back to article Ubuntu fights iPad fever with netbook shot

Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth is bullish on PCs exposing millions of consumers to Linux – despite the industry succumbing to Jobsian tablet fever. Shuttleworth reckons that Ubuntu is approaching a tipping point among the ordinary PC-buying public, with the distro shipping on a record (for Ubuntu) five million machines this …

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  1. Robert Hill
    Linux

    "A man's..."

    "A man's got to know his limitations..." Clint said the lines, Mark seems to know they ring true.

    He is totally correct about the _applications_ having to be tablet ready, not just the OS. That is something that iPad and Android have natively, as they evolved from mobiles. But Mark is right - Windows and Linux have a much longer road to go to provide applications that are keyed to a multitouch interface.

    Once again, I keep rooting for Ubuntu to hit it big with the right applications...and I'll keep my fingers crossed. After all, knowing your weaknesses (and publicly identifying them) is the first step to solving them...

  2. The BigYin
    Flame

    WHAT?!?!?!

    "We have a fantastic relationship with Dell" Really? Since feckin' when? It is *IMPOSSIBLE* to go to the Dell website, select the hardware of choice and then select "Ubuntu 10.04" as the OS. IT CANNOT BE DONE! The only option is a one crappy netbook and 9.10 (not even LTS!). And this is a "fantastic relationship"? No wonder Linux is a dead-duck. Ubuntu is just lucky that Shuttleworth has the money to waste on the Ubuntu project.

    Beyond a couple of very niche suppliers, it is simply not viable for Joe Schmoe to acquire hardware running Linux. WHat hardware that is available is underpowered and hard to find (thus making the Linux sales look bad). This is probably under orders from MS.

    Even a "No OS" option would be a step forward - and it's something I think the EU should compel all OEMs to offer under force of law. I support the idea of a free market, but we don't have one in the PC industry at the moment, so compulsion is the only answer.

  3. frank ly
    Boffin

    Does it have fibre?

    "You can get your iPad with regulation silver catsuit and protein-pill dinner on the other side of the time portal."

    Maybe, but what about the fibre? Nobody thinks about that but it's vitally important. Put squeamishness aside and consider the importance of fibre.

  4. Eddie Johnson
    WTF?

    Wrong Focus Yet Again

    Why do people focus on boot speeds? Who cares about boot speed? I mean, no one wants it to take minutes but seriously, it is a once a day occurrence at most, for me its once a month or less. If you are booting more than once per day you have more serious issues to be concerned about than speed.

    1. Havin_it

      RE: Wrong Focus Yet Again

      I would say that if you leave your computer on for months at a time, unless it's a server or a life-support machine, you just may be in the wrong place to cast stones regarding the lifestyles of others. Unless you never sleep, how do you justify keeping it on all that time?

      Personally it's quite common for my netbook to be booted and shutdown three times a day: once before work, once at work (if I've had reason to bring it with me), and once after. I use it for both work and personal activity so I hardly think that's evidence of a broken life.

      And as a Linux user of some years, I have learned the hard way never to trust the Sleep or Hibernate functions: the former might reasonably be renamed "Die", adn still consumes power; the latter, when it works any better, generally is no quicker than a reboot. Note that this is very much personal experience only, but is a sadly very consistent one.

      1. The BigYin

        I concur

        Linux (well, Ubuntu and this include 10.04) does not reliably support sleep/hibernate. It is one of the "detail" things that 100% vital. But because it is small and not very sexy if gets ignored as the wing-nuts fly around going "ZOMG! Check by cloud!"

        Detail, detail, detail; lover 'em or hate 'em, Apple at least get detail.

      2. Kevin Whitefoot

        Ubuntu suspends perfectly on my Acer Z150 netbook

        My experience since Ubuntu 9.04 is that suspend works perfectly on my netbook and on Thibkpad T61p.

        Never had much success with hibernation but then I haven't tried recently. Anyway resume takes almost as long as a reboot if you have a lot of ram.

        1. J 3
          Linux

          Agree too

          Although both suspend and hibernate work fine on my Eee 1000HE running 10.4 (has been working fine since 9.4, basically). But as said above restoring from hibernate takes as long as booting, so I only use it for when the battery runs down in my absence and I don't want to lose what was open.

          And suspend is also quite slow, at least compared wit my girlfriend's old Mac laptop, which is up and running before you finish opening the lid. That needs improvement in Ubuntu

  5. Balefire

    I think he hit the nail on the head

    "The way you interact with them assumes you've got a keyboard and a mouse" absolutely correct. Nothing designed to run on a standard desktop computer is designed for touchscreen interaction. Windows for touchscreen is complete arse. I have yet to see a Linux shell/GUI do any better.

    I love my HTC Hero, but not sure how Android or iOS would handle being able to update a spreadsheet, create a text document or program a website. Text entry on a touchscreen forces the emulation of a keyboard which interferes with the screen real-estate. Until an interface which allows you to do away with traditional text entry comes along, a keyboard and mouse will be essential for more technical or business use.

    I kind of think that the drag icons, click links, etc, interface you see in Star Trek would be kinda cool, but how that would get turned into code or an email I have no idea!

  6. Goat Jam
    Thumb Down

    Long time ooboontoo user here

    but I'm getting sick of the ever increasing number of bugs and regressions.

    I think Mr Shuttleworth should put a lot more effort into the less exciting parts of making a distro for a while. I'm typing this while downgrading a server from Lucid to Hardy due to a horrific memory leak that is evident when running virtualbox.

    1. Eldnah
      Black Helicopters

      URL for the bug report?

      I am planning on using vbox under Lucid.

      If there is indeed a problem, please provide a URL to the bug report (I assume one exists, or that you plan on filing it). I have seen too many astroturfing anti-Linux FUD items on internet forums to believe reports like this without confirmation.

      And if the problem is real, is it *buntu or VirtualBox? After all, one component of vbox is a kernel module. A bug there might well be able to squirm its way around OS-level limits in place for most applications. And if the problem is Oracle's, why not use one of the other virtualization solutions out there? KVM, after all, is now part of the kernel.

      1. The BigYin

        I see no leak

        I use VBox to host an instance of XPsp3 on Lucid (as I need to use Outlook etc). It is a 1gb image on a 4gb box and reportedly takes 31% of my RAM. I have never seen this figure rise, it is static. The image is up and being used Mon-Fri until the box gets shut down for the weekend. I am not saying there is no leak, just that I don't see one.

        You could always search for the bug report I guess, and if there is no report it is probably safe to assume that the OP is talking out their hat (you could also double-check in the forums too).

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    maemo?

    I've got a Nokia N810 tablet running maemo which is Linux based. It might not be as pretty as an iPad, but I can do almost everything on it with out the keyboard. And it's an open system.

  8. lucmars

    Avoid frontal competition

    That's the way how one has to compete in this market: avoid the tablets since the iPad, do an other device, even an tablet with a square screen would differ strongly.

    And I guess that the next iPad will have a square screen. But for that, OS vendors can do nothing since the hardware isn't their buisness excepted...Apple.

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