Quick Note: I am not trying to confuse Ubuntu and Linux here. I realize this could be done on almost any distro, but the recent news part is related specifically to Canonical, so I am focusing on Ubuntu.

For most geeks, the key advantages of Linux are stability, security, and Compiz Fusion, but these advantages (excluding Compiz Fusion) are not visible to the average user. How can you tell LInux is more secure or more stable just by using it for a few days. Sure it didn’t BSOD on you, but does that really tell you anything? The point is that you can talk about security and stability all you want, but, in the end, it is very unlikely to be those advantages that pull people to Linux. This is why I am such a big fan of Compiz Fusion and making everything happen smoothly. This, possibly more than anything else, not only looks cool, but also gives you a sense of the system being stable. It may not make sense technically, but if everything is smooth with no flashes of black or anything, it looks like the system is more stable. Because of this and a recent news story I am very excited about the next Ubuntu release.

Ars Technica recently reported on some development being done by Canonical’s (Canonical the company behind Ubuntu) Mirco Müller. He has created a proposal and basic example of a new login screen for Ubuntu featuring slick animations thanks to Clutter (Which is, according to the Clutter website “an open source software library for creating fast, visually rich and animated graphical user interfaces”.)

Now with this, I believe all the tools are in place for a completely smooth, animated Ubuntu experience from start to shutdown.

The Fedora project has already worked on creating a startup experience that is smooth and completely graphical. Some of this should be able to be used by Ubuntu (which is what is so great about FLOSS) to deal with startup and shutdown. Then at login, the recent login screen proposal will take over. Finally, a well configured Compiz Fusion can make the desktop slick, too.

In this way, the next version of Ubuntu should be able to be 100% smooth, slick, and polished, giving Ubuntu a much more cool and professional feel to it that should help convince even more people that Linux is the right way to go.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 at 11:39 pm and is filed under Development, Future of Linux, Ubuntu. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.