[ubuntu-uk] Looking for volunteers

[Liam Proven]

On 6 July 2010 20:40, Nick Brandon <maillist at css-uk.net> wrote:
> Over the past few weeks I've been adapting the live CD, trying out a number of different configurations. Ultimately I'd like it to be more useable "out of the box" for me as a UK user and genuinely I'm quite pleased with the results.
>
> I'm toying with the idea of making it available to the wider public to see if it would be useful for other new users of ubuntu. Before doing that however, I'd like a few people to try it out and report their feedback.
>
> Has anyone got a recommendation on where would be best to promote it so I could find, say 20 - 30 to make it reasonable, volunteers to try it out?
>
> That being said if anyone here would be interested in trying it out it please send me an email. It wouldn't take more than 30 - 60 mins and all you need is a laptop/desktop PC with a DVD drive and preferably 2GB of memory.

Just a small note of caution...

I suspect that quite a few of the things that really enhance the
Ubuntu experience can't be implemented on a LiveCD or can't be
implemented for legal reasons. E.g., proprietary hardware drivers,
Flash, MP3, Quicktime, DVD support and so on.

The other more general point is to understand that /your/ enhancements
are not everybody's. I think Ubuntu's choice of components has been
very carefully chosen to be nicely generic. The "utimate edition", for
instance, contains a lot of what I would consider to be bloatware and
crap.
http://ultimateedition.info/

The whole point of Ubuntu was that it contained one single
best-of-breed example of each category of application: one office
suite, one browser, one media player, etc. This is one of the reasons
it's succeeded, in the face of many competing distros which offer 12
desktops, 6 web browsers, 4 word processors, 86 calculators and so on.

Adding back in the complexity that Ubuntu's designers carefully
removed is /not/ improving the distro.

Terrible kludgeware such as Automatix only recreated this problem.

So be very very careful selecting what you think are essential
additions and improvements. You might find many people would disagree
with you and you will end up detracting from Ubuntu's essential
simplicity, cleanness and elegance.

-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
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