Comments on: Automated deployment of Ubuntu with Orchestra

By: Richard

Richard — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 18:21:10 +0000

@Ahmed
I completely agree with you!

By: Celso

Celso — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 12:59:14 +0000

Mr Mark, please check this news. Maybe a great oportunity to promote ubuntu?
(the website is translated from portuguese)

http://translate.google.com.br/translate?sl=pt&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=pt-PT&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.publico.pt%2FEduca%25C3%25A7%25C3%25A3o%2Fgoverno-quer-software-gratis-nos-computadores-mais-antigos-das-escolas-1518785&act=url

By: Ahmed

Ahmed — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 06:29:22 +0000

Mark
One of the thing that I hate in Ubuntu 9.04/9.10 is the Global menu. On a 24″ monitor, it is painful moving the mouse all the way from one corner to the top. Moreover, since menus are not visible, it feels like application has limited capability. Your argument of saving vertical space has no value if it comes at the cost of flexibility and ease of use.
If you are in love of global menus, keep it, but at least provide a customization option to the ones that do not like it.

By: Richard

Richard — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 18:00:42 +0000

@Shaglok

WebOS is the perfect example of my previous statements. WebOS has the most advanced most user friendly UI design and most productivity oriented design of any tablet and through many unfortunate mishaps has almost been deep sixed.

My point is that while it is almost perfect for phones and tablets and has gotten little love is similar to how ubuntu is still popular even with unity only for two opposing reasons. Unity is unimaginative and clunky in design as a copy or similar to mac is interface where webOS is minimal and simplistic and gets the job done.

The hiding of menus in the new global menu is difficult for many and new users to grasp and especially hard for those trying to come from windows or that virtualize windows at the same time. It is tough for some to use such differing interfaces and make such drastic changes. Global menu makes sense in the fact that it is tied to the top bar when maximized but not when the windows aren’t maximized. And the fact that unity by default places the window manager and shortcut bar on the left instead of bottom like the other major operating systems in both phones and desktops is also troubling to me.

I think with minor tweaks unity could be great, it’s just currently missing the mark or pun intended, Mark’s missing it.

By: Shaglok

Shaglok — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 06:11:38 +0000

I’m sorry for the off-topic, but I think it could be important.

Mark, have you read this: http://gadgetorama.com/2011/10/hp-close-to-shutting-down-webos-completely/ ? Why don’t talk to HP (or buy, you are able of it) to open webOS?? We need a full-open mobile operating system, and it’s almost finished. We’ll only need a bit of work to make it installabe on non-Palm-or-HP devices.

Please consider this.

By: Aleve Sicofante

Aleve Sicofante — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 00:00:50 +0000

@Andy: the linked reply makes little sense.

When someone cites Linus to proof some particular DE choice, is wrong. He’s good at kernle programming, no UI design.

Mark has shown he’s good at writing security software and selling that software to a big company for a lot of money. He hasn’t shown special abilities designing UIs or hiring people to design them for him/us.

Richard’s statement, while off-topic, is yet another example of ordinary people becoming furious at Unity, to the point of forcing the admin to revert to a similar desktop, like XFCE in this case.

On topic: I appreciate the Orchestra initiative. I definitely hope Canonical makes a lot of money on the server with many many deployments and puts it to good use hiring real professional designers to create a usable desktop.

By: Joe

Joe — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 22:19:34 +0000

@Andy S

That is an impressive amount of money to make in a software business (Referring to the link you posted) and I’m sure it was well deserved earnings; back when he had a sane view of desktop Linux.

However, now, in the current state of Ubuntu, it will be interesting to review those earning statements in, say 2 years.

By: Links 27/10/2011: GNOME 3.4 Plans, Retail Stores in China Sell GNU/Linux PCs | Techrights

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 18:57:13 +0000

[...] Automated deployment of Ubuntu with Orchestra Orchestra is one of the most exciting new capabilities in 11.10. It provides automated installation of Ubuntu across sets of machines. Typically, it’s used by people bringing up a cluster or farm of servers, but the way it’s designed makes it very easy to bring up rich services, where there may be a variety of different kinds of nodes that all need to be installed together. [...]

By: Saravanan

Saravanan — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 12:35:55 +0000

Hi Mark,
I am an active Ubuntu Desktop and Server user.
I have personally recommended ubuntu for around 20 of my friends and family, They all enjoy the stability of the software.
I have a little suggestion from the user perspective. It would be great to have Ubuntu’s own PC and Desktops shipping with Ubuntu per-installed. That way we can ensure that it works fine well tested on one particular hard ware platform.
Follow the Apple’s business strategy. Mac OS runs only on one hardware and its easy to support and maintain, and for sure this model will provide great success for Ubuntu in the coming days. Relying on Hardware Vendors to use our software is not going to take us anywhere.
We need our own proprietary hardware which works well with Ubuntu. 1 Platform, 1 Hardware approach will bring great success for Ubuntu. Previous linux distros are no more in existence now just because of lack of hardware support.

Good luck

By: mark

mark — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 09:50:01 +0000

@Oxwivi

The unstoppable Jorge has a good answer there now, which I edited a little and bumped up.