Ubuntu and the future of the Linux desktop

I will admit to being a Linux desktop nonbeliever. It feels a bit like yesterday's battle fought with the wrong weapons: geekiness rather than ease of use. There's a chance--still a slim one, but a chance nonetheless--that Ubuntu will change that.

In three separate places today I read reviews of Ubuntu's new desktop (7.10). Two were very complimentary, while the third suggested that Ubuntu give up.

Ubuntu upgrades the Linux desktop experience in two ways: user interface and form factor. While Novell continues to be the leader in traditional desktop replacements, Red Hat is reinventing the Linux desktop for new markets with its One Laptop Per Child involvement. Ubuntu is arguably doing the same, but is going one step further in disruption: Changing the notion of the Linux "desktop" completely:

Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth is thinking more iPhone than UPS tablet [or traditional desktop], though. "What's really interesting is that a lot of consumer electronics products that are being designed now are essentially a little PC," he told the New York Times. By mid- to late-2009, he said, "your impulse buy will be running Linux."

Mark is fighting the battle on his own turf, not Microsoft's, and he's doing it with style, as Stephen O'Grady points out:

...[O]ver the past few weeks, I've taken to using the multiple desktop concept quite heavily. This capability has been present in the desktop for years now, but the Compiz-fusion enabled 3D functionality in Ubuntu made them really usable to me for the first time by--get this--turning my desktop into a cube...

My experience, of course, is but a single datapoint. More pertinently, average users can hardly be expected to see the benefit to adapting to such a radical change in the UI paradigm. But each time I use the 3D desktop, I become convinced that users will have to meet the technology half way: the latter can certainly be more polished and user friendly, but consumers of the technology may have to be willing to think outside the traditional desktop, as it were.

Stephen is right, but what if the new paradigm comes in a new form factor: a consumer electronics product that fits the 3D user interface perfectly, rather than the traditional desktop experience?

Let's be clear on one thing: there's a very good reason that it is Ubuntu and not Novell (or Sun) that is actively targeting this emerging market. It doesn't have a legacy in traditional enterprise IT, so it enters the market with no preconceived notions as to what functions a desktop should serve.

So, Novell will continue to help traditional enterprises with traditional desktop needs (just at a lower price), and Red Hat will continue to bring a low-cost but still somewhat traditional desktop model to the developing world.

But Ubuntu has a clean slate, and the Linux desktop nonbeliever in me actually likes it. I like Red Hat's strategy, too, as it opens up new markets, markets with no calcified user experience to hurdle over. But I like Ubuntu's possibly more, because it means I'll be seeing Linux on devices that I use.

[hoplite3]

The disparate paths of Linux vendors

Reading this post, I was struck by the not-so-obvious divergent paths each major linux vendor has taken. Novell/SuSE = enterprise, Red Hat = developing markets and Ubuntu = new devices/forms.
It's not surprising to me as the Linux community is ALWAYS keen on avoiding duplication of efforts so I don't see picking Ubuntu over the others based on their focus as a solid reason. Each one discovers and contributes those discoveries back to the community so in reality, Novell/SuSE and Red Hat will benefit from Ubuntu's focus. And surely Ubuntu will benefit from discoveries/advances made by their competitors as well.
That's how the community works -- everyone can do their 'thing' but in the end, most if not all the code is GPL so we ALL benefit.
What you're seeing is the 'benefit' of leading -- once Ubuntu contributes source code back to projects, then the entire community will share in those benefits. Granted the packaging of their product differentiates them to start and does pose a clear advantage. The same can be said about the others.

[vexorian]

That third review

Done by a PCLinuxOS magazine and with so very odd conclussions, apparentally all 10 "windows" users would switch to PCLinuxOS (yeah right) and all 10 despised Ubuntu...

When in reality the stats seem to be a little different, of 10 windows users 8 would stay with windows, one go to openSUSE and one to ubuntu, but of course, who cares about real stats?

It looks to me the third review was just a PCLinuxOS advertisement, it is also full of straw man attacks against ubuntu, I am afraid to say that I will not consider that magazine a respectable source of information in the future.

[Matt Asay]

Good point on the divergent paths

@hoplite3: You're right. The different takes each vendor brings to the market end up helping them all, even if they each opt to deploy those updates in different ways. Great insight.