linux desktop

Canonical, creator of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, has taken its share of criticism for not being innovative enough for some in the Linux community. In 2010, however, Canonical's focus on design and packaging will come to be seen as a seriously shrewd strategy as it helps to take Linux to the masses.

The reason? The innovation that pays is changing, and UI matters more and more.

When we think of innovation, we normally think of traditional research and development (R&D), complete with a white-coated scientist or pizza-gobbling engineer.

As Apple, Google, and other highly successful software companies … Read more

Linux users are known for being a somewhat finicky lot. Despite broader application support for Windows and a better user experience in Mac OS X, Linux "desktop" users swear by the open-source operating system (and sometimes swear at its competitors).

It's therefore somewhat telling that Linux users overwhelmingly choose Google as their preferred search engine, according to data released today by Chitika, an online advertising network. Chitika analyzed data from 163 million searches across its advertising network between July 30 and August 16, and came up with the following:

Despite the concerns about Google and privacy and … Read more

There are companies like Intel, Canonical, Novell, etc., that are desperately trying to make Linux-based personal computers easier to use. Unfortunately, as Ubuntu fan Steven Rosenberg points out, there are often far too many decisions a lay user must make to make Linux just work for the average user.

Rosenberg was struggling to play music on his Ubuntu machine (you know, one of those obscure activities that only the geek elite do ;-), and struggled because of Canonical's efforts to balance ease of use with free-software purists' desire to have no proprietary codecs. The result is a mess:

But … Read more

In open source or in product development generally, one of the biggest mistakes is to take on a deeply entrenched incumbent on its own turf. Almost inevitably, if you play someone else's game, even if you're a little cheaper/faster/better, you're going to lose. Inertia favors the incumbent, and there's a whole lot of inertia involved in switching vendors.

For this reason, I agree wholeheartedly with Bill Weinberg's suggestion that Linux's opportunity in Netbooks is to focus on the mobile side of the market, rather than bringing a traditional, personal computer bent to … Read more

Revolutions don't always roil and boil toward a noisy, violent fracas. Sometimes they don't even ripple the surface.

Such is the Ubuntu Netbook revolution, which makes waves in the Linux community--and really nowhere else. Not publicly, at least.

I was fortunate to spend two hours on Tuesday night with Chris Kenyon, head of Canonical's Ubuntu business for original-equipment manufacturing, or OEM. Kenyon, in addition to being a fellow Arsenal fanatic, is also Ubuntu's point man for its quiet, but nonetheless dramatic, Netbook revolution.

Kenyon, who appeared a placid, affable chap when we first met outside Arsenal stadium … Read more

While evangelists of Linux distributions built for personal computers (i.e., "Linux desktops") point to Netbooks as an indication of renewed life in their chances to compete for consumers, new data suggests that this may be a fool's hope.

Instead, such advocates would do well to follow the leads of Canonical and Red Hat, as they respectively extend the desktop with cloud services and deliver desktop functionality from the cloud.

Although it's true that roughly 30 percent of Dell Inspiron 9s Netbooks run Ubuntu Linux, it's equally true that about 90 percent of Netbooks run … Read more

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 … Read more

One of the great challenges to Linux adoption is inertia. Many Windows users, for example, have spent decades learning and using the operating system: they don't want to be bothered with moving to and learning another.

Those are fogies like you and me. Kids, however, are a tabula rosa.

Taking advantage of that concept is Qimo, a desktop operating system geared toward kids that is based on the Ubuntu distribution of Linux. Developed by a husband-and-wife team Brian and Michelle Hall, Qimo was released in mid-February.

Getting kids into a new operating environment lets them, not Microsoft or any … Read more

I admit that I nearly got caught up in my former colleague James Urquhart's excellent analysis of Canonical's Ubuntu 9.10 release, code-named Karmic Koala. I saw the word "open" laced heavily through the post, and given Canonical's commitment to fully open-source Ubuntu experience, I played along.

But something doesn't quite fit in Canonical's story.

It's called Amazon.com. Yes, Ubuntu 9.10 will give users an option to build its own Elastic Compute Cloud-style service, using open-source Eucalyptus (or another cloud provider), but the intent certainly seems to seamlessly plug users … Read more