What if the next Steve Jobs... well, has nothing to do with Apple, and what if...

[villicodelirant]

I was wondering.
There is a guy who is a big visionary.
Who is clearly an admirer of Jobs as an innovator.
A guy who aped many ideas of Jobs and came up with his own.

And he's just coming into the spotlight now.

A guy called... Mark Shuttleworth?

The guy almost single handedly turned a heard of fragmented, incompatible and inusable software into something beautifully designed, well working, coherent and somewhat innovative: Ubuntu.
And sold it to the French government, Austrian schools, Dell, Asus and IBM.

I'm not the biggest Ubuntu fan on Earth, but have a look at Ubuntu 11 with Unity.
Its shell is not a copycat of any existing OS (there are more than a few nods to OS X, though), it works out of the box, and Dell and Acer ship it on $200 notebooks.

If any of you were around in 2005, you know what a mess the Linux ecosystem was.

And, here we go.

He's solidified it at an incredible pace, he got all the latest features in (multi touch, heh!), and he's built a lot of momentum in 4 years, and now he's getting serious corporate backing.

Again - Lion beats Ubuntu hands down for me, but the point is - the Ubuntu team are working very hard, they care about the user experience, and there's some clever marketing going on.
I dare say - a hint of RDF, too.

Could this be the next big thing?
Could Shuttleworth be the next iconic leader in IT?

 

[(marc)]

2011 surely must be the year of the Linux desktop.

 

[boss.king]

Could this be the next big thing?
Could Shuttleworth be the next iconic leader in IT?

Linux is not the next big thing. It's had plenty of time to make it's mark but it's not user-friendly enough. The masses don't care what they use as long as they know it and can do their everyday tasks with it; OSX and Windows fulfil these need far better than Ubuntu. What happens when something goes wrong? Is there an Ubuntu store they can take their machine into to get fixed? Who will help them when they do something incomprehensibly stupid because they messed with settings they should never have had access to in the first place? Why Ubuntu rather than the other dozens of varieties of Linux?

Most people only want to browse the internet and listen to music, what does Ubuntu offer in that respect that OSX and Windows don't? To be the next big thing it would have to take over from one of these, otherwise it's not a big thing, it's just a thing.

 

[maflynn]

Shuttleworth has certainly created a distro that is for the masses. Personally I like fedora over ubuntu. In fact since ubuntu has dropped Gnome, I'm liknig fedora better

While he has done a great job making Ubuntu the most popular linux distro for desktops, he has not made ubuntu a popular desktop. Linux's market share is hovering between the 2 and 3 percentile. Not much has really changed, Ubuntu made using linux safer and easier for users but an OS' job is run programs. Linux still suffers from a dearth of consumer applications.

Personally I like linux and can see myself switching over there if I don't like where OSX is heading and the apps I need are available. I don't see that happening in the short and long term.

 

[villicodelirant]

Paradoxically, I think late 2011-2012 will be the year of the desktop period, because we're seeing a lot of ideas being brought in from the smartphone world, where they were allowed to grow and develop without the glooming spectre of the Windows 95 GUI.

P.s.: Who are the two guys whose feelings I have unwillingly hurt in my above post?

 

[boss.king]

P.s.: Who are the two guys whose feelings I have unwillingly hurt in my above post?

Probably people who disagree with you. Don't take it personally, people generally downrank posts they don't agree with, or if they perceive you to have taken a shot at Apple. It's a meaningless system.

 

[villicodelirant]

Linux is not the next big thing. It's had plenty of time to make it's mark but it's not user-friendly enough.

Linux is a kernel.
You build operating systems of top of them.
Now, operating systems can or can not be user friendly, and it depends on their behavious and their look and feel.
Can you make a great operating system on top of an existing kernel and a heavily customized BSD layer?

A certain OS called "OS X" comes to mind.

I think Ubuntu 11 to be very user-friendly.
I can't see how my girlfriend would have troubles doing her everyday tasks (word processing, web, twitter and music) on it.

tasks with it; OSX and Windows fulfil these need far better than Ubuntu.

As I stated in my previous post, Lion can kick Ubuntu 11's ass anytime.

I don't think I can say the same about Vista, though.
(Don't really know about 7, don't have used it much)

What happens when something goes wrong? Is the an Ubuntu store they can take their machine into to get fixed?

Not that there is a Microsoft store where you can take your machine into to get it fixed.
You go to your hardware reseller.

Apple, of course, provides support for the whole box, which is one of a number of reasons.

Most people only want to browse the internet and listen to music, what does Ubuntu offer in that respect that OSX and Windows don't? To be the next big thing it would have to take over from one of these, otherwise it's not a big thing, it's just a thing.

You can browse the internet and listen to music with Windows 2000 SP4, for that matter.
Still, there aren't a lot of Windows 2000 boxes left around, because people want a tightly integrated system that's pleasant to use.

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But I think you are misreading my post.

I'm not saying "Ubuntu 11 is the best desktop OS ever".
That would be Lion.
(A future, patched-up version of Lion, actually)
Or SL.

What I'm saying is - this guy really know how to get things working, I would keep an eye on him.

Think about it - 6 years ago you couldn't have possibly thought that I was making a comparison between Panther, XP SP2 and Mandrake Linux: great OS, usable OS, pile of dung.

 

[boss.king]

Linux is a kernel.
You build operating systems of top of them.
Now, operating systems can or can not be user friendly, and it depends on their behavious and their look and feel.
Can you make a great operating system on top of an existing kernel and a heavily customized BSD layer?

A certain OS called "OS X" comes to mind.

I think Ubuntu 11 to be very user-friendly.
I can't see how my girlfriend would have troubles doing her everyday tasks (word processing, web, twitter and music) on it.

I'm not saying it can't do those things, I'm asking why would people change to something they are not comfortable with when what they have is good enough?

As I stated in my previous post, Lion can kick Ubuntu 11's ass anytime.

I don't think I can say the same about Vista, though.
(Don't really know about 7, don't have used it much)

Windows 7 is a great operating system, better than Vista in pretty much every way.

Not that there is a Microsoft store where you can take your machine into to get it fixed.
You go to your hardware reseller.

Apple, of course, provides support for the whole box, which is one of a number of reasons.

That's true, I guess I didn't really think that one through

You can browse the internet and listen to music with Windows 2000 SP4, for that matter.
Still, there aren't a lot of Windows 2000 boxes left around, because people want a tightly integrated system that's pleasant to use.


But I think you are misreading my post.

I'm not saying "Ubuntu 11 is the best desktop OS ever".
That would be Lion.
(A future, patched-up version of Lion, actually)
Or SL.

I'd have to say Windows 7 is better than Lion.

What I'm saying is - this guy really know how to get things working, I would keep an eye on him.

Think about it - 6 years ago you couldn't have possibly thought that I was making a comparison between Panther, XP SP2 and Mandrake Linux: great OS, usable OS, pile of dung.

The thing is, he may have made a great distro, but how many people really even know what Linux or Ubuntu is? I probably couldn't name more than 10 people (EDIT: 10 people that I know) who know or care even a little bit about it. I don't see how it could possibly take any decent market share unless they do some serious (and I mean massive) advertising. In however many years, it's gone from virtually unknown to only slightly less unknown. Maybe I'm completely missing the point, but I don't think Linux will ever gain any sort of popularity in mainstream society in the foreseeable future.