Comments on: Ubuntu: The Open Source Apple Challenger?

By: The Doctor

The Doctor — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 09:25:17 +0000

I don’t quite follow Shuttleworth’s statement committing more eyecandy to Ubuntu. I can customize every aspect to my preferences. Currently using 8.10 w/ Compiz (0.70 ?), it was just a matter of adding AWN & volia! I now have a better “experience” than anything offered in Win 7 or OSX (yes, I’ve used them both frequently).

That’s not saying Gnome/Nautilus/Ubuntu integration is perfect, but really, the “bugs” aren’t even worth mentioning compared to my experiences in those “traditional” systems.

Rather than Canonical opening a retail shop (which seems to be a rather wasteful “trend”), I’d prefer they work close w/ hardware manufacturer’s to provide proper non-propriety drivers (I’m looking @ you Nvidia).

Regarding Psystar, they’re using “open source”… sure (the quotes are for sarcasm).

Take a look @ System76. I can’t recall the name, but there’s another company in California. A bit of a shame Canonical’s “System Builder” program page really gives no useful info about it’s enrollment requirements and process.

Because @ the end of the day, all the eyecandy in the world doesn’t matter if the system isn’t stable.

By: Anton32828

Anton32828 — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 02:14:08 +0000

I totally agree with your idea of a “Canonical Store” or similar Gnu/Linux effort. I bought an HP Mini 110 recently on clearance sale (WinXP version). I chose that over other cheap netbooks precisely because I knew HP offered pre-installed Linux at one point for that model. I reasoned that they had done the work to integrate their hardware with Linux, therefore it would be easy for me to install Ubuntu on the machine. In general this was true, but I continue to have annoying little sound glitches (which is how I found your site ). That just doesn’t happen with OS-X. The reason OS-X “just works” is tight hardware / software integration.

By: John Ward

John Ward — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:07:31 +0000

The problem is, the eye-candy on OS X runs well because of this hardware and software integration. This would not be the case with Gnome, certainly not current Gnome and Ubuntu integration does not exist. Sometimes I wish for it and sometimes I love the modularity. But asking the Linux community to go down the road of non-modularity (which is what it will ultimately be) will be difficult.

By: NewJack

NewJack — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 04:46:38 +0000

Just because Shuttleworth says he wants Ubuntu to be better looking than OS X in 2 years means one thing….. We need something flashy to bring in the typical “sheep” computer user. Typical computer purchasers like eye-candy, it is a fact. That does not mean you can’t customize the UI to however you want it.

I like some eye-candy personally so I can show off to my “sheep” user friends who just take a stock PC from Best Buy or Dell and leave it as is because they are afraid to “break” their systems. Linux is all about choice and no matter how “pretty” it becomes, you can still make it what you want.

By: Adam

Adam — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 13:02:18 +0000

“Mark Shuttleworth [says] he wants to make Ubuntu better-looking than OS X in the next two years”

My greatest fear when I read this is that Ubuntu will end up with tons more “eye-candy”. I have seen Mac OS-X and I hate the animated whiz-bang nonsense interface. It is as bad as Vista Aero.

We are using Ubuntu 8.04 right now. We love the Gnome desktop because it is so simple, basic and utilitarian. That is the look we like, because it is functional.

I would prefer that if people want “eye candy” they use Kubuntu and KDE 4 and leave us utilitarians to Gnome and Ubuntu.

“Perfection is not achieved when there is nothing left to add; perfection is achieved when there is nothing left to take away.” – Zen proverb