Comments on: Ubuntu, its time has come

As Microsoft adds more features in order to justify its existence/maintenance renewals, watch for Ubuntu to fill the gap with an easy-to-use, consumer-facing product line.

[Motyoj]

I love Unbuntu. I have used it since Dapper Drake and found it easier to use than Windows and a whole lot more fun. I have never gotten any viruses or malware using it and never had to hose everything and re-install all my applications. The price is right too. Using Linux also gives a user a better idea of what's going on with your computer and how the software works. I am particularly amazed at how my hardware is found, setup, and the lack of input from the user to install many, many, drivers. Most installations need a little tweaking but that's part of the fun. Much easier to use the software than trying to get it to work on Windows and to some extent OS X, although I do like Leopard. I am M$ free now and have no plans on returning to that nightmare.

[jubbajubba]

Matt, in the spirit of O'Reilly I have observed that Ubuntu is starting to lose it's appeal to the alpha geeks, and folks in those companies you mention: Intel, IBM, Sun, even Dell. The problem is two fold;

* The hype is out in front of the delivery, or at least Canonical's current ability to deliver. Alpha geeks are seeing serious issues of 'robustness' - a collection of issues around QA, bug fixes, failed upgrades, stupid Ubuntu policies etc. Some of the issues are generic problems, and the over hype exacurbates, and others are just structural issues with Canonical / Ubuntu development process and understaffing.

* A realisation that relative to other players, e.g. RH, Novell, or even Sun, Ubuntu don't really contribute anything back into the various communities (kernel, GNOME / KDE, Firefox, OOo). For example, for a company that is supposedly 'ignoring the desktop' RH have quite a big desktop team that dwarfs Canonical's team - same for Novell and Sun. Ask yourself this: Of all the great features in Ubuntu, which were developed by Canonical? Easy wireless setup - RH/Novell (mostly), OpenOffice - Sun/Novell (IBM?), Firefox - Mozilla/RH/Novell, F-spot - Novell, Evolution - Novell, Totem - RH, Accessibility - Sun. Of course all those projects had varying levels of community contribution. Granted, Canonical have done a great job making all that easy to install and setup and adding some polish, but people are starting ask: What are they contributing back?

Now tihs doesn't mean much for Ubuntu / Canonical in the short term. They have a huge fanbase and positive press and momentum, plus none of this is unfixable. But if they continue to lose appeal to alpha geeks (many of whom are migrating back to Debian, or trying out Fedora, now that RH are screwing that up less) then their longterm picture isn't so rosy.

[odubtaig]

As for what they're contributing back, there's a couple of distros forked in their entirety from Ubuntu.



Ubuntu itself has mainly been about taking what already exists and making it easier to use, which is something I've always thought we could do with a great deal more of, this 'polish'



If other distros can easily take this ease of use and integrate it back into their own efforts then that would be a contribution worthy in and of itself.



But yes, stability has been an issue over the last year; when I select that I have a 1680x1050 screen I explicitly do no want to be limited to a 1440x900 max resolution, the stupid just burns. User friendly interfaces are all very well, but they're no use if you're having to fight the computer just to get it to do the most basic things.

[TxemiC]

Vista is the beginning of the end for Microsoft. Will home users switch to Ubuntu or Mac?

http://tech-talk.biz/2008/04/21/microsoft-apocalypse-2018/

[kiwibuntu]

It would be a shame if some "alpha geeks" felt they couldn't continue working on Ubuntu. But it should be remembered that the popularity of Ubuntu is boosting Linux as a whole (not least of all Debian). The more widespread Linux is, the better the hardware support we can expect, the better the documentation, and so on. And Ubuntu/Canonical represents the best hope for Linux long-term in my view.