PCs running Ubuntu will be getting more social thanks to changes that will set the popular Linux distro's look and feel for the next five years. Lucid Lynx, due this April, will bring social applications like Twitter and Facebook directly into the software, Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth has said in an interview here. …

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Wednesday 24th February 2010 11:19 GMT Slappy

Smacked in the face

By the sweaty scrotum of social netwworking and web 2.xx again. FFS, i look forward to the day when i have my car, wallet and portions of my brain integrated with FartBook, Twatter and some as yet undiscovered social networking bollocks.

Why Mr Shuttleworth? Why?

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Wednesday 24th February 2010 11:19 GMT petur

No no no no no no no no no noooooo!

Please fix the goddamn bugs, they are responsible for the crap user experience. I don't care about the stupid style.

Time for another distro, it seems :(

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1. Wednesday 24th February 2010 13:10 GMT Noons
  
  same sentiment here...
  
  I'll give them the benefit of doubt and wait till the next upgrade is released. But I might start eyeing around other distros, or simply give in to the temptation of returning to the purity of Debian.
  
  Having said that, it is quite possibly a good move for Ubuntu to become more popular. And at the same time, a lot less interesting to me. So it goes.
  
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Wednesday 24th February 2010 11:19 GMT Anonymous Coward

Tw@tter

"Lucid Lynx, due this April, will bring social applications like Twitter and Facebook directly into the software"

Remind me not to download it under any circumstances.

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Wednesday 24th February 2010 11:23 GMT The Original Ash

MyBookTwitterFaceSpace

No thanks, Shuttleworth. I'll stick with 9.10.

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1. Wednesday 24th February 2010 12:47 GMT The BigYin
  
  Sort of agree...
  
  ...but I'll just uninstall all that bollocks. It'll be easy enough.
  
  Am I the only one on the planet left without a Facebook, Twitter, MySpace etc account?
  
  I'll confess to being on LinkedIn.
  
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  1. Wednesday 24th February 2010 14:02 GMT Anonymous Coward
    
    Social Notworking
    
    Well, I'm not even on linkedin. (Though I might sign up with luddites anonymous when it launches - on paper obviously).
    
    This integration is all starting to sound like windows 98 with active desktop.
    
    And I had been so looking forward to Lucid...
    
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  2. Thursday 25th February 2010 01:00 GMT Fatman
    
    Am I the only one on the planet left without a Facebook, Twitter, MySpace etc account?
    
    No, you are not.
    
    I too eschew ScrapeBook, Tw@tter, and the like.
    
    No great loss, either!
    
    All are just a BFWoT*!!!!
    
    At our company, Tw@tters are shot!
    
    ------
    
    * BFWoT = Big Fscking Waste of Time
    
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Wednesday 24th February 2010 11:26 GMT Tony Paulazzo

Yay

Really getting to like Ubuntu (windows7 for web design, games and rendering, Ubuntu for all else), and a fresh coat of paint will def help 'sell' it to the masses, esp. if Open Office follows suit - then I get tons more work sorting out tech issues, goodness all around.

Just wish there were a Dreamweaver type prog for linux.

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1. Wednesday 24th February 2010 12:40 GMT Nanki Poo
  
  Dreamweaver
  
  I use Dreamweaver 8 quite happily in Ubuntu under Wine. In fact, it runs faster than it does in Windows!
  
  Some of the settings dialogues can be a bit fiddly, but then again that happens in Win as well.
  
  My two problems are MS Access (or as I am doing migrating clients onto proper Db platforms) and a decent pdf engine which will generate x-1a:2001 standards reliably. Then I can finally relegate Win to use purely as a website tester for those browsers which choose not to follow web standards.
  
  nK
  
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Wednesday 24th February 2010 11:26 GMT Anonymous Coward

This sounds really nice ...

... for people who use Facebook, Twitter et al, to be honest it's things like this that are starting to chase me back to Debian. I'd rather fiddle with my wi-fi configuration for 15 minutes after installing than be presumed social in a Web 2.0 sense.

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Wednesday 24th February 2010 11:44 GMT Anonymous Coward

No upgrade in this house then

Even the threat of having such insane idiocy as Twitbook in any way influencing my operating system is enough to set off a format-and-reinstall cycle in this here installation.

Now where did I put that Fedora disc...?

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Wednesday 24th February 2010 11:51 GMT Anonymous Coward

Who pays the broadband piper?

Just give us all some way of turning it OFF. Not everyone in the world has access to free, high-speed low-latency broadband, something that way too many software developers seem to just assume that is available everywhere at the drop of a hat. This applies especially in developing countries, one of the key target areas of distributions like Ubuntu!

You want my computer to always be talking to servers around the world? That's fine with me, you just give me your bank account number and I'll forward them to my ISP so that *you* not I, am the one paying the bills.

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Wednesday 24th February 2010 11:51 GMT Goat Jam

04 Releases are usually the best

It seems that every second version of Ubuntu sucks like a supercharged V8 Hoover. Intrepid was pants, and Karmic is no better. Hardy and Jaunty were great though and Lucid is hopefully going to be the next good instalment in the cycle.

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1. Wednesday 24th February 2010 12:47 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  Well, duh!
  
  A .10 is a beta release basically.
  
  .4 is LTS and obviously more stable.
  
  Unlike MS who screw up every second release, Canonical are at least clear as to which one is LTS and stable, which one is more bleeding edge.
  
  Nothing to see here, move along people.
  
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  1. Wednesday 24th February 2010 15:08 GMT Anonymous Coward
    
    I thought
    
    That they simply referred to the month of release, .4 for April, and .10 for October?
    
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    1. Thursday 25th February 2010 01:11 GMT Anonymous Coward
      
      There is something in that.
      
      Jaunty was superb for me, everything largely just worked.
      
      Karmic was a failure on so many levels. They tried to change too much too soon with insufficient testing. I do remember seeing a comment from Mr Shuttleworth that they were going to concentrate on stability with the lynx and I bloody well hope so.
      
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    2. Thursday 25th February 2010 10:09 GMT Nanki Poo
      
      @ Mad Dave
      
      Absolutely, and every two years there's a Long Term Support (LTS) version which is supported for a longer period, on the 04 release.
      
      Can't wait till June when the creases are ironed out. Beats waiting 12 months for a Service Pack (tm)!
      
      That's why Hardy does it for me. Business critical and leisure use. I'm gonna get a big surprise when I go to the next LTS, and it will be cool. Like trying a new OS... but free!
      
      nK
      
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    3. Thursday 25th February 2010 10:09 GMT Anonymous Coward
      
      That could well be...
      
      ...but .4 is LTS (Long Term Support) so tends to have a few more of the kinks sorted out.
      
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    4. Thursday 25th February 2010 10:16 GMT Big-nosed Pengie
      
      Nope
      
      What AC said.
      
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Wednesday 24th February 2010 12:40 GMT thehousecat

Please don't

I'm sorry Debian I'm coming back to you soon.

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Wednesday 24th February 2010 12:47 GMT paulc

arghhh

get facebook fully supported on Linux with all the apps and games working first before integrating it... integrating it implies it all works...

it's the one thing stopping my daughter switching completely to Linux is the fact that some of the games on facebook do not work on Linux

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Wednesday 24th February 2010 13:10 GMT Anonymous Coward

If I remember rightly

the great satan (microsoft) were doing this sort of thing - integration of desktop and web - some years ago & were howled down for bloat, and anti competitiveness. Still, great idea, Mark

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Wednesday 24th February 2010 14:02 GMT Cameron Colley

Thanks Mr Shuttleworth.

You've stiffened my resolve to upgrade from 8.04 to plain Debian and reminded me to sort my .conf files out.

Thanks too for getting me hooked on Linux, but no thanks to the Web two-point-oh shite and pointless eye-candy -- I thought the pointless and irritating RSS feed on the desktop was crap enough.

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Wednesday 24th February 2010 14:06 GMT James Dunmore

Hypocritical

Are people on the reg COMMENTS section really slagging of social networking?! really. REALLY!!!

I think it's great that there is a linux distro embracing what nearly every average pc user wants; remember most people on the reg are tech savy and usually want a stripped down system and build up from there; but that's what's stopped joe bloggs from getting going with windows/mac alternatives - they want it out of the box and don't want to open up a command line. Being linux, I'm sure this Web2.0 desktop stuff will be very easy to switch off.

As for design - this is where Mac is winning (again, joe bloggs) customers from windows - it looks great, etc. personally, don't get on with KDE4 (same for a lot of people) and gnome is getting dated - innovative design - yes please!! again, for those moaning, that's the power of linux/ubuntu - go install xfce.

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Wednesday 24th February 2010 15:03 GMT Anonymous Coward

He's is doing the right thing

to increase Ubuntu uptake, it is eye candy that the sweaty masses are after.

And Ubuntu is finding its way onto mobile devices, which is a good market, and a lot of hardware builders are turning to Ubuntu now to get a Linux system on board.

Should work out for Canonical as long as they can get people to take up their support options.

Shame they are not a PLC yet as their shares could be quite tempting, as this approach is more of a winner.

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Wednesday 24th February 2010 15:04 GMT TheMountain

KDE

How does this affect the Kubuntu branch? Hopefully this shite will be left out of the serious branches of the distro.

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Wednesday 24th February 2010 15:46 GMT Anonymous Coward

Linux is winning on netbooks?

Can you even buy a netbook with linux (any flavor) preinstalled anymore? Seems to me most netbook producers have drunk heavily of the MS koolaid and dropped their linux offerings. Please, prove me wrong.

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1. Thursday 25th February 2010 01:11 GMT Paul Slater
  
  Yes you can.
  
  I bought a Dell Mini 10V preinstalled with Ubuntu. Next.
  
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2. Thursday 25th February 2010 10:09 GMT The BigYin
  
  Sure
  
  But the Dell Ubuntu landing page is *VERY* anti-Linux!
  
  http://www.dell.co.uk/ubuntu
  
  Aaaaaaand they have one model.
  
  And it's pants.
  
  HP sell Linux PCs too, although they make them nearly impossible to find (probbaly under pressure from MS).
  
  Just buy what you want (after doing some rudimentary hardware compatibility checks)
  
  Reject the MS EULA
  
  Drop on the penguin of choice
  
  Reclaim the Microsoft Tax (around €70, YMMV)
  
  Or consider Frostbite Systems, System 76...
  
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Wednesday 24th February 2010 20:56 GMT Matt Piechota

Seriously?

You know, it's not like they're going to force you use this stuff. Get a grip people.

Besides, Facebook is what you make of it. Just block all the stupid apps and enjoy checking out what your school friends have been up to. It's not like Facebook forces you to play any of the stupid games, either.

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Thursday 25th February 2010 23:13 GMT Matthew Collier

@Can you even buy a netbook with linux (any flavor) preinstalled anymore?

I recently bought an Acer Aspire One (1GB RAM, 16GB SSD) running Linpus (yes, at least until recently, you could still get them!), and yesterday, an Acer Revo 3610, also running the new Linpus.

Also, I am about to order two new desktop PCs from PC Specialist (.co.uk) who let you delete the Windows OS options, The Linux Emporium will sell you a range of desktops, with a range of Linux flavours preinstalled on them, and it seems, more and more places are selling barebones kits, or full machines minus an OS (fairly mainstream like Ebuyer included).

I understand I can buy whatever I like and then put Linux on it, but I want to put my money where my mouth is, and support the Linux pre-loaded (or failing that, Windows not loaded), suppliers!

With regard to Ubuntu and Lametwatspace integration, hopefully it'll either be easy to not install, or to remove, to get back to a "proper" desktop (or even better, Ubuntu will get it, but Kubuntu will not).

Matt :)

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Friday 26th February 2010 10:28 GMT elderlybloke

Y Wurry

The use of Facebook and Twitter will be optional.

There is nothing about the kind, benevolent Mark forcing us to use these Kiddies games.

I have no knowledge of them except that the juveniles spend a lot of time on them.

I will continue with grown up things ,

Bugger- I see Matt Piechota beat me to it.

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Thursday 4th March 2010 23:15 GMT Woof

No thank you please

I will not upgrade unless there is some way to de-instal these items. All the desktops are already much too hefty. I don't have a problem with others using FarceBook or tw@tter but I do have a problem with no being allowed not participate.. To quote Emily:

I'm nobody! Who are you?

Are you nobody, too?

Then there's a pair of us — don't tell!

They'd advertise — you know!

How dreary to be somebody!

How public like a frog

To tell one's name the livelong day

To an admiring bog!

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