ubuntu

The disconnect between the tech elite and Main Street

Tim O'Reilly has built a compelling media business by "watching the alpha geeks" and using them as a compass to determine where the mainstream market will follow. Other companies like Google and Facebook, however, seem intent on building their own empires by largely ignoring this geek elite.

It turns out that the wants and needs of mainstream users can differ significantly from those of the technology elite. Geoffrey Moore figured this out years ago in his classic Crossing the Chasm.

Apparently some people missed the memo.

Silicon Valley and the techno-babblers have expressed dismay at Facebook's … Read more

Lucid Lynx paves way for Ubuntu shake-up

Canonical has published the release candidate for Ubuntu 10.04--code-named Lucid Lynx--which offers a new look, better integration with cloud infrastructure, and features designed to be more consumer-friendly.

The release on Thursday came two weeks after the beta was made available for public testing. The OS update is now more or less complete, Canonical said. "We consider this release candidate to be complete, stable and suitable for testing by any user," Ubuntu release manager Steve Langasek said in a statement.

The release leaves Canonical free to aim for more radical changes with the Ubuntu version scheduled for completion … Read more

Analyst: New developer demographics favor Linux, PHP

COLUMBIA, S.C.--Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer might agree with The Who that "the kids are alright," but he's unlikely to appreciate their changing taste in programming languages and operating systems. But then, neither will Oracle CEO Larry Ellison.

After all, according to at the Forrester analyst Jeffrey Hammond, speaking here Thursday at the 2010 Palmetto Open Source Conference, the rising generation of developers are more familiar with Ruby and PHP than Java or .Net, and increasingly opt to develop and deploy enterprise and Web applications on Linux rather than Windows or Unix.

The beginning of the … Read more

Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat to herald shake-up

Ubuntu version 10.10 is set for release in October, will be dubbed Maverick Meerkat, and will bring a gamut of changes to the open-source desktop operating system, according to Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth.

Ubuntu version 10.04--called Lucid Lynx--is set for release on April 29 and is focused on refining existing technology. In a blog post late last week, Shuttleworth encouraged developers to be a "little radical" in their approach to version 10.10.

A major focus of version 10.10 will be updating the Gnome 2.x series user interface to Gnome 3.0.

Read … Read more

Meet Ubuntu Linux's new CEO (Q&A)

LONDON--Jane Silber has been chief executive of Canonical for 11 days.

But she's no outsider swooping in to take over Ubuntu Linux's corporate sponsor. She joined Canonical in June 2004, two months after previous CEO Mark Shuttleworth founded the company with a few programmers he recruited from the Debian Linux project on which Ubuntu is based.

Since then Canonical has grown to about 320 employees and has made Ubuntu a major presence in the world of Linux--version 10.04, one of the important "long-term support" versions that arrives every two years, is due in April. It'… Read more

Buzz Out Loud Podcast 1175: But I don't WANNA Twitter!

New music stars are finally being told to social network buy the record labels and now they're throwing a fit. Benito thinks they're just being all rock and roll and disrespecting authority. We also discover buttocks meatloaf. Don't ask. And we talk about Apple's child labor problems and Sony's PS3 glitches. Tomorrow Molly is back and Jason too!

Subscribe with iTunes (audio) Subscribe with iTunes (video) Subscribe with RSS (audio) Subscribe with RSS (video) EPISODE 1175

Top Stories

Apple: Underage Workers May Have Built Your iPhone http://www.pcworld.com/article/190384/apple_underage_workers_may_have_built_your_iphone.html

Mysterious … Read more

What today's tech is teaching tomorrow's workforce

The technology we call innovative will seem pedestrian to our children.

From touch screens to open source, our kids are being conditioned to interact with technology in ways we hardly expected even a decade ago, despite what "The Jetsons" foreshadowed back in the '60s.

One thing seems increasingly clear: our children are not being conditioned to buy Microsoft. Not anymore.

This thought came to me from two directions yesterday. The first was a text message my 13-year old daughter sent me:

BTW bring more Ubuntu stickers if possible. I wore my Ubuntu shirt today and a ton of … Read more

From Alfresco to Canonical

After more than four years at Alfresco, I have joined Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu Linux distribution, as its chief operating officer.

You can read Canonical's announcement of my appointment here, as well Alfresco's here.

I am excited, humbled, and, candidly, torn by this opportunity.

In late 2005, John Powell and John Newton, the co-founders of Alfresco, took a chance on me, an open-source evangelist at Novell. I was the 13th employee and the company's first U.S. employee. My prior history had been with embedded Linux (Lineo) and semiconductors/silicon (Mitsui), but they gave me … Read more

Which open-source vendors can afford the cloud?

Cost and quality are two driving factors for open source's role as the bedrock for public cloud computing. Google, Amazon, and other public cloud providers simply can't compete with expensive, proprietary license-burdened infrastructure. They need open source.

As cloud computing matures and moves from public to private clouds, however, we may see enterprises flock to free (as in cost) and open (as in freedom) infrastructure, too.

What would this mean for subscription-based open-source vendors?

It might not be pretty. Tim O'Reilly pointed out nearly two years ago that

almost all of the software stacks running on cloud … Read more