Ubuntu 'stagnation' is really innovation
Linux guru Keir Thomas, in a blog post for PC World, argues that the Linux distribution and Mozilla's Firefox browser have forgotten themselves in the rush to popularity. Or, rather, they've forgotten their core values which, in both cases, translates into forgetting the importance of end users.
I can't agree.
Thomas' biggest complaint about Firefox is that it has slowed down, which seems an odd complaint, given how much faster Firefox 3 is (and Firefox Minefield is mind-numbingly fast).
But his complaints about Ubuntu seem even wider off the mark:
It seems there will be almost no new end-user features in the 9.04 release of Ubuntu...The most exciting thing is OpenOffice.org 3.0 and, well, that's not actually very exciting...It appears that, apart from a snazzy graphical boot, the desktop experience will be left to stagnate once again.
As with most Ubuntu releases, there will probably be furious tweaking under the hood, or in the back-room support services, but this means nothing, if it isn't visible, and if it doesn't improve the end-user experience. Ubuntu has, above all, always been a 100 percent end-user distro, which arguably makes it unique in the world of Linux.
Such criticism misses the mark, because it misses the point of what the desktop operating system has become or, rather, what it's becoming. Canonical's latest Ubuntu release may not have added new menus or graphics, but it made big news on the server side by making Ubuntu friendly to cloud computing. That is the point.
Whether you prefer Mac, Windows, or Linux for your desktop client, when was the last time that you saw big improvements? I'm a big Mac fan, but it has been years since Apple introduced something (Expose, in my case) that really wowed me and changed the way I use my computer.
This is why Apple's next Mac release, Snow Leopard, is mostly focused on the same under-the-hood tinkering for which Thomas rejects Ubuntu's Jaunty Jackalope release. Microsoft's Vista had its problems, but perhaps the biggest was that it gave no compelling reason to leave XP.
I believe we've tapped out the desktop metaphor.
If this is correct, Canonical should get plaudits, not criticism, for recognizing the desktop operating-system stalemate and pushing Ubuntu into the cloud, where there's still a great deal of room to innovate by tying desktop performance into cloud services flexibility.
The Linux desktop is dead, and has been dying for a long time. That's OK because it's not alone. Windows and the Mac are also tenants in the desktop's senior care center.
As users, we should expect more "under the hood" tinkering in Windows, Mac, and Linux releases, as each gears up for the next wave of cloud services competition. Desktop competition, in other words, isn't dead. It's just entering a new phase.
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Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
What Ubuntu needs is EXTREME eye candy, out-of-the-box, which I understand is planned for 9.10. The current out-of-box impression of Ubuntu is horrible (colors, etc.), compared to OS X & Vista, and I am sure that is what turns some people off...regardless if they can change it and regardless if the software quality is excellent.
Come this October, there should be several great desktop options for users (Ubuntu 9.10, Windows 7, OS X, Android, etc.).
Then there were those two very pretty but utterly fatal screensavers (I forget the names, one looked like a cubist painting in progress) which froze everything if they ran on top of compiz.
So, indeed... STOP "improving" software! Do things like make it much faster, add new and compatible features, etc. But don't redesign everything all the time.
The remaining problems with Linux adoption have everything to do with apps beyond the OS - you know, the actual things that people do with their computers. A lot of people do more than just browse the net and write documents and edit code. There are some great free software apps and also a few decent proprietary apps, but there are still glaring, gaping app holes that prevent many people from being able to adopt Linux. There is no really decent hi-def video editor yet, free or paid for. There are still problems with access to things like Netflix (Windows only) and a number of other media outlets lie Napster (Windows only). Quite a few professions like high end graphics, CAD in engineering and architecture, legal and accounting software, etc etc are not well represented at the top end or in the middle even.
Any number of fantastic improvements to the OS itself by the guys at Ubuntu are not gonna solve these app holes in the slightest.
If Mark Shuttleworth and co. want to promote the Linux desktop, they would at this point be much better off leaving their OS-centric efforts for a while and going out to key projects like Gimp and Lumiera and Kdenlive and Inkscape and Scribus etc and putting significant time and money and development resources into these, because without some serious improvement in the apps dept., Linux will indeed stagnate.
Linux is stable, fast, pretty and useable for day to day needs BUT the glaring lack of professional level software in many areas is a serious drawback.
That and problems that remain when doing simple things like installing new hardware or software which still require terminal / command line sessions etc. which is inexcusable in 2009.
If Linux is really to take on Windows and Mac OSX the command line needs never to be required for most users.
And perhaps what is really needed is a killer app that is only on Linux ....sounds nasty but that is why people use Windows or Mac...because they do something or something better than any alternative.
There is no other OS where basically every app is packaged and available on one screen to be clicked and downloaded for free. Where every app will be kept up to date, automatically if you want. Where each app is given equal footing with every other competing app. There are well over 25 THOUSAND packages in my Ubuntu Intrepid repositories. What makes Linux killer is that every single user can user every single piece of free software, no matter how elaborate nor how trivial. That's pretty killer.
BUT again - this killer app-of-all-apps would only truly be killer if ALL THE APPS WERE THERE. And we come back to my point number one . . .
I used to be a subscriber until I switched fully Linux. However, a recent email informed me that Napster now works in the browser.
This is confirmed on their site - 'Operating system PC/Windows, Mac, Linux.'
The more tweaking under the hood the better I say. Now, if they can just sort out proper screen resolution and frequency detection (I'm lucky, I've got an nVidia chip) I may well squee like a little girl when the next LTS release comes out.
About the only real feature that I want to see that's "above the hood" is getting Empathy up to speed and in use instead of Pidgin, but that, again, involves a lot of under-the-hood work in the Telepathy communication library.
Once we see Telepathy and GStreamer tied into every application, Gnome (and Ubuntu) will really shine as a desktop, just in time for the death of desktops and the move to smart phones and MIDs. LOL.
In Europe we like kde:)
1. They need to get a set base of Apps like Apple has with iLife and iWork and get those up to snuff and make people want and need them.
2. Marketing. They need to get Ubuntu on PC's and then sell those PC's on places like QVC.
3. Speed. They need to make it so that you never see txt in the boot up process and that Linux boots up faster and smoother.
4. Better server side apps. They need "Active Directory" for linux tied in with file and print sharing like with Windows server.
If a company like Ubuntu can get these things down. Esp Marketing and Directory services on the server side. I think Ubuntu can really replace Windows like the Mac OS can. They really need to make Ubuntu run like the Mac OS without the Mac hardware.
2. Yes. There has been next to no marketing of Desktop Linux, which, I guess, goes to show the relationship the OEMs have with Microsoft. I don't know how the Linux distributors would compete with that sort of money.
3. This is well on its way to being solved. The basics are there in Fedora 10. More graphics driver support and speed are needed and this is the focus of Fedora 11 and other upcoming distro releases.
4. This stuff is also well on its way. The new versions of Samba and Open Exchange make significant steps toward better integration with Windows networking.
Bottom line is that I *like* stability. Any change that cause my machine to stop working is unacceptable, no matter what the excuse. If that means Ubuntu doesn't come up with a new "Wow!" every 6 months, then so be it. I'll stick to the version that works, and be perfectly satisfied
"...end-user distro, which arguably makes it unique in the world of Linux."
have you ever tried:
http://Vixta.org
or
http://Simplis.org
apsantos
- by fuguroojin March 4, 2009 10:52 AM PST
- Well said prototerm. I do not need bling. I do need to know that when I buy new hardware it will work out of box with Ubuntu. I do need to know that the hardware that I have working with the present release will work with the next release. Case in point: Upgrade from Hardy to Intrepid broke my web cam use with Skype. Not Skype's fault, and not acceptable.
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