Hi<div><br></div><div>Staying on the topic of having complete control over h/w AND s/w for better solutions, interested folks may have a look at <a href="http://www.opencores.org/">opencores</a>. It is an initiative to design open-source hardware. The community strength is nowhere near what it is behind any open-source distro but its picking up, though some good amount of work has been done.</div> <div><br></div><div>In earlier days (and to a large extent, even today) hardware design used to be exclusively proprietary due to astronomical capital costs involved, but the trend has changed with the advent of 'fab-less' companies, who basically design stuff and get it made by someone else. They are the ones who stand to gain the most out of such an initiative. As a great example AMD, Qualcomm and Broadcom are all fab-less (meaning no manufacturing capability)!</div> <div><br></div><div>Regards,</div><div>Anish Mangal</div><div> <br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 8:17 PM, Ashutosh Rishi Ranjan <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ashutoshrishi92@gmail.com">ashutoshrishi92@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"> <div><div></div><div class="h5">On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 7:35 PM, bkd.jdk <<a href="mailto:bkd.jdk@gmail.com">bkd.jdk@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br> > On Tuesday 23 March 2010 12:33 PM, K Ramnarayan wrote:<br> >> Hi<br> >><br> >> This isn't exactly a poll but thought that it would be good to know what<br> >> people would choose if they had to move away from Ubuntu.<br> >><br> >> Before saying anything i want to put this on record. Ubuntu is one of the best<br> >> distro's i have ever used. , its ease in installation, responsiveness to<br> >> multitude of hardware, the incredibly large and varied repositories, the very<br> >> decent derivatives (Mint, Ultimate etc) . The huge forum and support.<br> >> Basically i like it very much<br> >><br> >> Over the recent months there has been a lot of chatter about minor and maybe<br> >> not so minor aspects.<br> >><br> >> First there was the dropping and inclusion of different programmes (e.g. GIMP)<br> >> not big things but when many small things add up they become to big.<br> > (OT)<br> > These changes may seem small, but they are really big ones. Especially<br> > the 'window buttons on the left' one. I really don't understand it, they<br> > shouldn't add such changes in an LTS release. If they would want to<br> > experiment, they can experiment in Lucid+1.<br> >> Then there is this<br> >> Ubuntu is not a democracy, Mark Shuttleworth<br> >><br> >> Sounds crazy saying it like that but to read what he had to say check out<br> >><br> >> Mark Shuttleworth: "This is not a democracy"<br> >> <a href="http://www.webupd8.org/2010/03/ubuntu-is-not-democratic.html" target="_blank">http://www.webupd8.org/2010/03/ubuntu-is-not-democratic.html</a><br> >><br> >> and some related discussions<br> >><br> >> <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23039/Kicking_in_Open_Doors_Open_Source_Is_Not_a_Democracy" target="_blank">http://www.osnews.com/story/23039/Kicking_in_Open_Doors_Open_Source_Is_Not_a_Democracy</a><br> >><br> >> and<br> >><br> >> <a href="http://www.itworld.com/open-source/101641/open-source-not-" target="_blank">http://www.itworld.com/open-source/101641/open-source-not-</a><br> >> democracy?source=smlynch<br> >><br> > Well, Ubuntu has become very big and that's all because of it's<br> > community. Not because of Canonical. There are people who spend nights<br> > contributing to Ubuntu, just for the sake of the community and Canonical<br> > is now completely ignoring them. In my opinion there should be some kind<br> > of open poll before making big changes that would affect the whole<br> > community, but no why will they do it, "Ubuntu is not a democracy" ya<br> > know :)<br> ><br> <br> </div></div>Well thats what he meant. Kind off. The kernel team decides the kernel<br> because they are the ones who work on it. No one else can vote for<br> their decisions because they have the merit of packing the kernel. The<br> design team contribute to design and no one outside their team decides<br> upon the design because they spend nights contributing to it. That<br> sounds like a professional way to manage things.<br> <br> On a personal note, I am completely OK with the buttons on the left.<br> In fact I had them on the left even before Canonical decided to (my<br> reason was because mac has it and mac > windows.. stupid reason though<br> ). Plus, now I am used to it and sometimes feel weird using the<br> buttons on the right in MS Windows (I have the opposite problem). What<br> I reason to myself is that:<br> 1) Canonical's design is new, it does not imitate mac (mac has the<br> opposite order) nor does it imitate windows. That is bad if you look<br> at it in terms of user migration from windows to ubuntu. But people<br> migrate to mac too from their windows and adapt well to it. So ubuntu<br> has something unique.<br> <br> 2) Mark Shuttleworth said that the next Ubuntu will have something<br> good on the right hand side. Right now there is the extra options to<br> move the windows from one workspace to the other and all that. But<br> hopefully they will get something good. I want a zeitgeist activity<br> journal integrated there. But lets hope for something better.<br> <div class="im"><br> --<br> Ashutosh Rishi<br> Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish<br> <br> --<br> </div><div><div></div><div class="h5">ubuntu-in mailing list<br> <a href="mailto:ubuntu-in@lists.ubuntu.com">ubuntu-in@lists.ubuntu.com</a><br> <a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-in" target="_blank">https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-in</a><br> </div></div></blockquote></div><br></div>