[Mikeb85]

Mark Shuttleworth is important to desktop Linux because he's the only one with vision, and the means to carry out that vision. He's making the tough, unpopular decisions that are advancing desktop Linux into the mainstream, and the only one with the balls to go at it alone.

Despite its issues (and it has them), Ubuntu is by far the most usable Linux variety, both on the desktop and server...

[keithpeter]

I would say Canonical rather than Shuttleworth himself personally, but that is a minor nitpick. I have used and like Unity.

One issue I really hope gets sorted before 14.04 is the LibreOffice menu bug

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libreoffice/+bug/7...

That is definitely under the 'fit and finish' heading! Imagine a future version of Ubuntu with Unity with that bug landing on the desktops of a few thousand users doing office work...

[mkr-hn]

Having the good sense to set up a system that can create Ubuntu and let it work is a kind of vision. I vaguely recall something about this being how Steve Jobs worked: he created a system where people could work on ideas, and he only acted as the gatekeeper who kept the bad ideas from reaching the market.

[keithpeter]

Yes, Shuttleworth has good leadership skills and has pushed an agenda all these years, not to mention putting quite a few $million where his mouth was.

Do you think Jobs would have allowed a MacOs X update to badly break the way MS Office worked?

[general_failure]

You mean apple and not jobs right?

[keithpeter]

The post three up mentioned Jobs being concerned to stop poor work reaching customers so I replied in kind.

Yes, for consistency with my original reply, I should have said Apple!

[themstheones]

Apparently you've never tried gentoo.

[SeanDav]

"Apparently you've never tried gentoo."

and this right here (sorry Parent, just using this as an example) is the reason that Linux has always been consigned to the ranks of the also-rans on the desktop. Someone will always come up with a reason why flavour x is better than flavour y. No matter what aspect of Linux is discussed, there will always be a significant proportion of users that think their flavour is better.

If you care about Linux on the desktop, you have got to see that people like Mark Shuttleworth are absolutely essential if Linux is ever to compete meaningfully on the desktop with Microsoft and Apple.

[muyuu]

I applaud Mark Shuttleworth and his vision.

Sadly we're missing "something else" other than Mark Shuttleworth.

What he does, is what most others are doing in a half-hearted, compromised way: providing a "packaged" system that works without much hassle and which is based in pretty much the same interaction principles of the 70s and 80s.

Being Open Source, Linux could do a lot more than that. But nobody explores these avenues, it just aspires to be Windows/OS2/Mac in the desktop and Unix in the server. Linux could exploit the fact that it doesn't need to hide its workings, that it can allow any level of customisation in the workflow, in the windows manager, in permission management, etc etc because the user owns the software running in his or her computer. This basically has been exploited just for virtualisation.

The problem with that is monetisation. But a lot of development in the Linux community is non-for-profit anyway.

[Raphael]

I am fascinated with the idea of customizable window managers. I haven't delved that deep, but the difference between XFCE and Unity is night and day. I can choose color schemes, window decorations, and make custom task bars. This should be table stakes for graphical interfaces.

[muyuu]

Have you checked Enlightenment lately? it's a decent shot but they seem short on workforce.

Also http://awesome.naquadah.org/ and https://code.google.com/p/wmii/

And that's just windows management which is probably the most obvious advantage of an all-open approach, but there are other things like user programmed priority systems, memory management etc which could potentially do a much more effective usage of the hardware than the standard monolithic opaque approach.

[phaemon]

> and this right here...is the reason that Linux has always been consigned to the ranks of the also-rans on the desktop. Someone will always come up with a reason why flavour x is better than flavour y.

No it isn't. The number of people who don't use Linux on their desktop, simply because someone else commented on a forum that they preferred one distribution over another, is utterly negligible. In fact, the theory is just ludicrous!

[scholia]

But it does impact companies that might otherwise try pre-installing Linux. Whichever distro they pick, they lose 100% of the Windows market plus the 97%* of the Linux market who bitch about not getting their fave version.

* Made up number but I remember Acer shipping netbooks with Linpus Lite...

[drcube]

Not at all. I bought a System 76 laptop that came pre-installed with Ubuntu. But I don't like Ubuntu.

However, I knew that Linux ran on it out of the box, and that meant I could run Slackware without worrying about missing drivers, etc. Also, it was a great way to support a company that supports free software.

To me, a company that sells pre-installed Linux on decent hardware has my admiration and support, regardless of the distro.

[phaemon]

No, it does not impact companies that might pre-install Linux, unless they perform their market research by picking random anecdotes from web forums.

They lose exactly 0% of Windows market by offering another option in Operating System (in fact, I tend to avoid hardware that only does Windows as it tends to be crap, so it might actually be a gain).

If you remember people bitching about Linpus Lite because it wasn't people's favourite distro, you remember wrong.

[scholia]

Actually, it does, and I know this from talking to their senior managers.

Otherwise (1) you're being illogical and (2) my memory is accurate.

[89vision]

"usable" "gentoo"

I think I detect a hint of sarcasm

[Schiphol]

You should list your phone number as the support hotline for those users of Ubuntu that take your word for it, and change to Gentoo to improve in usability. :)

[keithpeter]

Personal use: Someone at the level of confidence with IT required to install and configure gentoo would probably be able to install and configure just about any popular GNU/Linux distribution.

Corporate use: Ubuntu desktop can be deployed in various ways automatically. Canonical will sell configuration systems as well. There was at one point a desktop image available for corporate use that has the social and media integration removed. Not sure about gentoo in that area (if anyone has supported a large scale gentoo installation for end users, let us know!). I would imagine people would be looking more at CentOS or openSuse.

[itsjustpiper]

When you can buy a brand new laptop/tablet/device running gentoo, we can talk. Ubuntu got over that chicken/egg problem where OEMs don't want to ship linux on their computers because it's not popular, and it's not popular because OEMs don't ship linux on their computers. That, in and of itself, is a huge feat. Unfortunately, it can only really mean something for maybe a few years before casual desktop computing is "gone".

[Shorel]

I have tried it, it just takes a week to install, while Ubuntu takes some hours (I test several configurations until I'm happy with one).

[jb17]

How did it take you weeks to install? You basically just extract a small archive.

[Shorel]

Then you set some env vars, compile a bunch of applications for hours and then realize that your env vars were wrong or you want to change them for some reason and you have to start compiling all over again.

Unless you want some console-only LFS. But that's not me.

[korethr]

I'm confident that that was hyperbole, but the overall idea is not wrong. It takes much less time to install a pre-compiled binary from a .deb or .rpm file than it does to configure and compile source code, even if you have an especially powerful CPU to hand. Why? Your distro has already done the hard work of configuring and compiling for you.

[Shish2k]

libc alone took ~48 hours on my P2-266 with 32MB RAM...

(My gentoo experience may be somewhat out of date)

[stinos]

ugh, the emerge hell :] I'll take plain debian over that any day.

[TsiCClawOfLight]

or RHEL if you want the deployment stuff.

[wyz9]

I’m sorry, but what exactly is the vision of Mark Shuttleworth? The only one I can think of right now beyond pushing away other distributions would be Ubuntu as a universal operating system that works across mobile phones, tablets, servers and desktop computers, but that’s pretty recent.

[keithpeter]

"Linux for human beings" basically, and Linux that 'ordinary people' can use. That has been a fairly constant thread from the first tentative release (4.10 was it not?).

Shuttleworth has also been active in educational projects especially in South Africa.

[samspenc]

Totally agreed!