[ubuntu-za] 11.04

Daniël Louw daniel at dline.co.za
Wed Mar 2 19:13:08 UTC 2011


Since we're stirring the pot like Raoul did...

While sitting in class today with my netbook, I decided I'm lis for
something new. So I fired up the wifi, got Synaptic running and installed
Kubuntu Netbook from the varsity repo's.
I promptly switched back to Gnome. KDE looks nice, but IMHO the 10.04
netbook remix is a well rounded product that works well on the small
screens. KDE netbook not so much. Gnome is interestingly faster and more
responsive than KDE.

And now on to 11.04 and Unity. Two contrasting opinions:

I think when Unity is mature enough, it will be the best option available
for netbooks. The fact that each and every program is at the most two clicks
away would be very appealing to the masses. But for desktop PC's? Not so
much. It's going to look quite bad with the whole screen filled with
ginormous icons. Canonical needs to limit Unity to their netbook version,
and standard Gnome for the desktop version, with Unity as an option. I've
heard rumors that they want to do away with standard Gnome and exclusively
use Unity. That's quite scary actually.

On the other side of the dagger...
The other day I asked myself what is one of the big purposes of FOSS and
more specifically complete FOS operating systems? Why is there an army of
developers doing what they do, and not getting any renumeration for it? I
think we should always see FOSS in the light of "Yes, but would my
grandma/dad/baby nephew/uncle/dog use it?". Is it a product that can be
marketed to the masses, and be successful? *can it be (real) competition to
Microsoft?*
Can someone in a PC shop install it on the PC's he sells, and know that he
will have happy customers? This is not the case with Ubuntu yet. It's still
too easy to mess something up so bad that not even Linus will be able to fix
it, and this is seriously unacceptable to the general consumer.

Unity will bring Ubuntu one step closer to that Goal. Sure, it's more
limiting. Sure I can't customize it and sure it takes some power away from
me. But isn't this exactly why I should consider installing it for my mother
who has the worst case of finger trouble I've ever seen?
Maybe Mark and the other fellows at Canonical is trying to do just this:
Attempt to tap this huge and vast market called The Masses. Sure, it's not
geek-friendly, but it sure is *user-*friendly - there's a huge difference.
I will not run off to my old high-school and convince the IT department to
chuck Windows in favor of Ubuntu. No way. Not now anytime soon anyway. With
every release we get closer to that Goal. Maybe with the next LTS release,
we might be there, or we might not.

Just my couple of pennies worth anyway.

I invite all of you to engage me in conversation regarding this. Agree, or
disagree with me. This is one of the reasons why I love this mailing list so
much. We all can have wonderfully stimulating conversations with each other,
and not know anyone personally at all!

Have a great rest of the week!

-- 
Regards

*Daniël Louw*
================================
daniel at dline.co.za
www.dline.co.za
+27 84 2499 299
+12 12 347 8305
================================

*"In order to understand recursion one must first understand recusion"*
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-za/attachments/20110302/49e4cfba/attachment.html>


More information about the ubuntu-za mailing list