thelinuxlink.net

derStandard.at: If you look on the desktop market today there is one operating system that is growing significantly and it's not Linux. It's OS X. What do you think is the reason for that?

Shuttleworth: First of all, we should really understand this, as it's an important observation: The fact that OS X is growing, tells us that Windows is weakening. The fact that OS X is growing and Linux isn't, tells you that OS X is offering things that Linux is not. One of those is the pace of change, the level of innovation. You really have to give credit to Apple for driving innovation. Another of those things is their focus on the web as an experience. They recognize very strongly that the web is the killer application of the PC today and not Microsoft today.

There is a real opportunity for us to deliver a great web experience, but we have to focus very strongly on getting this done.

derStandard.at: So OS X is more interesting for you than Windows?

Shuttleworth: For me OS X is more interesting. I believe that free software is the most amazing platform for innovation, but I believe that that innovation also tends to follow a "lazy path", people often choose the path of least resistance, they want to express their ideas and they want to find the easiest way to do that. And at the moment we don't offer a particular easy place to go and express your technology.

There's some exceptions to that obviously, if you look at Firefox plugins for example. Once Firefox got to the same level of functionality as Internet Explorer we saw an explosion in the number of plugins. That was driven by people saying "I have an idea on how to make the browser better". And what's the easiest way to achieve that? Go write a Firefox plugin! And I guess that should tell us a lot.

derStandard.at: What do you see as the main obstacles holding back the success of the Linux desktop?

Shuttleworth: I think we don't yet deliver a good enough user experience. I think we deliver a user experience for people that have a reason to want to be on the Linux platform, either because of price or because of freedom. If that was your primary reason, Linux is the right answer.

But if you are somebody who is not too concerned about price, who is not too concerned about freedom, I don't think we can say the Linux desktop offers the very best experience. And that's something we have to change, that's something I'm committed to work on, focusing increasing amounts of resources of Canonical on figuring out on how we actually move the desktop experience forward to compete with Mac OS X.

Snarkout wrote:Well, at the very least The Dock was apple's idea, and we've been whoring it ever since. I'll admit that I don't care for the dock - I think it's a shitty way to manage windows, and I much prefer quicksilver or katapult style launchers, but linux folks have produced literrally dozens of shitty (and, ok, some not so shitty) ripoffs. Compiz and its ilk are all basically clones of similar technology that has been available on the mac for *ages.* .

Snarkout wrote:Well, at the very least The Dock was apple's idea, and we've been whoring it ever since.

I think we deliver a user experience for people that have a reason to want to be on the Linux platform, either because of price or because of freedom.