the ¨Install Propeitary, Incompatiable Software Please¨issues that came with other OS’s.
Easy to update, even though that was a few (8) hours online on dial up……
Adding is easier than windows, I prefer the Firefox browser over IE, might even download the addons, but most pages work without them anyhow.
After installing Wine, a lot of Windows apps work too, best of both worlds.

Yes, more packages would be better, but then the disro would be 2-3 DVD’s, and would be defeating the object of being lightweight and easy, most being unused. I found the tradeoff between the 2 reasonable, though would have preferred KDE to be included as an option, not as a download.

It seems that Ubuntu is easy enough for most people to use, well done on giving a great alternative. Most, if not all, issues are easy to fix IMHO, and the updates are easy to do, without too much hassle, and a lot easier than some other OS’s

By: James

James — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 07:06:46 +0000

I’ve tried out the last 3 releases of Ubuntu and so far its been an ok experience. I never stuck with them because I have dial up and Ubuntu is useless without broadband. I think that: More packages need to be included for those of us that don’t have broadband; More drivers need to be included as well as better testing of the ones included. Case in point the RT2500 driver worked flawlessly on SuSE 9.3 Pro, but when I tried it under 6.06 it would randomly lock up my PC; Better Help files. The Gnome UI used in SLED 10 is the best UI I’ve ever seen or used. Not only is it beuitiful, but it’s usability is just amazing.

More; Better, help files would also be great. Windows has two things going for it. 3rd party support and great Help files. SLED 10 addressed this nicely by developing a flash tutorial that shows the user how to do certain tasks. Although thats a nice start, whats really missing is help for common errors. Such as installing drivers, programs, and what all the different errors mean.

Not saying I would use Ubuntu if these were address as other Linux Distrobutions like SuSE are far ahead of Ubuntu in many areas, but If these were fixed I’d definitly take another look at Ubuntu.

James