Shooting for the Perfect 10.10 with Maverick Meerkat
Friday, April 2nd, 2010It’s time to put our heads together to envision “the perfect 10”.
This is a time of great innovation and change in the Linux world, with major new initiatives from powerful groups bringing lots of new ideas, new energy and new code. Thanks to the combined efforts of Google, Intel, IBM, Canonical, Red Hat, Oracle, Cisco, ARM, many other companies, Debian and other projects, a hundred startups and tens of thousands of professional and inspired contributors, the open source ecosystem continues to accelerate. We need to bring the best of all of that work into focus and into the archive. For millions of users, Ubuntu represents what Free Software can do out of the box for them. We owe it to everybody who works on Free Software to make that a great experience.
At the Ubuntu Developer Summit, in May in Belgium, we’ll have a new design track, and a “cloud and server” track, reflecting some major focal points in 2010. They will complement our ongoing work on community, desktop, kernel, quality assurance, foundations and mobile.
Our new theme is “Light”, and the next cycle will embrace that at many levels. We have a continued interest in netbooks, and we’ll revamp the Ubuntu Netbook Edition user interface. As computers become lighter they become more mobile, and we’ll work to keep people connected, all day, everywhere. We’ll embrace the web, aiming for the lightest, fastest web experience on any platform. The fastest boot, the fastest network connect, the fastest browser. Our goal is to ensure that UNE is far and away the best desktop OS for a netbook, both for consumers and power users.
On the other end of the spectrum, we’ll be lightening the burden of enterprise deployment with our emphasis on hybrid cloud computing. Ubuntu Server is already very popular on public clouds like EC2 and Rackspace, and now that Dell supports the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud for private cloud infrastructure, it’s possible to build workloads that run equally well in your data center or on the cloud. We’ll focus on making it even easier to build those workloads and keep them up to date, and managing the configurations of tens, or tens of thousands, of Ubuntu machines running in the cloud.
It’s not all about work. We don’t just want to be connected to the internet, we want to be connected to each other. Social from the Start is our initiative to make the desktop a collaborative, social place. For the past five years, we’ve all been shifting more and more data into the web, to a series of accounts and networks elsewhere. Now it’s time to start to bring those social networks back into our everyday computing environment. Our addressbooks and contact lists need to be synchronized and shared, so that we have the latest information everywhere – from mobile phones to web accounts.
So there’s a lot to do. I hope you’ll join us in shaping that work.
Introducing the Maverick Meerkat
Our mascot for 10.10 is the Maverick Meerkat.
This is a time of change, and we’re not afraid to surprise people with a bold move if the opportunity for dramatic improvement presents itself. We want to put Ubuntu and free software on every single consumer PC that ships from a major manufacturer, the ultimate maverick move. We will deliver on time, but we have huge scope for innovation in what we deliver this cycle. Once we have released the LTS we have plenty of room to shake things up a little. Let’s hear the best ideas, gather the best talent, and be a little radical in how we approach the next two year major cycle.
Meerkats are, of course, light, fast and social – everything we want in a Perfect 10. We’re booting really fast these days, but the final push remains. Changes in the toolchain may make us even faster for every application. We’re Social from the Start, but we could get even more tightly connected, and we could bring social features into even more applications. Meerkats are family-oriented, and we aspire to having Ubuntu being the safe and efficient solution for all the family netbooks. They are also clever – meerkats teach one another new skills. And that’s what makes this such a great community.
Here’s looking at the Lynx
Lucid is shaping up beautifully, but there’s still a lot to be done to make it the LTS we all want. Thanks to everyone who is bringing their time, energy and expertise to bear on making it outstanding. And I’m looking forward to the release parties, the brainstorming at UDS, and further steps on our mission to bring free software to the world, on free terms.
April 15th, 2010 at 1:26 pm
[…] Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth in his Blog announced the next version of Ubuntu 10.10 codename: Maverick Meerkat. screen.width * 0.7) […]
April 16th, 2010 at 6:01 pm
“Ubuntu Netbook Edition” on “i-pad”
Just a short remark: Since tablet PCs are taking off due to the i-pad, I see many more people wanting to use their mobile devices for simply writing stuff with their fingers or with a pen instead of a keyboard. People untrained in using the innumerable characters on a keyboard (what a complicated user interface?) would love to use a tablet-PC for taking notes (note-pad?)
This is an application missing in open source:
Optical character recognition. OCR
I have done some research, but I haven’t found a native linux solution that works really well (tesseract, gocr, … well, well?!?…). I am currently using a slightly dated abbey fine reader version under wine for scanned documents or pdf-files, which works fine, but…..
Linux would be perfectly suited for “light” tablet PCs, but this application is sorely missing!
Google has done some work on automatic speech recognition for android, right? Please lobby google and possibly abbey to put some effort into this…. A lightweight OCR with a GUI for n00bs. Package it with the netbook remix, if you can! Jump on the bandwagon!
All the best!
April 16th, 2010 at 7:50 pm
This is a great opportunity, if you are willing to listen. I left windows for Ubuntu because I wanted stability, functionality and speed when using programs.
I have converted 9 people to Ubuntu. None of which care about colors or boot time, or whether the buttons are on the right or left. They do care about not crashing and things working. I suggest being more concerned with fixing pulse audio so it works. people want skype they want to use rhythm-box and not have it freeze, they want to be able to watch hulu or you tube with out having choppy video. They don’t want to feel like they are dealing with the same old windows that doesn’t work.
Please refocus the trend back to stability and harness the strength of open source to create it. I think the direction of Ubuntu is all wrong and pandering to the geeks out there…Ubuntu needs to be there for the person that is not a techie. the average user that wants to use email and web. watch a few videos. and not have to worry why stuff does not work… thank you
I do hope you read this…i would not waste my time if I did not care about the future of Ubuntu.
April 16th, 2010 at 8:04 pm
I’ve been experimenting with various Linux distributions since 12/09. I have a multiple HDD PC that runs XP and Linux on separate devices. Because my wife is averse to change, she uses XP, but voila she has learned to navigate the GRUB menu and launch XP.
Relative to the world of Linux distros, a casual PC user will probably conclude that Ubuntu rates very, very high in terms of ease-of-use.
Ubuntu will present you with various functionality challenges, but once you begin to climb the learning curve, and if you’re so inclined, most issues are easily resolved.
I’m not so concerned with “look and feel”, but am very impressed with the amazing animations, and how easy it is to adapt the desk top and overall window appearance and function, to one’s taste. So, if Shuttleworth wants the buttons on the left, get over it and move ’em to the right. With Mac and Microsoft, WYSIWYG, and they are not free!!
So, for my money, oops it’s free, 10.10 means perfect functionality/interoperability right out of the box. Maybe, then it can be named the “ubiquitous urchin”
April 16th, 2010 at 8:29 pm
[…] […]
April 18th, 2010 at 6:40 am
first, thanks a lot Mark. I’m from Chile, in south america. Here, ubuntu isn’t so popular, but i’ve been telling my friends about ubuntu, linux and the free software and every day I see they’re opening their minds to this new world. I use ubuntu since a year ago (started using 8.10 intrepid ibex, what a change with karmic, cool!)
I think that the design group is doing fine changing the window controls and that stuff, i’ve been reding about what people is saying about that and… well, it isn’t difficult to learn to use the controls in the other side, c’mon guys, that’s not important for now… otherwise, this is a big big biiig change!
i love ubuntu, everything i can do with it, . thanks a lot Mark!! i’m waiting for the next release.
April 18th, 2010 at 3:36 pm
wow! thats nice, very much willing to try…
April 20th, 2010 at 5:22 am
What really happened after you went on the space trip and have seen the Earth from above?
Did this trip change the way you think and feel the world?
Well, at least it has changed the OS I use…
Mark Shuttleworth: It certainly made me want to work on a project that would have a positive, global impact. And Ubuntu is that project đ
April 20th, 2010 at 10:59 pm
Mark, after using lucid for a month, a really hate the new theme. Human was a far better constructed theme! Nevertheless, lucid is great. Thanks for ubuntu.
April 21st, 2010 at 12:09 am
[…] the work never stops, we’ve already started planning for Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat), I sent some of my preliminary ideas to the edubuntu-devel mailing list yesterday. We have a […]
April 21st, 2010 at 5:13 pm
[…] Lynx ini? Maka jangan lupa kedatangannya seminggu lagi. Atau malah justru lebih tertarik menunggu Maverick Meerkat si 10.10 yang katanya akan rilis Oktober […]
April 22nd, 2010 at 4:35 pm
[…] LTS) pero tendrĂĄ una relevancia notable, segĂșn las palabras que Mark Shuttleworth ha escrito en este post de su blog que uno de los objetivos principales de Maveric Meerkat (Ubuntu 10.10) es que Ubuntu y el software […]
April 26th, 2010 at 8:44 am
Well, just one thing…. Thank you for Ubuntu!!!!
April 27th, 2010 at 4:53 am
Well, Lucid is good enough that I almost never boot Windows/anything else; but it does have a few difficulties:
1. Battery life is extremely poor. Bad selling point, when Acer is boasting about a new Aspire One with 10+hours of battery life. If battery life is better than or equal to Windows, you have a good selling point.
2. Standing bugs/ occasional unsupported hardware. One thing to get would be GMA500 support
3. Slow network (Avahi/mDNS)
4. Business software. Yes, OO Calc works for records–but for real accounting software/other business software, one needs to know where to hunt, and be willing to install “unsupported” software.
1 & 2 are about netbook marketability; without them, don’t expect to do much.
4 is about business appeal. The one person who might reasonably refuse to install
“universe” software is a businessperson. If Ubuntu is ready for the business, there’s a market point.
OEM deals are important and social is nice for those who like it, but don’t forget everything else.