Ubuntu fans take note

[MickZA]

Things are really getting interesting over at Ubuntu these days, I'm getting the idea that they want to be known as the "bleeding edge" distro

At this rate all Fedora needs to do is have a LTS model and they'll become the stable distro of choice

Personally I think Mark is trying to carve a niche for Ubuntu in the tablet market, I was involved in a Naturally Speaking project some years back and can see where he might be going with this. ATM I'm not aware of any viable speech recognition projects in Linux Open Source so I assume the Ubuntu team have something special up their sleeve - possibly not Open Source.

Anyway, to paraphrase the Chinese, it seems we are living in interesting times - and I'm loving it

[antowan]

I cannot for the life of me understand why people fail to see the coming intensification of the touch revolution in the runup to the release of Windows 8... Speech recognition is cool in some aspects of computing, especially mobile and in car, but the desktop will move to touch this year. Focus on that Mark! In fact you could have led the pack with an early release of a suped up touch version of Linux!!!! Come on! Seriously!!?!

[acrobat]

Kudos to Mark, Ubuntu is constantly innovating in an effort to appeal to a wider audience. It is not enough to maintain the Linux marketshare, someone has to tackle new frontiers. Changes to the OS should not be viewed in isolation, but as a journey to a new interface. I like Fedora, Ubuntu and Mint and since 2007 I've been using them from time to time, especially on netbooks, but I stopped in 2010 because it was always the same boring interface. I had a look at Unity in its first itteration which was still unpolished, I liked it not as a Linux fan but it was something I could put on the desk of my mother's PC and she would be able to use it - and that really is what it boils down to - what interface will I give to someone who is not a PC freak, who hasn't used Linux before but who needs basic web access? This is the only way to increase the Linux footprint, don't aim to maintain, but to innovate for the rest. Two years from now, when Unity & Wayland are mature products and integrated into Ubuntu one will look back and see that Mark had the metal to break away and do the right thing.
Well done!

[ginggs]

At this rate all Fedora needs to do is have a LTS model and they'll become the stable distro of choice

They already do, it's called Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

[MickZA]

I cannot for the life of me understand why people fail to see the coming intensification of the touch revolution in the runup to the release of Windows 8... Speech recognition is cool in some aspects of computing, especially mobile and in car, but the desktop will move to touch this year. Focus on that Mark! In fact you could have led the pack with an early release of a suped up touch version of Linux!!!! Come on! Seriously!!?!

Sorry I don't see "touch" becoming a viable input method for the traditional desktop computer user (secretaries, call centres, programmers, authors etc) - I sit more than arms length away from my 24" monitor for comfortable viewing as it is. Plus my gnarly old fingers don't seem to work very well with touchscreen devices

I agree that touch on a tablet for the home user is "the next big thing" but this is a different market to what I regard as desktop computing. If Ubuntu can integrate voice recognition as an alternative to the tablets touch keyboard for traditional typing tasks I think Mark will have a winner on his hands. Obviously the accuracy of the VR software is the stumbling block but as the tablet is essentially a personal device it should only need training for one voice which simplifies things greatly.

[MickZA]

They already do, it's called Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Nah, if you're cheap like me it's called Centos

[garyc]

Voice control is obviously something that has been tried before. In the past it gave rise to an interesting security hole. Hijack sites would have audio commands built in which would play over the speakers and get picked up by the microphone. It was advised that if you used voice command that you turned your speakers off while away from the computer. Wonder if the new system will be able to circumvent this?

[dabbler]

Sorry I don't see "touch" becoming a viable input method for the traditional desktop computer user.

+1

I'm using Debian Squeeze KDE and happy. Hated the 'sudo' concept of Ubuntu.

[hawker]

I don't know why people want to dump Ubuntu so quickly just because they don't like the default DE.

You do you can install XFCE,KDE,LXDE,Openbox,E17,Gnome-Shell or just about any other DE, you don't have to use Unity.

[bekdik]

Yup, this is going to draw the Windows user over to Ubuntu.

Not.

[MickZA]

Yup, this is going to draw the Windows user over to Ubuntu.

Not.

You can't look at tablets in same way as desktops, they're essentially consumer fashion devices like smartphones. Purchasers are unlikely to be OS fanboys or ZDNet readers instead they'll buy based on fashion dictates and their peers opinions. They wont give a damn about what OS it's running just what it can do and the available apps.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Mark come out with a branded tablet UEFI locked to Ubuntu - thereby cocking a snoot at MS

[beans100]

Fedora!!!!!!!

[MickZA]

Fedora!!!!!!!

My favourite distro

[ghoti]

Unity works really well with my touch screen. Im not against it. All the other distro`s look the same, so if you dont like it, there are hundreds of desktops doing the same thing.

[Mouse]

Gradually Ubuntu has been removing many of the traditional control features

There's the problem. Removing the way things have been done, and adding a new way to do things would be fine if the new way was better. But it isn't.

If he chose to add new features that are easy to switch on and off, nobody would be complaining.