Canonical seeks designers to primp Ubuntu

Canonical, the leading backer of the Ubuntu version of Linux, is hiring a team to help make open-source software on the desktop more appealing and easier to use.

The company plans to sign up designers and specialists in user experience and interaction to lead Canonical's work on usability and to contribute to other free and open-source desktop-environment projects, including Gnome and KDE, Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical chief executive and founder of the Ubuntu project, said in a blog post Wednesday.

He wrote: "We are hiring a team who will work on X, OpenGL, GTK, Qt, Gnome and KDE, with a view to doing some of the heavy lifting required to turn those desktop-experience ideas into reality."

Shuttleworth has said recently that usability is the top priority for open-source software. Free Linux desktops should have "a user experience that can compete with Apple in two years", he said at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention last week.

Some open-source promoters have backed Shuttleworth but said businesses have a different priority to the consumers Ubuntu is aimed at.

Mark Taylor, founder of the Open Source Consortium, said: "He's bang on the money. Linux absolutely needs more usability. Having said that, it's not that hard to find," pointing to the strides made by the Gnome and KDE user interfaces.

However, Taylor cautioned against the open-source movement taking too rigid a line with developers on usability requirements. "I don't believe we need one desktop to rule them all," he said.

Consumers need a great user experience more than businesses do, Taylor said. IT managers are more likely to use Linux on servers than on desktops. Any desktop implementations they do work with are designed to lock the system down and keep the user within set applications and policies. "Even when they use a Linux desktop, delivering a user experience is not high on the agenda," Taylor said.

Shuttleworth said that the freedom of open-source software, where developers are free to develop as they wish, can lead to user interfaces that are "patchy and inconsistent" between applications and operating systems, he said.

Paul Adams, a member of KDE e.V., the 'board' of the KDE project, said: "One of the biggest problems in the free-software world is that so many objects are different, depending on the different desktops."

For instance, Ubuntu itself is normally available with the Gnome desktop interface, but one version ships with KDE. Both Ubuntu versions include OpenOffice, which is based on the GTK graphics library. GTK is also used by Gnome, so OpenOffice in KDE would have a different 'open' dialogue to that on the desktop.

"In KDE, we are looking at producing a cross-desktop, human-interface guideline set, so that, as people move between Gnome and KDE, they won't be shocked to see that the dialogues are different," said Adams, who is also projects director at UK open-source company Sirius. That cross-desktop project, led by Celeste Lyn Paul of User-Centred Design, could create guidelines for common UI features.

Adams said: "We already have a very usable experience. Are we up there with the Mac desktop? Probably not. But we have achieved something which is very mature and usable."

Peter Judge of Silicon.com reported from London.

[RompStar_420]

yay!!! that's what I am talking about baby! viva Ubuntu, I love it.

[inachu]

the worst thing that was really only very very minor in my usage of Linux was the mouse arrow was pointing the opposite direction from what we are all used to in the windows world.

[RompStar_420]

I have two Ubuntu Servers, one runs the 64bit AMD version of 8.04 and the other the 32-bit.

On the 32bit I run Oracle 11g R1 - runs great!!!

and on the 64 I run the LAMP system and MySQL.

I would never, ever! go back to windows.

I did hear some good things about Server 2007, but I have not seen it my self yet.

The licensing is too confusing, with Windows you have to have a license for everything, I can't take one step forward without thinking about the licensing, it sucks basically.

I have been using Linux with 1992 when everyone told me that I was crazy, who's crazy now you monkeys!!!

[wbeckle]

making KDE and GNOME look like and behave like each other defeats the purpose of having them both installed. Why not just choose one and stick to it.

[Shukkun]

They wouldn't necessarily look or behave in the same way, after all, there are so many underlying differences between them it would be very hard to close to impossible