<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" http-equiv="Content-Type"> </head> <body bgcolor="#ffffcc" text="#000000"> The server is more difficult to define as a single "thing" than the desktop. We've taken the view that the best service we can provide to the free software community is to ensure that Ubuntu's server offering is highly modular, so you can start with something minimalist (the out of the box experience that you've seen) and then add the specific components you want. Ubuntu server follows from the Debian heritage of striving to be "the best platform for a serious Linux system administrator", and I think we succeed very much in delivering to that promise. I would credit the server team with great work in recent releases and am very excited by the plans they have committed to for 8.10. I do agree with you that this requires a more expert understanding of the free software stack, and thus is quite different to our promise with the Ubuntu desktop, which is "the easiest and most modular desktop experience possible with free software". I can understand that this creates a potential shock for users who are new to Linux, find Ubuntu very easy to use on the desktop, and then are dropped into the deep end when they install Ubuntu server. I would suggest, however, that those users can quite easily use the normal desktop edition as a server-with-GUI, and that there are a number of easy to use web administrated server management tools that are already available with Ubuntu. I think there has been a push to get eBox working well, and you might want to join that effort. This would allow someone to install a minimal server with eBox and be productive in the way you describe. I don't want Ubuntu server to lose it's minimalist, component oriented sensibilities, so I can't support your call to have a GUI out-of-the-box on the server. But I would welcome your participation in any of the existing efforts to make it possible to get the benefits of that minimalist approach together with an easy-to-use administrative interface, either GUI or web based. Mark </body> </html>