Tanner Helland: October 2009 Archives

I've been looking in on Tanner Helland's Ubuntu-rich blog for some time, and today I found a virtual motherlode of well-researched and -reasoned opinion on where Ubuntu should be headed.

You can see the entire blog, just the Ubuntu bits, or better yet start with his excellent series:

Hellend hits it right on the head: While there's a whole lot right with open-source software, specifically the Linux operating system and the wildly popular (in an obscure, cultish kind of way) Ubuntu distribution, there's quite a bit that's not so right and needs both minor and major improvement before a free, open-source, Unix-based operating environment can really challenge Windows and Macintosh for significant share on the desktops of non-geeks and geeks alike.

My reasons for running FOSS (free, open-source software) operating systems and applications are many, the chief among them being that I'm able to install many different distributions/projects/applications on as many different pieces of hardware as I please with the consent of those who produce that software in a fully open and collaborative way.

Innovation, freedom, not needing to steal what I'm unwilling to pay for, sticking it to the man, security, keeping older hardware in service ... FOSS means a lot, and Ubuntu has way more heat on it and in it than just about any other free, open-source operating system out there.

And while I'm very, very happy to have so much software at my disposal, like Helland I'm frustrated by those areas where FOSS is weak.

Like him, I'm puzzled by Ubuntu's lack of an easy-to-use, currently maintained GUI backup utility.

I'm less hopeful about a solution to the lack of decent video editors at both the consumer and professional level.

A lack of eye candy doesn't bother me; I turned Compiz off because it literally gives me a headache.

He didn't mention suspend/resume, but I've never had it work terribly well (and often not at all). For me, the Macintosh, with its tight hardware/software integration is the standard, and Linux sure doesn't measure up to that.

But with video, Helland is spot on. The <video> tag in HTML 5 could bring some sanity to streaming video across all platforms, not just Linux, and if ever there was the need to wrest something from the corporate grip of Adobe, Microsoft and Apple for the good of all content-creators and users, video is that thing.

In just about every instance, Helland says it better than, so hop over and read every damn thing he's written about Ubuntu.