2c about the development of ubuntu

[Christian Bjälevik]

sön 2006-01-01 klockan 22:25 +0100 skrev Robos: 
> Is it me or is there a certain shift from "linux for human beings" to "linux
> for the corporate environment - free!". I would think that already enough
> companies cater for the server side of linux: ibm in conjunction with ...,
> novell and such that in that area there are enough players. Like I said, and
> microsoft said, the licensing cost is - for a company - neglectable to the
> cost of support and the cost of e.g. oracle.
> What I see is this: canonical can more easily make support contracts with
> companies about servers at the moment - BECAUSE "linux isn't ready for the
> desktop". That was - at least I understood it like this - what ubuntu wanted
> to do. Make linux more userfriendly to the human behind the machine on his
> desk. THEN companies will approach canonical about support contracts for
> linux on the desktop. Fewer, in smaller volume, but _that_ was what I
> understood Mark was spending his money on. Surely ubuntu will amortize
> itself faster with more focus on the server - but was that the intent? From
> what I read in Mark's remarks about dapper drake he wants it to go head on
> against vista - not windows server 2000something. I think there is this
> notion about "linux not ready for the desktop" (I run it solely, on lots of
> machines) _because_ nobody is doing something about this. I thought ubuntu
> was. Am   I   wrong?
> Cheers
> Udo 'Robos' Puetz

Why shouldn't we go head to head against both Vista and Windows Server?
Ubuntu, GNOME, Debian, Linux as much as everything else in the Free
Software Community are already collaborating on making Linux Desktops,
aswell as Servers, more and more userfriendly. Ubuntu already have a
nice desktop (even my father seems interested in switching out XP Home),
and we will probably never stop making that better. Edubuntu and Kubuntu
isn't where most of the paid develops work. They work on Ubuntu, and so
have always worked on Ubuntu-Server. This wasn't named before, but the
packages for apache2 have always been there since warty (you are free to
check ;-)). What the "new distribution" gives is yet another InstallCD
with more server-tools than gnome-thingies shipped on the CD. Ubuntu
6.04 is our first "Enterprise Release", but we won't do what Redhat and
Fedora does and make it another distro. It will still be Ubuntu, just
with longer support :-). Here is aswell a reason to have the "new
distro". 6.04 will have 2 year longer support on the server than on the
desktops.

What I really want to say with all this is that the paid resources still
goes where it have gone since warty, so what's the fuss/issue? :-)

Sincerely, /C - who has run Ubuntu on his server since 4.10 and never
seen a horrible broken system except development
-- 
Christian Bjälevik <nafallo at ubuntu.com>