With the huge success of Firefox 3, I think it is fair to say that a lot of people have been wondering how Firefox’s success could be achieved in other open-source projects. Firefox has two key advantages over other open-source software that have nothing, or very little, to do with Firefox itself. First, web browsers are used by almost everyone who uses a computer. Ubuntu shares this advantage, because everyone who uses a computer uses an operating system. Firefox’s second advantage, however, is not shared by Ubuntu, or any Linux distro. Firefox runs on Windows. Ubuntu has taken steps, however to make itself run on Windows and should take more steps in this direction.

Before Ubuntu Hardy Heron (the current version), the following are the steps you would have to give to a new user to let them try out Ubuntu:

1. Put the CD in the drive
2. Reboot your computer
3. Make sure your BIOS are set to boot from the CD drive
4. After you’re done, reboot your computer again

While the steps to try out Windows or OS X are even harder, even this set of instructions is not easy to convey to a non-technical user. In other words, it could be easier. In Hardy Heron, it is. The new instructions are just:

1. Put the CD in the drive
2. Install it (with Wubi)

These are not only fewer instructions, but also simpler and more ordinary instructions. This is the current state of things and, while this is really very good, it could be even better. How about this:

1. Put the CD in the drive
2. Start using Ubuntu

This would be possible if virtualization were built into the Ubuntu CD (or a separate special CD). If this were done, Ubuntu could almost be considered a Windows application, at least in terms of the advantages it brings for promotion. It would be incredibly easy to hand someone an Ubuntu CD without any explanation. After someone gets the chance to try it out, they might decide to try the Wubi installation or even the full installation.

Including this kind of virtualization capability would remove almost all barriers to people trying out Ubuntu and provide the chance for Ubuntu to have Firefox-level success, or even more success.

Brilliant Brainstorms is a weekly-ish summary of some of the best/most interesting brainstorms from the Ubuntu Brainstorm site.

Not All Good

While an option like this might help with some screen resolution issues, it would also make the bootup and installation a lot harder. Perhaps a better options would be to offer the same options, but only under some sort of advanced tab. (Also winner of the like more grammarily challenged brainstorm awardy-thingy.)

Really Brilliant

Many of the hardware problems people have could be solved much more easily if they were directed to a page with all the information relating to various possible solutions. While including all this information in the OS would be very hard, Ubuntu could just give a link to a wiki page for any unsupported hardware. Perhaps this could even be a cross-distribution project?
I really like the idea of setting up some annual awards for the best Linux applications and developments, though I would also add awards for cool Linux hardware (everything form Chumy to small Linux computer vendors like System76.) Also, this could be joint sponsored by Ubuntu and other distributions.
My guess is that there are a lot of people who would love to help out with Ubuntu, but don’t want to seek out how they could help best. Introducing a form where people could fill out what their skills are and have others suggest places where they could help out (and possibly volunteer to mentor the person) would bring in lots of new contributers.
Sometimes the best ideas are hidden down in the comments. In cases like this, and just in general, it would be extremely useful to be able to vote down unhelpful or uninteresting comments and vote up the really cool comments.
As I said above, the best ideas can often be in the comments, so being able to vote on changes to an original idea could really refine ideas and make them truly great.
This is just cool. See an example here. My only concern is that it could be distracting, but that is why it would just be an option, not a requirement.

This does not have to be the only option for installing fonts, but it should definitely be one of them.

With Intrepid Ibex Alpha 1 out the door, I decided to take an early look at some of the cool new proposed artwork for Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex. Obviously, the artwork out now is likely to change a lot, but it is still interesting.

“Clear”

This theme very much maintains the current brown-orange theme, even making it a little darker, but manages to make it look really smooth with the gradients. Paired with a new background, this could be a real candidate for a final theme. My only concern is that it could be too dark and, therefore, unappealing to some people.

Wiki Page

“Sunny Ibex”

Going for a much lighter feel and nicely incorporating the Ibex, this background could appeal to those who dislike brown. In fact, this might be a great choice as a color base, because of its lighter feel.

Wiki Page (scroll down some)

“Kith Intrepid”

Another theme that looks like a potential candidate for the final release, although this theme goes for a lighter, more orange look, which could be a plus or a minus, depending on your tastes.

Wiki Page

“MadsRH”

This is certainly an interesting and new idea for the boot up process. I do not know how difficult this would be to implement, but it would be cool.

Wiki Page (scroll down some)

“Everything Moves”

This last idea has no images to show off, but it still attracted my attention. To quote from the description:

“the ultimate aim being that whenever a user passes a mouse over any icon or a window bar or clicks or minimizes or maximizes a window or opens a menu there is a number of different rapid responses, colorful little glows everywhere whenever something is done, nice little sparkles or ripples when an icon is added to a desktop”

This sort of eyecandy would not be too intrusive or annoying, but would be incredibly cool.

Wiki Page

I hope this quick preview of some of the possible artwork for Intrepid Ibex has been interesting. Hopefully the final artwork will be even cooler!

With OpenMoko’s new Freerunner phone now available, Google’s Android scheduled for the end of this year, Symbian becoming open-source, and LiMo phones already entering the market, it looks like the time when a significant portion, perhaps a majority, of smart-phones will be completely open.

Apart from being any Linux/open-source enthusiast’s dream, this will also be a chance to see how much the average smart-phone buyer values an open-platform.

While most users are unlikely to pick a phone because they like the idea of openness, as things play out, the open phones are likely to become the best phones. Instead of being locked down with third-party applications only avaliable from one censored source (*cough* iPhone), applications will be developed and distributed without limitation. Plus, the platform itself will be improved by hundreds or thousands of developers who are coding because they want to, not because they are being paid to. In the end, this is likely to lead to a better platform and, thus, a better phone. Of course, that is just my opinion. With so many open phones entering the market, we will soon get to see what the rest of the world thinks.

This is Linux Loop’s 300th news story.

Regardless of what you think Microsoft is doing wrong, no one seems to think that Microsoft is doing a great job. They may still have the top position (by a lot) in desktop market share, but they are losing it fast. The point is, Microsoft seems to be shooting themselves in the foot. They may recover, especially with new management coming in, but they are certainly going to throw away a lot of market share, before they recover. The question is, how does Linux capture that thrown-away market share?

Right now, an average user who is frusterated with Windows is far more likely to turn to a Mac than Linux, since most people know some avid Mac users. As it stands, I suspect that Apple will pick up most of the desktop users that leave Microsoft, and Linux will pick up most of the business users. That’s pretty good, but Linux can do bettter.

As an average PC user looking to buy a Mac, you would most likely be surprised by the high prices. You can argue all day about Macs being more expensive for what you get or not, but they definitely start higher-end than your bottom-line PC. This is Linux’s easiest to understand advantage over the Mac.

To push this advantage, I believe a volunteer-based (so no big company paying tons of money for TV ads or anything) joint Dell and Ubuntu advertising campaign would be effective. The name Dell, which almost everyone knows, would make it clear that “Linux is not just for geeks” and the price would make people seriously think about trying Linux. Plus, Dell might be able to arrange some sort of “buy a PC with Linux, and if you don’t like it, we will replace it with a Windows PC for just $50″ (or whatever Windows costs to Dell.)

With an advertising effort like this, Linux might be able to make people who are moving away from Microsoft thing twice before moving to the Mac.

I can’t say I own an Eee PC, an HP MiniNote, or any UMPC, but all I need to do is read what people say about them and use some common sense to figure out that a full desktop OS is not, as a general rule, a good option for a tiny screen. Unfortunately, not everyone seems to agree.

The VAR Guy is reporting that SuSe Linux Enterprise will be shipped on the MSI Wind, a yet another yet-to-be-released UMPC. I have no problem with Novell, well, ignoring the whole Microsoft patent deal thing, but I just don’t think shipping a full desktop OS on a UMPC is a smart idea, especially when you could just use Ubuntu Netbook Remix or Linpus Linux Lite?

I can sort of understand on a bussiness-y UMPC like the MiniNote, but come on, think about your customers and what software they need. Next time, MSI, choose more UMPC-apropriate software.

Reading this week’s DistroWatch Weekly, I was surprised to see an interesting news story I had, apparently, completely missed. Normally, I try not to write about stories that are more than a couple of days old. But considering how many Linux news sources I read daily and considering I never saw this story, I have to assume that a large portion of you also missed this story, so I am making an exception.

This message on the Debian Eee PC mailing list reveals that Asus and Debian are working together, or at least planning to, on software for the Eee PC. This, presumably, means that future versions of the Eee PC could run a modified version of Debian, rather than a modified version of Xandros, as they currently do. While the end-user interface might be very similar, it seems highly likely that if the Debian project was involved, it might become much easier to install software and do other more complicated tasks, beyond what the current Eee PC’s software allows.

A change like this would, hopefully, make those who are trying to do anything beyond the most basic tasks with the Eee’s default software much happier, while not making the standard interface too complicated.

If the Eee PC does switch to Debian as it’s default OS, it would be a great step forward in making the Eee PC’s default software more attractive to a wider audience.

Brilliant Brainstorms is a weekly-ish summary of some of the best/most interesting brainstorms from the Ubuntu Brainstorm site.

This week I am going to start something a little different. In addition to the ideas I think are best, I am also going to talk about some ideas that might seem good, but have a less obvious negative side to them. Feedback is appreciated, as always!

Not All Good

While at first it may seem that more artwork is better, and it usually is, I am not always in favor of branding the bootloader. After all, the bootloader is not part of Ubuntu. Right now, the bootloader on my computer is OpenSuse’s, but I run Ubuntu as my main OS. In a situation like this, I find the branding slightly annoying. That is why I favor having a professional, but not branded, bootloader.

Really Brilliant

This is a great example of the kind of innovation Brainstorm-like sites should promote. The idea is to periodically (and optionally) restore everything except your home folder to a “clean” image. Sort of like a less-extreme version of Windows SteadyState.

You might be wondering why I am highlighting a “fix this” “idea.” The reason is that this has been the most popular idea since the first few days of Briainstorm. Yes, it is easier to stay on top once you are on top, but any idea that stays up there this long has to get some attention.

Being able to instantly install a package and have a new theme on your desktop would be really cool and it looks like work is already underway.

To help users (like me) keep their systems clean, it would be nice to be able to just look through your Applications menu and say, “hey, I don’t need that anymore” and just right-click and uninstall.

Believe me, if you have lots partitions, it is a pain to try to figure out which is which based on their sizes alone, so naming them just a little better would help a lot.

As you know, I am absolutely against making the same hardware cost the same with two different operating systems that don’t cost the same price. So if you take a given PC or laptop, put a free OS on one version and a commercial OS on the other and charge the same price, that is unfair. You may wonder why I am making such a big deal of the same hardware. Obviously you can’t compare across two different PCs, right? Well, apparently not.

A recent Techworld article is titled “Windows same price as Linux in new Eee PC.” When I read this, I thought “Ugg. Asus is messing with prices again.” Then I read the article.

If you look closely, the end of the second sentence says “although the specs are different.” That makes the story completely different and makes the title very misleading.

Just to make sure I am very clear, there is nothing wrong with selling machines with different priced OSs, if there is a difference in the specs that compensates for the price. Please, no more misleading titles.

Companies like Apple and Microsoft are starting to create a web of products that are all designed to work really well with each other. Perhaps the clearest example of this is Apple’s iLife software package. It includes a number of applications like a photo organizer and a movie maker. Another example, though, is Windows, Windows Home Server, Windows Media Center, and the Zune. In fact, you could really put almost every product Apple makes into one “web.” As I said before, all the products in each web are designed to be perfectly integrated into each other. There may be some cross-compatibility, but the products  are “best” together.

What these “webs” mean is that you can buy into the “Apple experience” or the “Microsoft experience.” The question in my mind was, what is the “open-source experience.” The problem, if you call it a problem, is that there is no one company or group to create an Apple or Microsoft-like set of products. It just doesn’t work that way. That’s OK. These super integrated product sets are the wrong way of doing things, anyway.

As an example, lets take two of Apple’s products: Mail and iCal. In a perfect world, there are a number of things Mail and iCal, or any E-Mail program and any calender program, should be able to do together. For example, you might get an e-mail that had a date for some event and want to add that event to your calender. Apple’s solution (which they may have already done - I just don’t know) would be to make it so that if you use Mail you can send event details to iCal. If you did this on the Linux side, though, what e-mail client and what calender program would you choose? That is where the right way comes in.

Instead of making program X and program Y talk to each other, why not create an open protocol for any application of type X to talk to any other application of type Y. If these sorts of protocols were adopted, it would solve the problem of the best applications, presumably from different companies, not working as well together as all the applications from one company. All you would have to do is find the best application for your needs and you would know that it will work with all your other applications. This should be the “open-source experience.”