Mark Shuttleworth Reveals Ubuntu Netbook Remix

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:What is it with Ubuntu

[stoolpigeon]

A guy on my team has the new hp mininote or whatever it is - with Suse. Out of the box wireless causes system crashes and the camera doesn't work. Maybe Novell wont mind the lack of publicity.

Re:What is it with Ubuntu

[Tikkun]

I personally like the design of the Debian site. It's easy to get the information I need, and the format hasn't changed in years so I'm comfortable with it. Besides, Debian isn't trying to take over the world, they're trying to make a kick-butt FOSS gnu/linux distribution.

Re:He didn't say Ubuntu is unlicensed.

[harry666t]

It's not the idea of communism that was so bad, it was the implementation.

I like to think of Free Software as "communism done right", with real sharing, with real community, with people that are actually willing to help each other, without repressing the outstanding ones, and such. And on the long run FS seems to have less in common with communism that one might think it has in the first place. It has many of its advantages, but less of disadvantages...

And I think I know why it succeeded. The people who started the whole movement were not only speaking, but acting. And they weren't acting through any deeds of violence, they didn't lead an armed revolution, they just wrote code. All these "let's do $X, let's change the world, there should be $Y, why on earth $Z is so fucked up" people should do the same: shut up and start actually trying to improve the reality they're facing.

And since one's efforts to improve the world should always begin with improving oneself...

<shuts up and goes back to coding>

It's about time

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm running Ubuntu 8.04 on my Lenovo X61 and had to go back to XP until linux catches up with things or until I have time to fix all the problems.

Problems = No hard disk protection, bad power management, rotation only works if you disable DRI (and therefore OpenGl), pen input is problematic. Fan control = broken. Basically, everything that makes a portable or a tablet work on a hardware level is at version 0.1. Sure XP is broken on many things, but, the basic stuff seems to be there, and, XP's handwriting recognition is outstanding. Too bad it's on XP.

Other than that, Ubuntu 8.04 makes a fine desktop OS.

Re:Dislike Ubuntu

[ChrisA90278]

"What's wrong with /etc/init.d?"

The only real problem is that if is to slow. In a standard system that uses init.d each script is run one at a time. But what if you happen to have one of those eight-core systems and a very fast disk array. Whouldn't it be great if the system could take advantage of those eight cosres to make startup run 8X faster? Solaris does this. It looks at dependancies between services and starts up as many as it can in parallel. Once you have a dependancy graph (that says for example that FTP and Apache need networking but FTp does not need apache then you can launch both FTP and Appache in parallel. You can also take advantage of the graph wen you stop services too to prevent errors like bringing down the network when it is needed by FTPd. The whole init.d and "run level" idea is just not well suited to this new idea.

Re:What is it with Ubuntu

[miffo.swe]

I manage SUSE, RedHat, Ubuntu and Windows server boxes at work and i can concur. Ubuntu is by far easier to manage and keep running. When i need something or want to test something out its just an apt-get away on Ubuntu while it can take many hours on the others. Package management is where Ubuntu (or debian to be true) really shines. That coupled with the enormous repositories with most packages known to man makes it a very handy tool for me. I tried to use SUSE for a terminal server but i had enormous problems with it. For every new package i introduced i had conflicts all over and had to resolve them by endless sessions with "--force".

Debian should be very proud of Ubuntu. It just works and the biggest part of that in my view is that it got a package management system that really shines above everybody else. If it works because of hard work or technical merits i don't know but i do know it saves me endless of hours in the end.

I think Ubuntu chose the right way when they start at the desktops and then go for the servers. Even my boss runs Ubuntu at home and at work. When he run it at home chances are much greater he wants me to use it at work for our servers. Novell/SUSE must be out of their mind when they drop the desktop and gives it away freely to Microsoft. Why go for the enterprise market where competition already are fierce when you can go for a desktop market and the small company market? You can never take a market top down, it has to start from the bottom.

If Ubuntu do a real push for servers with easier setup of services and more or less key ready solutions they will make a real dent in the Linux server market. All that is needed is some polishing on the configuration procedures of some key components like OpenLDAP, SAMBA, Cups and some Groupware.

Re:What is it with Ubuntu

[hey!]

Well, the big problem isn't with the Debian site; it's with the aspect ratio of most monitors these days. Flowing to fill the full horizontal width of the screen is actually a bad idea for such a text-heavy site, because such long lines are hard to read.

Look at the Debian home page in a browser window that is narrowed to allow about 7-10 words per line in the main text, and it looks -- nice. Not coincidentally, the Ubuntu site squeezes about ten words across into the main text.

I'm sitting here on a laptop with a screen that's designed for watching wide screen movies, but it'd be better for me to rotate it 90 degrees if I'm reading text.

Re:What is it with Ubuntu

[mhall119]

I think Debian is the parent of enough distros to be "the Distro", so recent events would unfortunately prove your hopes wrong. The OpenSSH guys aren't ever going to be evaluating distro changes to their package, it's not their responsibility. As long as it works right in OpenBSD, they're happy, doesn't matter to them if some Linux guys break it in their package.