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13.10: New Release, Brand New Squabble

Although Ubuntu is arguably the favorite option for new Linux users, its popularity among the larger GNU/Linux community is not so universal. This is not helped by the fact that, from time to time, Ubuntu bigwigs put their foot in their mouths when they should know so much better.

The latest has come from no other than Mark Shuttleworth himself. In his celebratory blog post for the release for Ubuntu 13.10, he managed to shoehorn an insult against Mir detractors into what should have been a through-and-through festive message.

On October the 18th, launch day for Saucy Salamander, he wrote:

Mir is really important work. When lots of competitors attack a project on purely political grounds, you have to wonder what THEIR agenda is. At least we know now who belongs to the Open Source Tea Party ;-) And to put all the hue and cry into context: Mir is relevant for approximately 1% of all developers, just those who think about shell development. Every app developer will consume Mir through their toolkit. By contrast, those same outraged individuals have NIH'd just about every important piece of the stack they can get their hands on… most notably SystemD, which is hugely invasive and hardly justified. What closely to see how competitors to Canonical torture the English language in their efforts to justify how those toolkits should support Windows but not Mir. But we'll get it done, and it will be amazing.

Regardless of whether you consider calling someone a Tea Partier an insult, many Linux developers took issue with the comparison. "I am particularly offended by the implication that the only retort to Mir has been politically motivated," retorted Aaron Seigo from KDE in his G+ feed. "It amounts to libel at worst, and name calling at best. You would not accept that done to you, yet you do it to others. Shame on you, Mark, shame," he continued.

Seigo also challenged Mark to a live debate on Linux Action Show to discuss the merits of Canonical's decisions with regard to Mir versus Wayland graphics servers, and Upstart versus systemd system and service managers. That would be worth a watch.

Seigo's remarks started a long thread in his feed, which Jono Bacon, Ubuntu's Community Manager, described as "another pointless Open Source bickering match."

Did not help.

L'Ubuntu

Apart from videos that are surfacing showcasing The French police have migrated 37,000 computers to their own brand of Ubuntu, dubbed GendBuntu (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu), and they plan to migrate all 72,000 workstations over the next couple of years.

The migration was carried out gradually, by moving users to open source applications, and has been in process since 2004. During the process, Microsoft Office was swapped for OpenOffice, Internet Explorer for Firefox, and Outlook for Thunderbird.

According to the spokespeople in charge, the total cost of ownership of the IT infrastructure will be reduced by 40%.

Open NHS

The British NHS (National Health Service) has also initiated their migration to open technologies and is substituting the botched NHS National Programme for IT system (based on Oracle and other proprietary technologies) for Spine 2, which uses mostly open source.

The applications layer will be run on Python, redis, RabbitMQ, and Tornado, while Ubuntu, HA Proxy, Nginx, and Puppet will be running in the back end. Mustache and Flask will be in charge of the presentation layer.

Also, instead of mega-multinational-consultant, the NHS has decided to use BJSS as an external consultant, a British consultancy firm specialised in Open Source.

Steaming Along

Valve made the most of its visit to the LinuxCon held in New Orleans this year, and, apart from having Head Honcho Gabe Newell deliver a keynote, the company took the opportunity to announce several surprising projects during the event.

First off was SteamOS, an Ubuntu-based operating system which will integrate their famous Steam distribution platform and high-end graphics drivers [1]. According to the site, SteamOS "combines the rock-solid architecture of Linux with a gaming experience built for the big screen," which makes it clearly geared toward living-room entertainment. This begs the question of who wants to have big, noisy, and rattly computer in their living room? No one, obviously. That's why their second announcement was for the Steam Machine [2], a hackable console (in the sense that it will allow users to modify it) that will run SteamOS and all the games delivered by Steam.

Valve also announced a gamepad, or Steam Controller, to go with the whole lot, with touch-sensitive circular touchpads – instead of the classic joysticks – and a tablet-like touchscreen.

The effect of the announcements was electric on the industry, prompting major video card manufacturers Nvidia and ATI to announce updated Linux drivers for their most high-range hardware. Even Linus Torvalds was inspired to proclaim the coming of the Year of Linux Desktop… again.

ownCloud, Now with Added ODT Goodness

ownCloud, the free cloud software developed by KDE that allows you to set up an advanced cloud service on your own network, now allows collaborative creation and editing of ODT documents.

Although it's still in an experimental stage, ownCloud implements a JavaScript-based editor, which allows several authors to create and modify a text document simultaneously. The document can be stored in the cloud or downloaded and processed later.

More info at http://blog.karlitschek.de/2013/10/welcome-owncloud-documents.html.

Ubuntu Touch with a Twist

System 76 have launched a new laptop in their ever-increasing range of Ubuntu-based machines.

The Darter UltraThin [1] is a high-powered ultrabook that runs on an i5 Intel Dual Core Processor and packs 4GB of RAM and a 500-GB hard disk in its ultra-slim (0.9'') frame (more processing power and extra storage are available at a price). The screen is 14'' and has a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels… and, it's tactile. Tap on the screen to launch applications or use your fingers to drag elements or to draw.

The this sleek looking beast weighs 4.60 pounds and comes in a smart, brushed metal finish. The Darter UltraThin will set you back at least US$ 899 dollars, but it is a handsome machine with some very interesting features.