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!

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.

Brilliant Brainstorms is a weekly-ish summary of some of the best brainstorms from the Ubuntu Brainstorm site. In the beginning it may not always come exactly once a week or on the same day, but, if it becomes popular, it should become more regular.

This week I started using the bookmarking system built in to Brainstorm instead of opening each idea in a tab and it seems to work quite well. I submitted an idea to include tags for bookmarks, to which I received a response from a Brainstorm admin that they are working on tags already!

There are already tons of great user-created videos promoting Ubuntu. With a contest, even more people would be inspired to create great videos that promote Ubuntu.

Although the implementation would have to be carefully figured out, the basic idea, improving copy and paste with lists or stacks, is great.

As long as most of the desktop is already animated, why not make more stuff look cool? Seriously, especially if there are a lot of icons on your desktops, making the new ones glow could be very useful.

Add/Remove is arguably one of the things that differentiates Ubuntu from other distros and other OSs, so making it better should be a top priority.

For those of us who want to know what each update does, but don’t want to have to sort through highly technical gibberish, it would be nice to have, possibly in addition, a short one or two sentence description of what an update does.

Imagine clicking on your Applications menu and dragging Firefox to the top as all the other apps glide down to make room for it. If that sounds cool, you should support this idea.

When Ubuntu’s Netbook Remix was first announced, Ars Technica mentioned that “No major OEMs have revealed plans to use it yet and Canonical is still actively looking for new partners in the hardware space.” This brought up the potential concern of what if no one really adopts Ubuntu Netbook Remix?

Of course, we can be quite confident that Canonical will figure something out, but for those of you who have been really hoping that the Ubuntu Netbook Remix will be widely adopted, it looks like you can stop holding your breath.

In a blog post today, Mark Shuttleworth said that:

The Canonical OEM team has been approached by a number of OEM’s who want to sell netbooks (small, low-cost laptops with an emphasis on the web) based on Ubuntu.

It is great to see cofirmation that Ubuntu Netbook Remix will almost certainly be adopted and I can’t wait to see what happens when it ships on the first devices.

From the perspective of a Linux user and watcher (and I guess in my case writer, too) of the Linux news, it certainly seems like the Eee PC should be increasing Linux’s number of users, but what do the real numbers show?

Unfortunately, it is very hard to know for sure how many people are using any particular operating system, since there is no way to measure OS usage. Luckily, there is some data available from Net Applications. Net Applications uses the information browsers give to various websites to get an approximate idea of OS market share. Here is what the Net Applications data tells us:

• From March of 2007 to September of 2007 Linux gained about .15% per month
• From September of 2007 to May of 2008 Linux gained about .3-.4% per month, with the exception of January to March where Linux lost .3%

Interestingly, the Eee PC appeared around the beginning of November of 2007, or about 1 month after Linux’s market share started going up by .3-.4% per month.

If the timing of the Eee PC’s arrival had been slightly different (one to two months earlier), it would look like the Eee PC made a huge difference, but since the larger increase started before the Eee PC arrived, it does not appear to be possible to show a connection between the Eee PC (and other Linux-based UMPCs) and Linux’s market share.

This is what I would have predicted, though, if I had been forced to guess. The reason is that Eee PCs can only make up a tiny part of all the computers in the world. Thus, the only reasonable way to expect them to increase Linux’s market share is if they cause people who have good experiences with them or hear about other people having good experiences with them to want to try out Linux on their main computer(s). There are two problems with this, though. First, it takes time for people to get around to downloading Linux and time for them to tell their friends (though it would seem like 6 months would be enough time.) And second, people need to know they are using Linux on their UMPC before they can be inspired to try out Linux on their main PC. With most of the current UMPCs, there is no real way to tell they run Linux (assuming they do.)

Will this improve in the future? Yes, it probably will. For one thing, these UMPCs are going to get more press and, through that press, more and more people will learn that they are actually using Linux already on their UMPC. Perhaps more importantly, though, I am hopeful that we will see more UMPC-specific distros or distro-variants that brand themselves so that it is easy to tell you are using Linux. I am particularly watching Ubuntu’s Netbook Remix, hoping that it will be used as an opportunity to promote Ubuntu.

Even if UMPCs are not yet directly affecting Linux’s market share, they are certainly helping Linux get a good reputation with more people and there is hope that, in the future, UMPCs running Linux will contribute to Linux’s market share noticeably.

Many Linux users have looked on happily as the Eee PC has taken off, bringing Linux to so many more people. Unfortunately, unless you learn some other way, there is no way to know that you are using Linux on the Eee PC. Thus, very few Eee PC purchases will result in someone trying Linux on their primary computer, unless they know from some other source that the Eee PC runs Linux. The same issue is true of most other Linux-based UMPC OSs.  If Ubuntu’s “Netbook Remix” takes off, though, this problem looks like it may go away.

What makes Ubuntu’s Netbook Remix different is that it appears, from the Ars Technica screenshots, to be clearly, though not annoyingly, Ubuntu branded. When people see the branding and have a good experience with their UMPC, they may choose to go try out Ubuntu on their primary computer. Because of this, Ubuntu’s Netbook Remix could bring Ubuntu to many people who purchase UMPCs who have possibly never heard of Linux.

Unfortunately, hardware makers are not exactly jumping to be the first to use the new Netbook Remix, but hopefully by the end of this year, when Canonical says the Netbook Remix will first be shipped, some hardware makers will jump on board and use it on their devices. And if the Netbook Remix is heavily adopted, we may begin to see a significant boost in the number of people trying Linux and Ubuntu out because of their UMPC expierience.

Brilliant Brainstorms is a weekly-ish summary of some of the best brainstorms from the Ubuntu Brainstorm site. In the beginning it may not always come exactly once a week or on the same day, but, if it becomes popular, it should become more regular.

Many distributions now have small presentations that run during installation and show off new features. Expanding on this idea, Ubuntu could offer a choice of an introduction for newbies to reduce post-installation questions, a tour of new features, or just the regular old installer. (Full disclosure: this is my idea.)

As you may know, I am always a fan of making things look cool, so a logical next step is to make the installer carry on the theme of the release. (See mockup at the right.)

Not everyone is like me in thinking that the Ubuntu brown and orange color scheme is great, so, to make those brown-haters happy, different colors of the human theme could be offered as options for a quick color change.

There is a lot of great, free e-book material out there, and since LInux is being adopted frequently in schools and it is consistent with open-source, it would make a lot of sense to make some of the freely-available e-books easily accessible from the Ubuntu repositories.

You may have noticed that this week’s Brilliant Brainstorms is shorter than previous weeks. Just FYI, I don’t try to reach any particular length, I just gather up all the brainstorms that I think are good and if I have way too many I remove a few.

Brilliant Brainstorms is a weekly-ish summary of some of the best brainstorms from the Ubuntu Brainstorm site. In the beginning it may not always come exactly once a week or on the same day, but, if it becomes popular, it should become more regular.

No one likes finding their computer will not boot. When it is impossible to boot your system, you usually don’t care so much what is wrong as how to fix it. That is why having a live CD designed to fix various common issues automatically would be great.

There are tons of cool plugins for Compiz Fusion that add new effects. While I can understand why these plugins are not shipped by default, it would be cool to have them easily installable in the repositories.

One of Linux’s many advantages over other OSs is how easily you can put your home folder its own partition. Unfortunately, this is not yet possible unless you know how to do it yourself.

It’s good that ideas can now be marked as “not an idea,” but if someone accidentally reports a bug to Brainstorm, it should not just be thrown away. Instead it should be sent to Launchpad.

Synchronization is something that not everyone will need, but when you do need it it is nice to have built right into the OS.

I am sure I have talked about this before, but I would really like Ubuntu to put some focus on making sure that from the time you press the power button to the time you log in, everything looks good and there are no black screens of text flashing by.

The current GRUB choices could be confusing, and it would be so simple to change the options to something more logical, so why not?

More publicity for Brainstorm = better. What else is there to say?

Recently the issue of synchronizing open-source software releases has come up quite frequently. Stories are being written about it. Shuttleworth (founder of Ubuntu) has stated his opinion on the topic. Seigo (from KDE) has also given his input. Basically, the topic is becoming a point of a lot of discussion and controversy.

Before I launch into my ideas on the topic, what is the whole synchronization idea? (Feel free to skip this part if you already know.) The idea of synchronizing open-source software is that all the Linux distributions will release their new versions on the same day and upstream projects (projects whose code goes into Linux distributions) will time their releases according to the distribution schedule.

Now onto my ideas: The debate seems to come down to a single major issue. There may be side topics, but the core issue seems to be time-based releases versus feature-based releases. Time-based releases, as you may know, are releases based on a set time schedule. For example, Ubuntu does time-based releases, because they release a new version every 6 months. Feature-based releases, as you may also know, are where the software is not released until all the features have been implemented.

The advantage of time-based releases is that they offer predictability for businesses and software developers, goals to force the developers working on the software to keep moving, and easier scheduling of how long support for each version will last. On the other hand, though, time-based releases may discourage major new features and allow bugs to slip through the cracks and make it into the final release. As you can see, there is no clear best option.

So how is this related to synchronization? Synchronization would force projects into a time-based release schedule. This seems, at least to me, to be the biggest issue surrounding synchronizing releases.

Personally, although I don’t have a strong opinion, I think time-based releases are the best way to go because they make it easy to see that development is progressing steadily and encourage steady development. Also, with good management and the help of version control software, it should be possible to still introduce new features and keep bugs out.

Even though I prefer time-based releases, I recognize that it may not be the right choice for some projects. Initially, I made the argument that if the features were not ready in a piece of software or there were still bugs, that piece of software would just skip that release date and release at the next date. The problem is that a piece of software might finish with months left before the next release date. That is why I think optional OSS (open-source software) synchronization is the right way to go.

What I mean by optional OSS synchronization is that the projects that already use time-based releases would all synchronize, while feature-based release projects would continue with their way of doing things and their code would be incorporated as needed when it it possible. This would allow a major synchronization effort, without stopping the projects for whom feature-based releases work better.

Additionally, I suspect (correct me if you think I am wrong) that most of the projects that are serious about getting mainstream adoption will go with time-based releases, because of its appeal to businesses.

For all these reasons, I think optional OSS synchronization–having the projects that already use time-based releases synchronize while the others remain as they are now–is the best solution to the synchronization question.

Recently the YouTube Ubuntu Developer Channel has been launched. The channel currently has four videos from the Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS) that is going on this week. The videos interview various people involved with Ubuntu and discuss that person’s views, what the person does, and what the person sees in the future of Ubuntu. I don’t know where the idea for this came from, but I think it is a great idea. It gives people a chance to get an idea of what is going on in Canonical and Ubuntu and to get some idea who the main Ubuntu developers are.

Because the interviews are with developers, though, they tend to be fairly technical. Because of this, it would be great to have another channel that shows off the best promotional videos for the less technical. The two channels could then link to each other. This would help prevent new users from being intimidated or scared off by the level of technicality, but also let users who wanted to learn more about the developement of Ubuntu see more detail.