VIDEO | New FREE OS Taking on Bill Gates (More4 News)

[redacted]

Internet millionnaire Mark Shuttleworth has spoken to More4 News over his plans to create a rival to Microsoft.

When you've made £400m before your 30th birthday -you'd probably want to spend the rest of your days living the high life.

But not Mark Shuttleworth who made his fortune when he sold off his internet security company four years ago.

Since then, he has given half of it to charity and bought a £13m pound ticket to space station.

Now he's working hard to create a free software - which he hopes will rival Mircosoft. He has given a rare interview to More 4 News.

http://www.channel4.com/more4/news/news-opinion-feature.jsp?id=350

First broadcast Tue 8 Aug 2006

[Rainscents]

1. Alright!

[rawtribe]

2. I put Ubuntu

on my Toshiba laptop (duel boot). I find myself using it more then XP.

http://www.ubuntu.com/

[redacted]

4. rawtribe, how did you set up the dual boot?

Did you have to partition the drive?

[rawtribe]

5. My laptop has two drives

so I installed Ubuntu linux on the second drive. The installer did all the partitioning of the second drive. The nice thing about Ubuntu is he installer is on the live CD so you can try it before you install it on your Hd.

[physioex]

3. Just browsing their web site....

Looks like a Linux based OS. There are already several flavors available, so what is so new about this?

[Nomad559]

6. It's not new

Ubuntu has been around for awhile.

I downloaded Ubuntu 6061 LTS a couple of days ago, but I haven't Installed It yet. I was never Impressed with earlier builds of Ubuntu, and I don't expect much from this build.

:)

[alcibiades_mystery]

7. It's supposedly a more user-friendly Linux distro

That's why the slogan is "Linux for human beings."

I dual-boot Ubuntu on my desktop, and it really is like driving a stick rather than an automatic: a bit more work, but considerably more control. One thing: Linux geeks have to start being more attentive to appearance issues. There's no doubt in my mind that Linux focuses on function, and geeks generally favor function, so muchg so tht many I've spoken to despise eye-candy, etc. All well and good, I suppose, bu the average user has a different aesthetic than most geeks, and does favor the bright and shiny. No Linux distro I've ever used really matches XP or Apple in terms of aesthetics. They're getting there, but it's always a secondary consideration. This is especially true when you start playing with the skinning options for XP (see WinCustomize, etc). Yes, Linux is getting there, again, and sites like GnomeLooks.org and others are starting to change the way the Linux desktop looks, but it's still a lag, and it points up a different value systm. Hey, at the end of the day (coporate speak), I prefer functionality over aesthetics for my tools as well. But aesthetics COUNT, and count big, so I think great strides could be made by focusing more on aesthetics for OS's like ubuntu, etc. This goes for individual F/OSS programs as well (the Office 2007 programs just plain look better than any of the Open Office programs; the new Windows Media Player beta just plain looks better than any F/OSS media player, and they're doing interesting things with user-interface...don't know whether they are better interface features, although I think they are better on the new WMP).

"Linux for human beings" is a good idea. I want my Mom to use Ubuntu. I really do. But there are two approches for the Linux folks. They can try to get everyone to see the world (and the software environment) the way THEY see it, with function trumping form to the severe deficit of form, or they can work to improve their aesthetics and interfaces while retaining superior function. The typical geek disdain for the "end-user" and the "end-user's" silly preoccuptions (aesthetics) has thus far caused the community to tend towards the former, but hopefully that will change.

[Irreverend IX]

9. "Severe deficit of form?"

Ubuntu lacks eye candy compared to XP and OSX in some areas, but I've found it to be a much more usable system overall. Gnome implements multiple desktops by default; this can be done in XP and OSX, but only via clunky third-party programs. The default two-panel layout in Ubuntu's Gnome is a great way to organize tasks that doesn't take up excessive screen space, and the way I've customized my Gnome panels makes them a lot easier to use than any Windows or Mac environment I've encountered.

XP has an ugly plastic panel with huge taskbar buttons, tiny system tray icons, an awkward start menu and no way to create a second panel. OSX's dock looks cute if you only have 5 or 6 items in it, but it gets unusable when you place large numbers of icons inside, just as OSX's overall usability breaks down catastrophically when you have more than 10 or 11 windows open. The multiple desktops and plentiful taskbar space in Ubuntu allow me to keep (counting...) 62 windows open as of right now with no difficulty. If I worked in XP or OSX the way I worked in Ubuntu, it'd drive me crazy.

And if you want eye candy in Linux, you can get it if you're willing to manually install some bleeding-edge graphics packages. The compiz extensions in Ubuntu result in a much cooler desktop than anything I've seen in OSX, with windows and tooltips rippling like pieces of floating paper as you move them. And you don't need a $2000 graphics card to run it like you will with Vista.

If you want to see how cool Linux can look, check out the desktop shots posted here: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=227244

[alcibiades_mystery]

11. Oh, I do all the eye-candy in Ubuntu

Trust me, I'm far from a Windows or OSX guy. But I think that MS and Apple give more consideration to aesthetics than you can get in Gnome, KDE, or in most F/OSS programs.

[alfredo]

12. FYI Leopard 10.5 will have multiple desktops.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/spaces.html

I use Desktopmanager and it works well. Others use Virtue Desktop which is built using Destopmanager code.

I have twenty items in my dock. I see no problems with it. I do have similar items in a folders. I right click a folder in the dock and it shows everything in that folder and launch what I need to launch. Each finder window has a dock along the left side and that relives some of the need for putting stuff in the dock. It's a single click for launch.




BTW, I am an old Linux user, but with OSX I can use the apps I used in Linux (GIMP, Scribus, Inkscape, Open Office, Xephem) The above image was uploaded using the terminal.

[tabatha]

8. South Africa and Collaboration

Africa is becoming aware of the potential of helping others through open source in the digital age:

"The Commons-sense: Towards an African Digital Information Commons project is run out of the Creative Commons South Africa office at the Link Centre, Wits University. The ‘Commons-sense’ project develops tools for African organisations and individuals to make copyright work in the service of economic development, public heritage and a shared history for all. Funded by the IDRC, it consists of a) a set of training materials on developing a copyright policy for your organisation, b) a researched wiki on the projects, concepts and issues surrounding alternative intellectual property rights in Africa and c) a competition to build the awareness of the creative potential of Creative Commons in Africa. As part of the project, the Link Centre hosted an international conference on the African Digital Information Commons in May, 2005. Go to www.commons-sense.org to find out more!"

http://za.creativecommons.org/learn/

"Living by the philosophy of ‘ubuntu’, South Africans have always created in collaborative groups. ‘Ubuntu’ is most effectively encapsulated in the phrase: ‘umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu’, which can be roughly translated as: "a person is a person through other people" or "I am what I am because of you". "

[originalpckelly]

10. I am using FreeBSD/GNOME to type this...

Let me tell you, there are some things I absolutely love about free operating systems, but there is one big problem that I know all people hate: no software!!! (And spartan drivers so you can use your peripherals with your computer.)

Anyone who wants to create another operating system that is free must get developers of major software programs to support it.