Two things.

One, I am glad Ubuntu is doing this. It is not for me and I doubt I will use it. Though I might install it just out of curiosity (While keeping Debian of course.) Linux is so great that it can handle change or someone doing something different, can't it? I don't understand why it all has to be the same thing.

Two, I am not sure why some are so upset. Ubuntu is based on Debian. I got use to Ubuntu and that made it so much easier to switch to Debian. Those upset at the changes can always switch to Debian. Debian isn't going anywhere. Been around since 1993.

Or, if they also like the look and feel of Linux Mint and can tolerate a rolling release distro, they could also try LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition). It is closer to Debian than Ubuntu (has the Debian software repositories instead of its own) and also has a familiar interface for Ubuntu users.

Good Point. Linux Mint and the Linux Mint Debian version would be perfect replacements. (Of course there are also an endless number of distro's based on Ubuntu, what was it the last count? A couple of thousand? )

And besides, the installation of GNOME Shell in the Natty Narwhal will only be a few clicks (or one command in the terminal) away.

I've been looking at a few videos and screenshots of Gnome Shell and to be honest it looks like a terrible waste of screen space.
Maybe Gnome has finally dug its grave with this one.

Take a look at this screenshot while you're at it:



This is what GS looks like *outside* of the Activities overview (Yes, the view you probably saw as a 'terrible waste of screen space' was simply a menu invoked by a button in the upper left corner [or by moving the mouse into the upper left corner of the screen] but still dictates the whole experience). It is *NOT* GS in whole.

Looks like Gnome 2.x without the extra bar. Big deal.

Then take a look here:

http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design/Whiteboards

This is what GNOME Shell will look like when closer to GNOME 3.

Now take a look here:

http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-sh...rview-relayout

This is the git branch where all these changes are taking place.

Well I will give the new Gnome a fair try. If worse comes to worse I can just switch to XFCE.

By the way. If there are any XFCE Devs here listen to me. DON'T CHANGE A THING WITH XFCE.

Ack...please...let's hope it doesn't come to that sort of thing. Not that I really *use* Ubuntu regularly (aside from having a VM in VirtualBox ), but this whole attitude of "let's shift as much work as we can to the CPU" is ridiculous IMO. A whole operating system. Running off a Python interpreter. What. The. Hell.

Still doesn't seem like such a big deal for all the hype you're giving it.

Everyone, everyone. Can we get back on topic *PLEASE*? It seems like everyone had been so busy arguing about off-topic things that the topic just went out the window.

Agreed. Python is *NEVER* a good language to write an OS in unless you're simply trying to create a VM out of a folder or something.

Notice how long Android takes to boot? It's because the majority of the OS is written in Java and has to be interpreted. I have tried booting Android myself using Eclipse and an Android Virtual Device on my Acer netbook. It took upwards of 5 minutes to boot! Ubuntu could take longer if it replaces the kernel with a Python-based one.

However, as I have already stated: Can we *PLEASE* get back on topic? Thank you.

Is there any PPA to download the desktop version of Unity (not the netbook version, the version that will come in 11.04 desktop edition).

Just for the record, there is no Slackware Live CD. I believe that you are thinking of the installation disk. I could be wrong, but I don't think there's a Gentoo one, either. I don't know about Arch.

Impossible if you don't know about 'ifconfig,' perhaps.

Once you have been running Ubuntu for a while and endured a few updates, I'd say it's more like the IE of Linux distributions, but the metaphor is so murky to begin with that I'll let you have that one.

Well, that all depends on the "newbie" in question. When my friend Scot, the software engineer, asked me what distribution I thought he should try first, I told him Slackware. When my seven-year-old niece asked me the same question, I told her Ubuntu. When my eighty-year-old grandmother asked me, I said, "let me come over and set it up for you, then I'll show you how to use it, turn it on, and turn it off." All three were satisfied with the resulting experiences.

Some will, but others will not . . . that's how you get from newbie to veteran, right? If all newbies went straight for Ubuntu and never left, then all Linux users would stay newbies forever.

Did you mean dependencies? I've never had a package just not install. Well, there was that one time, but that file wasn't actually even a compressed archive file.

I'm ready.

Firefox is like a million times more popular than OpenOffice.org. Firefox is the #1 web browser in the world, and OO.o is nowhere close to that.

Fully. It is awesome that Canonical has succeeded in building a true, easy-to-use for everyone desktop Linux distribution. Ironicly, it is actually least easy-to-use for experienced Linux users.

Well, it aspires to some of that, but I doubt that it will be very successful in those veins, so, yes, you are (mostly) correct.

No . . . that's what Squeeze is for.

. . . Which, just to remain clear, don't have Live CDs at all.

Who are these men of straw that tick you off so much, running about recommending Slackware, Gentoo, and Arch to computer illiterate people? Can you site one example of that for me? I'm not upset that you're ranting about it, don't get me wrong; I'm just intrigued that this might actually be going on somewhere.

Clearly, they aren't guilty of similar forms of over-generalization, either.

I'm sorry, man; I'm just following your lead here.

Anything can be . . . GNOME has been for a long time, most notably by Ubuntu, and they've done a good job of it. I agree with you. I have faith that the team at Ubuntu will do well in shaping a nice desktop UI out of Unity.

The point where I do agree with the author of the article is this: Those same armies of "permanewbs" who've been converted to Ubuntu over lo these many years, may see something intimidatingly different in Unity and run, which might not work out so well for Canonical.

Totally. You are correct.
However . . .
The users who you refer to earlier, who "will simply stop at the failure to build or install some software package, crying 'configure: error: <blah blah blah>: Help me!'," won't be able to take that "leap."

That could be bad news for the "every man" distro, and I think that this is one of the main points of the article.

Hey, man . . . that time you were the one who bunny-trailed everybody with all of those screenshot links.

That depends . . . if you're converting to assembler or binary on-the-fly with an interpreter, then no . . . but I don't think that anyone would do that. (Has anyone ever done that?)

Now, hold on. The UI may be written in Java (I don't know, but I doubt it), but Android itself, the underlying OS, is written in C. It's kernel is Linux.

My Evo takes 53 seconds.

Hey . . . why are we talking about Android now? Kenny, can we get back on topic, please?

That's more like it.