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During a phone briefing today, Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth described the Ubuntu 9.10 desktop, server and cloud strategy to members of the IT media. WorksWithU tuned in and posed some key questions to Shuttleworth. Here are 10 highlights from the call.
As you’ll recall, Ubuntu 9.10 is scheduled to debut Oct. 29. Shuttleworth’s thoughts from today’s call included:
1. The User Experience: “We wanted to bring design and user experience to [the Linux] desktop.” Shuttleworth believes Ubuntu 9.10 achieves those goals.
2. Competition with Microsoft, Windows 7: Shuttleworth concedes that Windows 7 is impressive but “it’s still proprietary and expensive.” Also, he says, OEMs have “no desire” to go back to a single-vendor operating system market.
3. On the Netbook Market: Shuttleworth concedes that Microsoft “clawed its way” back dramatically in the U.S. netbook market with Windows XP. But he hopes once the Windows 7 dust settles, vendors and users alike will realize Ubuntu netbooks are a natural choice.
4. On Oracle’s Buyout of Sun (and MySQL): Shuttleworth sees no reason for regulators to block Oracle’s buyout of Sun Microsystems nor, by association, the MySQL open source database. Shuttleworth doesn’t see an opportunity for Oracle to abuse its database power. Plus, he notes that open source code can quickly fragment if there’s community concern about the governance and leadership of a project.
5. On Canonical’s March Toward Profits: Shuttleworth says he has “no concerns” at this stage about Canonical’s ability to achieve profitability. If necessary, Canonical could quickly focus on specific business areas that are self-sustainable in the near-term, he asserted. But at this point in Canonical’s five-year business journey, Shuttleworth remains convinced that the best strategy is to make Ubuntu an end-to-end solution.
Translation: Shuttleworth isn’t ready to say how soon Canonical could achieve profitability. But he’s basically saying the company is willing to lose money in certain areas as new businesses ramp up and strengthen the overall Ubuntu ecosystem.
It’s a daring bet considering how many different areas of focus Canonical has taken on. But then again, I doubt we would have launched WorksWithU if Canonical only wanted Ubuntu to be a desktop operating system.
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Karmic is the worst ubuntu release I can remember. There are postings of serious problems all over, X freezes, blank screens, no-boot problems, grub2 problems, no console after text-install, KVM guests no longer boot, and plenty more.
All in all I think Canonical should recall this ‘toxic’ Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic release.
Being an Ubuntu fan, I regret to agree that Ubuntu 9.10 should be recalled.
The worst problems I had with Ubuntu were while Karmic was in late alpha. That seemed natural, one shouldn’t expect stability fron an alpha version.
But waiting for the final release didn’t make things better. No grub, crashes, incompatibilities, you name it
And of course, booting is much slower than Jaunty.
And, although subjective, I very much preferred Jaunty’s visual.
(Most of my machines use Netbook Remix).
Is there any official explanation for this problems? Some change on management? Changes in the organization?