back to article Ubuntu 14.10 tries pulling a Steve Ballmer on cloudy offerings

“It hurts my eyes,” Steve Ballmer once joshed during a demonstration of Microsoft’s Virtual Server 2005 Service Pack 1 managing Red Hat Linux. “I know that's an important capability of the virtual server technology for our customers,” continued a humbled Ballmer. The ex-Microsoft chief exec's Saul-like conversion followed …

  1. Mage Silver badge

    Cloud

    Irrelevant to an OS, server or workstation.

    "Cloud" is marketing remote services. Any viable Server OS can provide them and any viable OS can use them. Nothing SPECIFIC to "Cloud" is needed.

    I'm getting sick of hearing this marketing meme.

    1. Dave Bell

      Re: Cloud

      As a counter-example, consider the interactions between Google Drive, Linux, and, er, Android

      There might, I suppose, be OS-level features which need to be "right" for a particular cloud service.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Cloud

        Cloud is just a "cute" term for what is effectively outsourced storage and services.

        1. A Known Coward

          Re: Cloud

          AKA shared hosting

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Paris Hilton

      Re: Cloud

      YAM = Yet Another Meme... to describe the latest layer of complexity stapled onto the prior. In this case we've wrapped the cloud layer over SOA to allow one client to multiple SOA providers. With all those layers to plow through, it's no wonder that we have to use a metric fuck-ton of hardware to get usable results out.

      Paris as she knows all about MF-Ts.

  2. Stuart 22

    Just Sayin'

    About 13 minutes remaining on my Kubuntu desktop upgrade to 14:10.

    Which puts me ahead of kibuntu.org and unbuntu.com that are both trying to 'sell' you 14.04. I guess someone slept through the alarm. Or was it set to silent?

    BTW Kubuntu works nicely with openCloud if I have to go back on topic. Why should I consider changing?

    1. Matt Piechota

      Re: Just Sayin'

      "Which puts me ahead of kibuntu.org and unbuntu.com that are both trying to 'sell' you 14.04. I guess someone slept through the alarm. Or was it set to silent?"

      Ubuntu is trying to sell you the version that'll still get patches next year. That's a little different than what you're looking for.

    2. Tom 7

      Re: Just Sayin'

      14.04 (.01) is a long term service update - it will be supported for 3 years.

      I had 13.10 until the recent bash bashing but that wasn't fixed for 13.10 so I spent a few hours (I'm in the sticks) upgrading one machine and then 1/2 hr upgrading the rest from cache for what would for an LTS be a two minute automated job.

      I'm going to reserve non-LTS versions for playing with so I can dismiss them with some faux authority.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Windows

    This proves one important thing...

    "“It hurts my eyes,” Steve Ballmer once joshed during a demonstration of Microsoft’s Virtual Server 2005 Service Pack 1 managing Red Hat Linux.".

    In my opinion comments like that clearly prove that Ballmer's main approach was that of marketing and administration and that he severely lacked any feeling for the technical approach of things.

    I don't care if you're pro or anti Linux or Windows; one cannot deny that Microsoft has made some interesting progress here within their line of virtualization products. Yet it seems that even that detail is completely wasted on Ballmer and all he can see is his own petty ideas.

    Must have been fun for the developers who worked on this.. First thing the head honcho says is that your work is hurting his eyes, such motivating words indeed!

    Anyone with a small bit of feel for tech would at the very least recognize some progress here. Who cares if Microsoft are more or less re-inventing the wheel here?

    And I think that lack of "tech vision" on the part of Ballmer is one of the reasons which caused Microsoft to alienate themselves from so many users, developers and fans.

    1. Dave Bell

      Re: This proves one important thing...

      I can imagine somebody saying, "I think I need new spectacles," which is a bit different. But Microsoft does seem to have been a bit of a foot-dragger on fonts and layouts as displays got bigger with more pixels. The timing feels about right, but why did Ballmer think he needed to go public?

  4. Charlie van Becelaere
    Boffin

    Types of cloud

    "The computing world's fabric is undergoing one of its periodic periods of re-alignment. Yes, around cloud, but more specifically around types of cloud."

    Make mine cumulonimbus, please.

  5. Christian Berger

    Ubuntu is past its "useful" point

    Ubuntu used to be the first Linux Distribution I've seen which just runs after installation. It has brought the GNU/Linux environment forward.

    However today it's more and more turning GNU/Linux into Gnome/Linux, a horrible mess of bad software design akin to Android. Code is developed for code's sake. People should have stopped adding complexity, but they haven't.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Ubuntu is past its "useful" point

      Seems to me like Ubuntu was trying to provide an Apple-like experience on a "Happy Shopper" budget.

    2. Phil_Evans

      Re: Ubuntu is past its "useful" point

      Lost interest in the desktop when Unity came along, however have found it to be a rock Solid HOST OS to run my virtual guests.

  6. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

    Why?

    would I want to keep using something that

    1) Has lost its way (aka doing a Microsoft)

    2) Is going its own thing and saying 'up-yours' to the rest of the FOSS world

    3) seems to be increasingly fragmented and buggy since 12.04.

    I'll probably try it in a VM but frankly I don't have time to fix all the issues any more.

    I switched to CentOS 6 last year and love the stability. sure there are a few things that I need to work on to make everything on my ASUS Laptop work but once done it stays done.

  7. Mage Silver badge

    Cloud

    @ Dave Bell

    If accessing or providing a particular "Cloud" service or vendor needs added special OS "sauce" then don't use that steaming pile of proprietary nonsense.

  8. CaptainBanjax

    52%

    Could that high percentage on AWS be due tonthe fact you can get Ubuntu on the free tier?

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