More than half of Windows machines are INFECTED with malware

David Gerard dgerard at gmail.com
Wed Oct 7 20:30:14 BST 2009


2009/10/7 Samuel Thurston, III <sam.thurston at gmail.com>:

> Is the desktop Canonical's focus?  the X.org contribution factor would
> be relevant here... Canonical is almost non-existent in this space.  I
> don't know how much contribution Canonical makes to the gnome project.
>  Picking desktop apps that work well together and setting them as part
> of your distro's default installation doesn't strike me as all that
> much of a community-oriented contribution.


The important thing Ubuntu does is to regard a new user having
problems as being a reportable bug. Contrast to Debian, where the (IMO
appropriate) response is more likely "RTFM."

Then there's things like the 100 Paper Cuts project. The business of a
distro is the whole stack. Making it all work together really nicely
is very important and not easy, and Canonical does spend its money
doing just that.

When someone asked for more lovin' for Kubuntu, Mark Shuttleworth did
say he spent a considerable sum every year on it. (Can't find cite,
sorry.)

I think Greg K-H missed the important point: while layering is a good
thing, being a jobsworth and deprecating all  tasks except your own is
not. Look at his Linux Driver project, where they say "we support all
the devices!" and when users say "but my stuff doesn't work", they
answer "well, that's userland." That's the start of the job of
supporting the devices, but it certainly is not finishing the job of
supporting the devices. The kernel is important, but it's not anywhere
near the whole thing.


- d.



More information about the sounder mailing list