Mark Shuttleworth: Our Goal Is 200 Million Ubuntu Users In 4 Years
digitizor.com
digitizor.com
I thought netbooks a few years back were what was going to get Linux to "normal users", but Canonical barely managed to get anyone to ship netbooks with Ubuntu bundled in the boom year (when I bought an Eee, with their terrible Linux version on it and then installed Ubuntu netbook edition). And then Microsoft managed to push Windows back onto netbooks.
Right now there is no touchscreen Ubuntu, the netbook edition is folded into the standard one, and the only vague hope would be ARM based machines (Nettops, or desktop), but these are still not really shipping in any volume, and Microsoft has announced Windows 8 on ARM so that only gives a short window of opportunity, and not likely a 200m one.
The tablet option is a lot of work, and up against Android (and Meego), with rather less momentum.
So, I think that just leaves the geeks still? There are only in the thousands not millions of Andrroid developers though. Some people (like me) have come back from a few years on Mac to Ubuntu, but not a lot yet.
So right now, I am not convinced...
Touchscreen, netbook, ARM, tablet... These edge-case platforms aren't what Ubuntu targets. Neither do they target "geeks". Ubuntu targets the average user: just install it on your box and have a look at the software it comes with. It truly is "Linux, for human beings".
It's never been easier to try and install a different OS: not ten years ago you could only get an OS by buying a physical copy.
Have a look at the growth of Google searches for "Ubuntu" alongside other OS[3].
I don't see why Ubuntu won't continue to grow in popularity and users. It has a large and growing community.
[1] http://distrowatch.com/stats.php?section=popularity [2] http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp [3] http://www.google.com/trends?q=ubuntu%2C+%22windows+xp%22%2C...
Also, Unity? Are you freaking kidding me?
I'm all for being bold and innovative in UI/UX, but pushing alpha-quality software in a stable release to unsuspecting users?
What the hell were they thinking? It isn't acceptable that the UI in Windows 3.11 (for Workgroups; yes, I still have the license) was more consistent / reliable than Ubuntu 11.04 -- the average user doesn't have the patience to understand UI absurdities, neither the skills / patience to go edit files in /etc or recompile their kernels, just to make their system behave normally. Even I, after several years of struggling on every update, I'm quickly losing my interest in doing that.
So I'm sorry, but 200 millions of users won't be dumb enough to switch -- at this point I consider projects like Android/Meego as the only choice for desktop-Linux (simply because tables/mobiles will merge with desktops in the future).
That's actually a slight decline since its apex in 2008...
The roadblock to user adoption isn't the quality of software/ux, it's making people to make an effort and learn something new. Another issue is hardware quality. Trying out Linux on cheap and flimsy netbooks isn't the best way to experience new software.
In other words there nothing to be done with Ubuntu itself to reach his goals. The technology is fine.
The problem I have with the system, the problem I see making the masses balk once they've been convinced to give it a try, is that, simply, things don't work out of the box with linux.
That's not Cannonical's fault, and indeed, they've put a lot of work into their app repository to build a pile of things that do....but every single time I've tried to go off the farm, install a game from CD, install something from makefile or a tarball..I'm missing repositories. I've the wrong..something. I'm trying to build a massive skillset and understanding of the thing, and I don't have the background to do it. Very few people do. People will install it, browse the web, and then run into walls. They'll be angry, they'll blog about it. They'll leave, and they'll poison the public view.
Thank God I purposely chose an Intel wifi card in my laptop, because the poor people stuck with Broadcoms (the standard install on Dell laptops at least, and that's not an insignificant market share) were horribly buggy in every past release I've tried--and even if they did work, wifi was noticeably slower than Intel or other cards. I certainly wouldn't sit back with my Intel wifi card and tell the Broadcom users that it "works for me!"
Furthermore, there is a license applied to open software, and quite a lot of cost free software.
But the Software Center is a walled garden, requiring backwards support of the OS to the application.
The software center is easty to use, yes. It is also a hugely important part of the experience, because its how you get new software...if you can find it in the software center. (often you can't..more on that in response to your last point)
Most commercial liscenses are remarkably simmilar to one another. The gist is 'don't infringe my IP', to the extent that you can plug different IPs into one by word searches.
I do mean free as beer software, as in response to the argument that avoiding credit card charges is a benefit of Ubuntu..there's plenty of widows capable free software. (and open source). Incedentally, many of the open source applications I've found have an option for a windows download. Lots of users in windows, after all.
Walled garden from the end user's side. If your access to software is through the software center, then you'll discover that there are plenty of things not supported by cannonical. Its an app store, and one with fairly limited supply. (33,686 on display, as opposed to over 80,000 in the android) If you consider that the average user is not a person who knows how to make from source, or even navigate the terminal (and I'll lay good odds not willing to learn), the software center is the -only- way anyone is likely to get decent software.
All right, only is rather extreme, but other sources of apps are so frequently rather difficult to install in this OS, where accepting a liscense agreement and pressing the install button is anything but.
The point being is that the average user won't see an open source repository, or the source at all. they'll see a list of apps they can install from what is, essentially, the ubuntu market, each app chosen and vetted by canonical.
Indeed, I think this is the number one issue of converting users to Ubuntu, and that there are two types of not working that turn off potential users:
1) Learning a new workflow. There are tons of viable open source alternatives to proprietary software, but new users can often be overwhelmed by the idea that they're going to have to transition to a different workflow.
A year or so ago, I agreed to help my mother's secretary with her malware infested XP installation, but came to the conclusion that only a nuke from orbit would suffice. I told her that I could install Ubuntu on a separate partition, which would allow her to access her old files. However, learning OpenOffice proved too much for her, and we ended up doing a clean Windows' install.
So, users' need to be made aware of recommended alternatives to Windows' software and they very much need stellar documentation on how to complete simple tasks. It seems like many Windows' users just internalize a set of steps to complete a certain task and have a very hard time adapting when presented with a new environment.
2) Lack of out-of-the-box hardware support is still a serious issue, especially for notebooks. Many of my semi-technical friends/co-workers have expressed that they would like to try out Ubuntu and that, inevitably, they would like to install it on a notebook computer.
I typically caution them against it because of the not insignificant chance that they will end up with missing hardware support, usually wireless, which is critical to basically every notebook user. Sure, it's often possible to install proprietary drivers or firmware, but this is definitely not a task that someone new to Linux can reasonably be expected to overcome.
Something like lack of 3D acceleration is not a huge deal (maybe more of an issue with Gnome 3, not sure), but lack of wireless support, significantly reduced battery life, and broken suspend-to-RAM are serious issues that plague Ubuntu (and Linux) installs on the notebook. Canonical needs to make serious in-roads with hardware vendors before they can reasonably expect to reach 200 million users.
Again, I think it's not "Linux isn't ready for the desktop", but "Linux isn't ready for the notebook" that Canonical needs to be concerned with if they don't want to be left behind in our increasingly mobile-leaning future.
What is this fiasco that he is talking about? not including wayland on 11.04? talk about confusing writing.
I do think 11.04 is immature compared to previous versions, but is in line to what you should expect with such a radical change as Unity.
And yes, only geeks keep up with Ubuntu news--everyone else just clicked upgrade and then stared blankly at their weird new desktop. He's not going to keep regular users around for long if he keeps pulling that kind of crap--and he's done it twice already, with window buttons in the past.
But, I think the motivation here was a bit different, canonical had less control and influence over the desktop than they felt they needed.
full disclosure: I'm a 10.04 user and plan to stay that way until the next LTS.
If you tell a "regular Joe" user that by clicking a dropdown you can change how the operating system fundamentally works, they'd probably think you were lying--the thought is that alien to them. There's a slim to none chance they'd discover that option on their own (not in small part because they wouldn't even know the option existed), and an equally slim chance that they'd know how to search for it.
To you and me, "Unity" is the "well, duh" search term. To regular people, it's tech gibberish.
So again it all comes down to the average user--they don't like change, they don't keep up with Ubuntu news, and they aren't interested in fiddling with configuration options to have a usable desktop. I don't think that you can have both fundamentals-shattering releases and also a ppa-based/milestone-release distro at the same time.
The other big problem has always been applications. For example, I need Adobe's tools and Wine has never done it for me. Hopefully the cloud will make this less important. I already find myself popping into pixlr and coming away satisfied. Now I just need After Effects and gigabit broadband...
Even as a developer that interacts with linux on servers every day I still feel no great urge to run a linux desktop.
Open Office has all the features I need and I can open all my spreadsheets and docs from MS Office. The support for my HP 3-in-1 is great and I found the software a lot easier to use (because its simpler) than HP's. Scanning is a lot simpler. My wireless got working before I noticed it.
So I see no reason to return to Windows unless you are a gamer. My parents and in-laws certainly don't need to stick to Windows.
What Ubuntu needs is a bit of marketing.
Software compatibility is the real issue. However, I think that the move towards web based platforms over the next decade will pretty much eliminate this issue. For the average computer user, Windows is unnecessary. If you are doing something that requires demanding tools -- be it photography, 3D animation, CAD, etc, then the OS means a lot more and probably will for a while.
I would place my money on Google and Apple dominating the OS's of the future. Something is going to replace Windows short of Microsoft undergoing a radical transformation and Windows being free. Seeing the direction of Windows Mobile I am guessing that Microsoft will try something radical and it won't be something that works.
I think desktop Linux, or at least Ubuntu, is at a point now that most geeks use it or know about it so one would assume Canonical will be targeting the other 90-something percent next.
I'd be willing to wager that my prediction has a better chance of coming true than Shuttleworth's. But the truth is that neither has a very high chance of happening.
if I wanted to use imposed shortcuts I'd be using a mac or windows
It's actually one of the little consistencies I miss when using Linux-based desktops.
This sort of thing says to me that Canonical no longer want to make something great[er] they just want to be famous.