31 ms·

Shuttleworth reaffirms Canonical's lead design role in Ubuntu

33 points by mrschwabe 15y ago

kleiba 15y ago
I think that's good news. Designing by (the GNU/Linux) community has not really proved to yield impressive results in the past.
sjs 15y ago
I hope that they will settle on the stock apps they are putting resources behind. I haven't used Linux on my workstation for a while now, but every time I look at Ubuntu it seems like they have new apps for core things like photos and such, and I feel sorry for people trying to migrate their data around and keep up with the latest releases. It's really important that such fundamental apps are stable. Mom and grandma don't want to migrate their photos from F-Spot to <photo app of the year>. That is a pretty cruel task to burden average people with. Best of luck to them though, and I agree that they have a better chance of mainstream success than any other distro. However, it's still going to be a lot of work to get there. Windows and OS X are not standing still.
- masklinn 15y ago
  > Mom and grandma don't want to migrate their photos from F-Spot to <photo app of the year>. That is a pretty cruel task to burden average people with. And frankly, it would be nice if they could have one which actually worked.
- rohitarondekar 15y ago
  A good point but I wonder how many Mom's and grandma's install operating systems on their computers. :)
  - reirob 15y ago
    You're right there are not many grand parents able to install an OS. But in our family the children offered a laptop three years ago to their mother - she never had a computer before. We installed Ubuntu on it and she is using it happily now for 3 years. We do not have a single problem with viruses and such. This is what was behind the decision to install Linux. But to come back to the topic, the author of the parent comment is right - it is already difficult for old people to get used to their application, but if then every 6 month the applications for photos is changing it is a pain. So for my mother in law we go with Ubuntu LTS. I am a little bit worried how it will work out with the next LTS if it is going to be Unity :D
bluedanieru 15y ago
That would be wonderful if their products weren't so disappointing. You can't throw a stick around here without hitting someone who has tried Unity and hated it, uTouch is utterly irrelevant to Linux on the Desktop (I thought this is what Ubuntu was about but I have been proven wrong). Juju might go somewhere, I haven't used it, but they've definitely got some competition in that space and considering their tone-deaf responses to users in the past I'm not confident it'll get any traction. But this is all fine. They're trying new shit. I wouldn't complain if it was just that. It's the heel-digging that bothers me. It seems that Mark Shuttleworth has, rhetorically, tied his reputation somewhat to the success of these projects and especially to Unity. That is, it will be hard for him at this point to just say "well we tried something new, it didn't work out like we hoped, and now we're going to iterate on the next thing." If you listen to him it's as though their new desktop is already a rousing success. If you use Ubuntu and you are hoping they switch back to another desktop in a later release I would humbly suggest that you switch to a different OS. With a more traditional business model (i.e. if they sold the OS) they would immediately sack Mark and switch strategies with someone who isn't so married to its success, when sales fell off a cliff. That's not going to happen.
- andrewvc 15y ago
  You can't throw a stick around here without hitting someone who has tried Unity and hated it Maybe, but I, and a good number of other people really like it. There's sizable support for unity, and my guess is a lot of non-power users (who are silent on HN) like it even more.
  - bluedanieru 15y ago
    Fair enough. What I'm getting at though is that if it doesn't work, we're probably stuck with it anyway. If it turns out that some people like it, but most don't, and that in the typical case it's turning people off Ubuntu rather than on to it, I suspect that isn't going to matter. It's a pet project, in other words.
    - mtts 15y ago
michael_dorfman 15y ago
I know it is a trivial point, but it's annoying to see somebody as bright as Shuttleworth misuse the phrase "begs the question."
- Luyt 15y ago
  WikiPedia on this: "Many English speakers use "begs the question" to mean "raises the question"; for example, "this year's deficit is half a trillion dollars, which begs the question: how are we ever going to balance the budget?" Many philosophers and prescriptive linguists deem such usage incorrect. Academic linguist Mark Liberman recommends avoiding the phrase entirely."
- hasenj 15y ago
  How is that a misuse? Meaning changes depending on context, it's a well known feature of natural languages.
  - michael_dorfman 15y ago
    Meaning changes, but that doesn't mean that it is impossible for a native speaker to make an error. In this case, the phrase has a well-documented meaning (and a long history), and the usage here is clearly a misuse.
    - hasenj 15y ago
      When lots of people make the same error, it gradually becomes part of the language.
ZeroGravitas 15y ago
I like it. The last version had promise, but was somewhat half-finished. This time it's pretty good (though it still has bugs). I love all the changes that make tiny netbook screens more usable (auto-hiding dock, the dissapearing menu bar, easy access to other apps, e.g. music skip, via the menu bar, auto-hiding scrollbars). I'm somewhat unique in having a touchscreen netbook. It's mostly for the kids but the touch-able dock seems to be working for them. For me, I like that they've went with a power-user friendly keyboard launcher similar to Blacktree's Quicksilver for Mac OS X (which Apple later copied into Spotlight). Less importantly, I like the looks and the general simplification of the UI.

33 points by mrschwabe 15y ago

I think that's good news. Designing by (the GNU/Linux) community has not really proved to yield impressive results in the past.

sjs 15y ago

I hope that they will settle on the stock apps they are putting resources behind. I haven't used Linux on my workstation for a while now, but every time I look at Ubuntu it seems like they have new apps for core things like photos and such, and I feel sorry for people trying to migrate their data around and keep up with the latest releases. It's really important that such fundamental apps are stable. Mom and grandma don't want to migrate their photos from F-Spot to <photo app of the year>. That is a pretty cruel task to burden average people with. Best of luck to them though, and I agree that they have a better chance of mainstream success than any other distro. However, it's still going to be a lot of work to get there. Windows and OS X are not standing still.

masklinn 15y ago
> Mom and grandma don't want to migrate their photos from F-Spot to <photo app of the year>. That is a pretty cruel task to burden average people with. And frankly, it would be nice if they could have one which actually worked.
rohitarondekar 15y ago
A good point but I wonder how many Mom's and grandma's install operating systems on their computers. :)
- reirob 15y ago
  You're right there are not many grand parents able to install an OS. But in our family the children offered a laptop three years ago to their mother - she never had a computer before. We installed Ubuntu on it and she is using it happily now for 3 years. We do not have a single problem with viruses and such. This is what was behind the decision to install Linux. But to come back to the topic, the author of the parent comment is right - it is already difficult for old people to get used to their application, but if then every 6 month the applications for photos is changing it is a pain. So for my mother in law we go with Ubuntu LTS. I am a little bit worried how it will work out with the next LTS if it is going to be Unity :D

bluedanieru 15y ago

That would be wonderful if their products weren't so disappointing. You can't throw a stick around here without hitting someone who has tried Unity and hated it, uTouch is utterly irrelevant to Linux on the Desktop (I thought this is what Ubuntu was about but I have been proven wrong). Juju might go somewhere, I haven't used it, but they've definitely got some competition in that space and considering their tone-deaf responses to users in the past I'm not confident it'll get any traction. But this is all fine. They're trying new shit. I wouldn't complain if it was just that. It's the heel-digging that bothers me. It seems that Mark Shuttleworth has, rhetorically, tied his reputation somewhat to the success of these projects and especially to Unity. That is, it will be hard for him at this point to just say "well we tried something new, it didn't work out like we hoped, and now we're going to iterate on the next thing." If you listen to him it's as though their new desktop is already a rousing success. If you use Ubuntu and you are hoping they switch back to another desktop in a later release I would humbly suggest that you switch to a different OS. With a more traditional business model (i.e. if they sold the OS) they would immediately sack Mark and switch strategies with someone who isn't so married to its success, when sales fell off a cliff. That's not going to happen.

andrewvc 15y ago
You can't throw a stick around here without hitting someone who has tried Unity and hated it Maybe, but I, and a good number of other people really like it. There's sizable support for unity, and my guess is a lot of non-power users (who are silent on HN) like it even more.
- bluedanieru 15y ago
  Fair enough. What I'm getting at though is that if it doesn't work, we're probably stuck with it anyway. If it turns out that some people like it, but most don't, and that in the typical case it's turning people off Ubuntu rather than on to it, I suspect that isn't going to matter. It's a pet project, in other words.
  - mtts 15y ago

michael_dorfman 15y ago

I know it is a trivial point, but it's annoying to see somebody as bright as Shuttleworth misuse the phrase "begs the question."

Luyt 15y ago
WikiPedia on this: "Many English speakers use "begs the question" to mean "raises the question"; for example, "this year's deficit is half a trillion dollars, which begs the question: how are we ever going to balance the budget?" Many philosophers and prescriptive linguists deem such usage incorrect. Academic linguist Mark Liberman recommends avoiding the phrase entirely."
hasenj 15y ago
How is that a misuse? Meaning changes depending on context, it's a well known feature of natural languages.
- michael_dorfman 15y ago
  Meaning changes, but that doesn't mean that it is impossible for a native speaker to make an error. In this case, the phrase has a well-documented meaning (and a long history), and the usage here is clearly a misuse.
  - hasenj 15y ago
    When lots of people make the same error, it gradually becomes part of the language.

ZeroGravitas 15y ago

I like it. The last version had promise, but was somewhat half-finished. This time it's pretty good (though it still has bugs). I love all the changes that make tiny netbook screens more usable (auto-hiding dock, the dissapearing menu bar, easy access to other apps, e.g. music skip, via the menu bar, auto-hiding scrollbars). I'm somewhat unique in having a touchscreen netbook. It's mostly for the kids but the touch-able dock seems to be working for them. For me, I like that they've went with a power-user friendly keyboard launcher similar to Blacktree's Quicksilver for Mac OS X (which Apple later copied into Spotlight). Less importantly, I like the looks and the general simplification of the UI.