Mark Shuttleworth Reveals Ubuntu Netbook Remix 245
Glyn Moody writes "In an interview with the Guardian today, Mark Shuttleworth talks about the upcoming Ubuntu Netbook Remix, a tailored version for ultraportables, produced in collaboration with Intel." The new version of Ubuntu is barely mentioned in this interview, but it's tantalizing -- SUSE looks nice on the HP Mininotes, but for people who are used to and enjoy Ubuntu, it's an option to look forward to.
Re:Dislike Ubuntu (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Dislike Ubuntu (Score:5, Insightful)
Not using conventions i.e (at least in the Ubuntu versions I've used)
I prefer the slackware way of
but there are few good things about Ubuntu, it made Linux and Open Source much better to new-comers, works almost always out of the box
It's friendly (but silly IMhO) to people who migrate from Windows, and it's the greatest achievement made in the last few years. friendly OS for Windows migrating users.
He didn't say Ubuntu is unlicensed. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why reading the article is important... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:He didn't say Ubuntu is unlicensed. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What is it with Ubuntu (Score:4, Insightful)
Hah! Prove it!
Re:What is it with Ubuntu (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the things that's with Ubuntu is that it's the only group with a real sense of marketing. Granted, it's viral marketing, but if you look at http://ubuntu.com/ [ubuntu.com] versus http://debian.org/ [debian.org] you'll notice that one is quite pretty and modern, and the other looks like it fell out of a wormhole circa 1996. I even tried talking about a site redesign on #debian on freenode once and got flamed by someone saying "why the hell should the look of a website matter?" Perhaps it somewhat matters because when I was a newbie and knew nothing about the merits of distros, I overlooked Debian as being a fairly amateurish distro because, well, its website looked amateurish. Yes, I know better now, but we should acknowledge at least a little that appearances do matter.
Of course, it's not just the website. Ubuntu also has an army of Diggers, and it's overall just a really easy distro to get started with when you know nothing about Linux, because the project has made appealing to that crowd one of its goals.
Re:He didn't say Ubuntu is unlicensed. (Score:3, Insightful)
Free software works more like third position distributivism, as advocated by Hilaire Belloc in The Servile State -- that is to say, there are three remedies to capitalism - socialism, slavery and property. Unchecked capitalism leads to slavery, but also necessitates socialist revolution UNLESS you take the third option - property.
That is to say that the means of production and exchange must be distributed as widely as possible, but that holdings are then privately owned. Free software is the perfect example of this. Anyone with a computer (means of production) and internet connection (means of exchange) can create value and trade for it and with it. Its generation of wealth at its purist.
However, we need a codified method of protecting our property - and that is the license. That is what allows us to exchange with each other without losing anything of our own but what we chose willingly to give up.
XanC on the other hand, chooses the Socialism path and paraphrases Marx. That is exactly the sort of argument that leads to "ignorant people" confusing what exactly it is that free software accomplishes - because many of the people who use and advocate it were confused in the first place.
However, its not really his fault that schools don't really teach Belloc or Chesterton but force Marx down your throat at every chance they get. Marx's analysis of the problem was correct -- his solution was flawed.
Re:Why reading the article is important... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure. I've used an unlicensed copy of Ubuntu many times. It says right there in the GPL: If you don't want to accept the license, you don't have to in order to use the software. So I didn't.
You could if you agreed to the GPL. If you didn't, then I imagine that the various Linux authors would take issue with your attempt to ignore copyright law.
No, unlicensed means unlicensed and public domain means public domain. Just because public domain software is unlicensed doesn't make all unlicensed software public domain. (i.e. A car stays in a garage. Is everything in a garage a car?) Unlicensed means exactly that: You didn't agree to a license to obtain the software. I don't agree to a license to obtain a book, either, but copyright law is still in full effect.
Re:What is it with Ubuntu (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:ZOMG ANOTHER UBANTO *FAP FAP FAP* (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What is it with Ubuntu (Score:5, Insightful)
Everything is easy. Install a new package. Get the source for that package that isn't quite working right. Configuration. Update packages. Upgrade to the new version. It's all trivial, and just works.
And my folks are running it. When i visit I f with things. But when I'm not there, they can still upgrade packages, etc. And they're on dialup, and it still just works
We run suse on the servers at work, and i needed a very recent gcc with fortran and gomp. Ended up building from source, including a half dozen dependencies. On my workstation (ubuntu) "apt-get install gfortran libgomp". done. 5 hours vs 5 minutes. Actually, I think it took several iterations, maybe spent 2 full days installing it on suse.
Great for the power user.
Great for the beginner.
Don't confuse diversity with diffusion (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:He didn't say Ubuntu is unlicensed. (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/index.htm [marxists.org]
Pull your head out of your math books once in a while and read something. You might learn. I'm not making this stuff up.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Mod parent back up (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't have to accept the GPL in order to use Linux legally. I do have to accept whatever Microsoft's EULA of the day is in order to use Windows legally. GPL software is generally unlicensed for use.
I think that the problem is that lots of people believe that "unlicensed" somehow means that you're running afoul of the law. It's bad PR to call Ubuntu "unlicensed", but that doesn't mean that it's technically inaccurate. License-free would probably be a better term.
Re:What is it with Ubuntu (Score:1, Insightful)
Stop and think about it. Do you really want the Windowtards bussing into all of the Linux distros, spreading their pollution and flamage wherever they go? Do you want Debian and Slackware dumbed down to the Fischer-Price toy that Ubuntu is so the Windows converts can comprehend it with their tiny little minds?
Keep it like it is. Ubuntu makes a great asylum.
Re:ZOMG ANOTHER UBANTO *FAP FAP FAP* (Score:4, Insightful)
Because it's easy for end users. And that's what should count. One reason Ubuntu is so popular is that they understand this.
Re:What is it with Ubuntu (Score:2, Insightful)
Agreed. The Ubuntu website is the amateurish one that breaks the rules. For example, it is fixed width and doesn't flow to fit the screen, and it fails validation [w3.org] (Debian's site passes validation [w3.org] and flows). I also feel it just isn't as functional as the simpler, cleaner Debian site.
However, I am a bit of a minimalist (use IceWM, Emacs (small by today's computing resources), play nethack, etc.), making me less likely to be interested in Ubuntu anyway (besides some other reasons).
Re:What is it with Ubuntu (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What is it with Ubuntu (Score:3, Insightful)
Alternatively, one may as well realize that there exist different target groups with different attitudes, needs, (and average age, (and knowledge), presumably).
CC.
Re:He didn't say Ubuntu is unlicensed. (Score:5, Insightful)
But when we're dealing with non-physical property like software, it works, simply because people taking as much as they can doesn't reduce the amount available to others. "To each, according to their needs," really does mean everyone can have as much as they want of what's out there.
I think the correct phrase isn't "communism done right," but rather "Communism the only way it can actually work"
Re:What is it with Ubuntu (Score:5, Insightful)
Website design is as much about the audience as anything else-and the Ubuntu site is perfectly geared towards it's audience, as is Debians towards it's- which is why it looks any other F/OSS project page where as Ubuntu's looks like a standard corporate page.
Re:What is it with Ubuntu (Score:5, Insightful)
I wanted to learn how to package up software and I found the full circle magazine more helpful then Debian's 6000 page document on it, such a useless website.
Re:Dislike Ubuntu (Score:5, Insightful)
Solaris is older than Linux, so it must be the superior operating system.
Monarchy is older than democracy, so it must be a better form of government.
I can make my examples more absurd, if you want.
Re:What is it with Ubuntu (Score:4, Insightful)
I myself see no need to switch away from the distro that gives me everything I need and has the most active community. This idea that users will switch to other distros once they see the "choice" is missing the point - 1: users don't want too much choice, and 2: given the choice, users will usually choose either what's familiar to them or what everyone else chooses. This is how Windows achieved and kept popularity! It simply became the standard. Linux needs this.
The other misconception is that this is bad -- it is not. It creates underlying standards and consistency across the board, which will confuse users less and help them adapt to the change faster and easier. It's also a lot easier to support a single distro than a dozen.
So it may not *always* be ubuntu, but it very likely will. I think Ubuntu has reached the tipping point where its momentum will support its growth. More power to it, in my opinion.
Re:What is it with Ubuntu (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What is it with Ubuntu (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What is it with Ubuntu (Score:5, Insightful)
Like most people, you're confusing two different concepts here: skillful vs. professional. Debian's site is clearly more skillfully done, and wins on technical merit. Ubuntu's site is clearly more professional; people are more likely to pay for a site like that. Debian's site is both technically superior and more amateurish. The very qualities you mention as signs Ubuntu's site is "more amateurish" are common and even to some degree desired in many professional web designs (fixed-width, for example, is required to accurately control precise layout, a common client requirement). If the Debian developers were trying to sell the site design, it'd look more like Ubuntu's, which is to say, more professional, albeit not as good in many ways.
Never confuse "professional" with "better" or "amateur" with "worse". The first terms relate to the compensation for the activity, the second refer to subjective criteria which are usually utterly unrelated to that.
Re:What is it with Ubuntu (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What is it with Ubuntu (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What is it with Ubuntu (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been using FOSS software since 1996, and the only 3 Linux distros i like are smoothwall, ubuntu, and knoppix. in 1996 i gave up on slackware (what all the Linux people were talking about then) for something that worked out of the box as a cross platform Internet gateway/file server... Free BSD.
I've never been cured of my desire for simplicity, never, and neither will the masses.
I don't want to fight with my software for 7 hours to get it 'just right' i want it to just plain work out of the box with no quibbles.
that's the #1 reason i hate Microsoft, despite all the other reasons to hate Microsoft. work with no hassles, and I'm not alone, most of the free world wants what i want, even if they don't know that's what they want.
for the few people who like to meddle with the guts of an OS, building gentoo from source is there, but at best, if the world switches to Linux, you will find the breakdown is the same as it is now, 99.9% wanting stuff that works and
you can't make people enjoy meddling with software who don't already enjoy it, and even then you can't increase the amount of spare time they have unless you put all food, housing and medical care under the direct control of the government... and believe you me, doing that is not cool, just ask people who lived in communist Russia how well that worked for them.
Re:What is it with Ubuntu (Score:5, Insightful)
As an Ubuntu user; I find that vaguely insulting. Linux in general is missing an easy entry into its world for outsiders. Ubuntu helps with this by bring friendly on the outside; having good support forums and services, but being a full distro under the hood.
The classic linux expert criticism.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm very pleased that many of the linux distros have got their act together to appeal to a wider audience these days.
Re:What is it with Ubuntu (Score:3, Insightful)