The default positioning of window-management buttons in Ubuntu 10.04 has generated a lot of controversy. But given the decreasing importance of these buttons in modern desktop environments, I’m left wondering if the issue is really so important.  In a year or two, after all, window titlebars may be a thing of the past.

As I wrote recently, Lucid Lynx will bring with it a radically refreshed theme.  As part of the interface changes, the buttons for minimizing, maximizing and closing windows will be relocated to the left of the window titlebar, from their position on the right where users of most modern operating systems are used to finding them.  More specifically, the titlebar will now look something like this by default:

Personally, I’m not crazy about this decision.  The position of the buttons will feel “wrong” to most users, Ubuntu veterans and Windows converts alike.

True, wrong and right in this context are defined by convention, not logic.  But in the absence of sound reasoning or research proving that the interface changes make for an objectively more functional desktop, I have to remain convinced that the right place for window buttons is on the right, if only because it’s been like that since Windows 3.1 (pace OS X).

Ivanka Majic, one of the designers behind the interface changes in Lucid, recently provided some feedback on the rationale behind the button placement.  Unfortunately, she didn’t explain why exactly the decision was made as much as she provided a cool drawing of window titlebars through the ages.  I’m still not convinced this was a good idea, Canonical.

Does it matter?

All the same, I’m not sure it really matters where the window buttons live, because they’re becoming less and less important.  By many measures, window titlebars are on their way out.

For example, Ubuntu Netbook Remix discards them in favor of a few extra vertical pixels of screen space.  For the same reason, applications like Google’s Chromium browser retain only a hybridized version of the title bar, combining it with menu controls.

More notably, when Gnome 3–which is set to accompany Ubuntu 10.10 next fall–hits the masses, it will bring with it a whole new conceptualization of window management in the form of Gnome Shell.  (For a look at an early version of Gnome Shell in action, see this post from a few months ago.)

If Gnome Shell catches on, it will make window management buttons almost obsolete, since windows will be managed from a central location.  And with the unlimited number of virtual desktops that Gnome Shell provides, minimizing and maximizing windows may no longer be very necessary in the first place–why shrink a window when you can create a new workspace instead?

In order to be truly innovative, Ubuntu’s designers might better have thought in terms of the future of window management, considering how to make Lucid’s new interface consonant with the trend away from titlebars and other pixel-wasting elements of traditional desktops.  But at this point, it looks like that innovation will have to wait until Gnome 3 necessitates it next fall.

The big news out of the Ubuntu world this month is the radically refurbished look introduced to accompany Lucid when it’s released in April, replacing the orange-brown “Human” theme that Ubuntu users have known and loved–or not–since 2004.  Here’s a look at the new face of Ubuntu, with an attempt at abstract thoughts related to it.

Ubuntu’s traditional theme never enjoyed universal acceptance.  For some users, earth tones just didn’t look right on an LCD display.  For others, there wasn’t enough contrast between colors.

Personally, I grew to like the Human theme, despite all the controversy.  I can’t say I was in love with it at first sight, but it grew on me–and not only because the orange-on-brown color scheme brought pleasant thoughts of the chocolate orange that’s given to me every year at Christmas.  Indeed, I suspect that the conventional look grew on a lot of Ubuntu users, if only because they used it long enough that it became familiar and comforting.

After all, as much as we’d like to think otherwise, taste is a construct; we’re conditioned to be attracted to certain styles, and what appeals one day might lose its attractive qualities the next.  The beige IBM PS/2 in my basement looked stylish once, too.  Now it looks as dull as the Windows 3.1 that it ran.

The New Ubuntu

Regardless of what we think of the Human theme, it’s now on its way to the dustbin of history, to use an overstated phrase.  Beginning with Ubuntu 10.04, the operating system will have a radically new look, with the “Ambiance” theme installed by default.

Pictures are worth something like a thousand words, so here’s a more detailed presentation of Ambiance:

The default desktop.

Menu icons.

The alternative wallpapers installed by default--a few additions from Karmic.

Nautilus

Gnome Terminal is transparent by default. Personally, I am not a fan.

I can’t say I feel strongly either way about the new theme at this point.  It seems a little too dark, and a little too much like OS X, for my tastes, but I imagine it will grow on me in time.  That’s how life works.

In any case, an updated look for Ubuntu was long overdue, if only because the theme had yet to be meaningfully revamped in the six years of Ubuntu’s existence–and in the free-software world, six years, which spanned almost a dozen Ubuntu releases, is a long, long time.  In that sense, Ubuntu without a human face can’t hurt.

A couple weeks ago, we took a look at Lubuntu, a lightweight Linux distribution based on Ubuntu.  Since then, the operating system has undergone major changes that merit a revisit of its features.  Here’s a second look at the Ubuntu variant that just might replace Xubuntu.

When I wrote about Lubuntu previously, I was impressed by its performance and ability to run on minimal system resources.  That’s already a major point in its favor against Xubuntu, which can appear underwhelming to users looking for a lightweight desktop.

My one major criticism of Lubuntu when I first tried it out was its aesthetics.  Maybe I’m just a shallow guy, but looks do matter, especially in operating systems, and the iteration of Lubuntu that I tested initially was filled with overly geeky artwork.

Lubuntu’s New Look

But that’s all changed in the most recent build of the Lubuntu Lucid live CD, alpha 3, which was released on February 25 and is available here.  The new Lubuntu looks like this (apologies for the dual mouse cursors; the black one is Lubuntu’s):

Here’s another screenshot offering a more thorough look at the new art:

In my opinion, this color scheme and artwork are much prettier than what I saw two weeks ago.  They’re something I could use everyday without feeling like a totally unfashionable geek.

Additional themes are accessible from Lubuntu’s appearance preferences utility:

Finally, here’s a quick look at the login screen, which is also pretty pleasing to the eye–especially given that the developers are working with minimal system resources:

Note the several different options for desktop sessions.  When I tried, only “Lubuntu” and “Lubuntu Netbook” (and “Default,” which is Lubuntu) worked, but the suggestion that the Lubuntu developers aim to release implementations of Gnome and KDE on Openbox is exciting.

Other Changes

Beyond the visual, Lubuntu’s developers have updated the operating system in other significant ways.  For one, as perceptive readers will have noticed in the first screenshot above, Lubuntu now sports NetworkManager instead of wicd.

As much as I love wicd, I have to agree with the developers that NM is better.  NM offers exceedingly easy configuration of VPN connections and the like, which wicd does not.

Also noticeable is the replacement of Firefox with Chrome as the default Web browser (Firefox is no longer installed at all):

Finally, the Lubuntu developers have created a special interface for netbooks.  I haven’t had much time to explore it yet, but hope to do so soon.  Briefly, though, here’s what it looks like:

There are still two long months between now and the final release of Ubuntu 10.04, which means there’s plenty of time for future changes to Lubuntu.  But so far I really like what I see, and am starting to regret not having a computer old enough to justify switching to this still-unofficial Ubuntu variant.

I wrote recently about legal concerns involving multimedia patents on Ubuntu, and how to obtain licensed codecs without breaking the law.  But I didn’t give much thought to the philosophical side of the issue.  That’s an important topic in the Ubuntu community, so I’m catching up with it here.

The incorporation of proprietary software into Ubuntu has long been a touchy issue.  Even where legal ambiguities are not in play–as in the case of closed-source video drivers or Adobe’s flash plugin–there are those who object to the use of proprietary software in any form, even if it’s the only reasonable way to achieve vital functionality.

Fortunately, those voices are few and far between these days (either that, or they’ve moved onto other, “Freer” distributions), and Ubuntu developers are able to place pragmatism before philosophy when it comes to putting proprietary hardware drivers and other essential closed-source software in the Ubuntu repositories.

The Argument for Ogg

Patented multimedia codecs, however, are a little different from proprietary drivers and firmware, for reasons discussed in my first post on the topic.  There are people–for example, a commenter on a previous post named markit–who remain passionately opposed to the use of restrictively licensed codecs and can make well reasoned arguments to support their stance, particularly since fully functional GPL-friendly equivalents are available for multimedia codecs.

The arguments against the use of patented codecs are not without merit.  By using formats like MP3 and MPEG-2 rather than GPL’d alternatives, users perpetuate dependence on proprietary software, which is antithetical to the Ubuntu philosophy.

The obvious response to such arguments, of course, is that while it would be nice to use only patent-free codecs, that’s not a realistic goal for most people.  You can’t send .ogg files to Windows users and expect them to know how to open them, and you won’t have many friends if you refuse to accept data in non-free formats.

Fluendo’s take

I was interested in the opinion of Fluendo’s employees on this topic, since they sell patented multimedia codecs to Linux users while affirming their commitment to free software.  In other words, their company, which describes itself as committed to software freedom “without renouncing the model of a profitable and attractive business,” straddles the awkward line between advancing open-source development while recognizing the inevitable need of many users for proprietary software.

When I asked Viktor Nordstrom, a member of Fluendo’s corporate sales team, for his take on the use of patented codecs on open-source operating systems, his response centered around the practical inevitability of such software.  “It’s not about opinion,” he said.  “It’s the truth of the matter.”

Viktor and I went on to discuss whether the sale of patented multimedia codecs to Linux users–which is Fluendo’s chief product–perpetuates dependence on non-free formats and countervails the cause of software freedom.  Viktor’s response again centered on the pragmatic middle line, emphasizing that the company’s aim is to provide an answer to a problem that can’t be avoided for many Linux users.  “We believe we have found a solution that respects open-source,” he said.

The bottom line

Ultimately, the multimedia-codec question, like the other great imponderables of our age (e.g.: “When did time begin?” “Where does space end?” “Is Richard Stallman’s craigslist personal real?”), has no perfect answer.  The Ubuntu community will likely never be in agreement on the issue.

But for my money, the current system is about as good as it gets.  Ubuntu ships only with GPL-compatible codecs by default, but makes it easy (in most cases) to download patented codecs if a user needs them to play a file.  It wouldn’t hurt to make it clearer to users that there are legal alternatives, like those sold by Fluendo, to the gstreamer-ugly plugins available in the Ubuntu repositories.  But from a philosophical perspective, Canonical’s coping the best it can with an imperfect world.

Ubuntu is way easier to install than certain other operating systems.  But it would be even greater if I could select which applications I wanted on my new system before the Ubiquity installer goes about its business–an idea that was proposed recently on Ubuntu Brainstorm.  Here’s why it should go through.

An Ubuntu installation requires two or three minutes of a user’s time configuring the setup, followed by about a half-hour for the system to be installed.  That’s not bad at all, especially compared to other operating-system installers that stupidly compel you to sit in front of the screen throughout the whole process rather than asking everything upfront.

After installing Ubuntu for my own use, however, I generally spend another half-hour adding and removing applications to fit my liking.  Multimedia codecs need to downloaded, applications like VirtualBox need to be installed and stuff I won’t use needs to be gotten rid of.

What would be great is if the application stack could be customized before installation, in order to save me and my computer the trouble of installing programs that I’m going to remove manually later on.  That’s precisely what a user named nhandler envisions on Ubuntu Brainstorm, where a mock-up of a configuration utility has been uploaded:

Granted, this may not be the most professional-looking (or grammatically sound) interface, but it’s a start, and provides an idea of the kind of functionality that would be a great addition to Ubiquity.  Being able to customize default applications and install non-free software along with the rest of the system would save a lot of time.

In defense of the idea

Not everyone agrees that an addition to the Ubuntu installer such as this would be in the best interests of the end user.  For example, d0od of OMG! Ubuntu! argues that it would turn new users off to Ubuntu by confusing them with options they don’t understand.

I agree that non-geeks shouldn’t be exposed to stuff like this.  But no one says it has to be an obligatory part of the installation process.  It could be hidden behind an “Advanced” button with adequate warnings telling people to stay away if they don’t know what they’re doing.  There’s no harm in that.

Others complain that Windows and OS X don’t provide options like this at installation time (although some other Linux distributions do), so Ubuntu shouldn’t either.

The obvious response to that reasoning, I think, is that proprietary operating systems don’t allow users to customize their application stack because in most cases, the alternatives to the default choices are third-party products.  Obviously Microsoft and Apple are not going to make it easier to replace Internet Explorer or Safari with Firefox or Chrome.  Where’s the monopoly in that?

In fairness…

Of course, there are some valid criticisms of a proposal like this.  Above all, it assumes that everyone has a high-speed, wired Internet connection available–or that the Ubuntu installer would start supporting wireless networking, which would almost certainly end in a huge fiasco if attempted–which is far from true.

Issues are also bound to arise if Ubiquity allowed users to install non-free software, especially because some of that code is of dubious legality in certain jurisdictions.  It’s already easy enough to install these packages from within Ubuntu itself, but offering them as a preinstallation choice would raise the ire of free-software advocates, and possibly some lawyers.

All the same, despite its limitations, this idea has merit.  After all, plenty of other Linux installers already offer functionality similar to that proposed on Ubuntu Brainstorm, and have done so for years.  I’d love to see Ubiquity follow suit.

Canonical has launched a new service, dubbed Ubuntu Single Sign On. The effort seeks to simplify and unify all login services for all Ubuntu-related sites. Sound like a good idea? Here’s the deal…

The plan is to make it more “convenient for Ubuntu users and community members to access information, communicate, and contribute.” It’ll replace the Launchpad login service, but don’t worry — existing Launchpad accounts will still work with the single sign-on service.

Over the next few months Canonical plans on shifting the entirety of Ubuntu and Canonical related sites running Launchpad and migrating them to Ubuntu single sign on. It’s a bit ambitious, and Canoncial is going to start obviously, with their own sites, and then work with the community sites to get the transition done.

Canonical doesn’t want to make this hard, though, so Launchpad data will be copied over to the Ubuntu service during the transition. However, once you’ve signed into the new Ubuntu account and the transition becomes complete, your Launchpad one goes defunct. Both sites will use identical credentials, and while Canonical has noted this isn’t ideal, it’s necessary.

Here’s the added bonus in the transition. Ubuntu single sign-on is build on the OpenID standard. That means any site that accepts the standard will let you pop on with that account name. That’s actually kind of nice.

And why all the fuss?

The Launchpad login service has served us well for several years but Launchpad is not a familiar brand for many Ubuntu users. As Ubuntu grows, we’ll see more and more users who don’t understand the connection between Launchpad and Ubuntu and the new Ubuntu login service is intended to overcome this problem. It will also enable us to develop features which are more oriented to Ubuntu users.

Interesting. A small shift or a big change? In this case, conformity and uniformity seem to be good on the whole. I’m all for tidying up and simplifying the login situation.

If the American government invested as many resources rounding up violators of software licenses as it does fighting “terror” (and no, I don’t mean the Jacobin variety), I’d have been put away long ago, because all of my Ubuntu systems use patented multimedia software that I didn’t pay for.  But I’ve recently realized that it doesn’t have to be this way, and that legal codec support is easily available.  Here’s a look at some of those options.

Last week, we wrote about multimedia patents and their place within the free-software ecosystem.  As almost anyone who’s installed Ubuntu knows, the operating system doesn’t ship with patented multimedia codecs by default due to legal issues.

For most people, however, installing software to play MP3s and DVDs is simple enough.  In many cases, the system automatically prompts users to download the fully functional but legally ambiguous gstreamer-ugly plugins from Ubuntu’s repositories the first time they try to play media compressed using proprietary algorithms.  Where relevant, the pop-ups warn that using the software may be illegal in certain jurisdictions, but that hasn’t stopped anyone I know from clicking “OK”.

So chances are good that if you use Ubuntu for listening to music or watching videos, and you live in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan or any other country whose legal codes frown upon violation of software patents, you’re breaking the law, maybe without realizing it.

If you’re like me, this may not bother you very much.  There are much worse laws to break, after all.

Fluendo

But if you run a business, local government or other organization that can’t so easily disregard intellectual property laws, you have to think twice before installing patented multimedia codecs onto your Ubuntu system.

Fortunately for the growing number of organizations that deploy Ubuntu on their workstations, however, the gstreamer-ugly plugins are not the only way to enable patented multimedia playback.  Fluendo, a company based in Barcelona, offers legal codecs for a variety of patented formats, including MP3, MPEG2, MPEG4, H264, AAC, WMV and WMA.

Fluendo’s products, some of which are available in the Canonical store, are targeted at businesses and local governments that deploy Ubuntu and need legal support for popular multimedia formats, but are also available for individual use.  They range from MP3, codecs, which are free, to support for DVD playback.

Fluendo also develops its own media center application, called Fluoh.  Its codecs, however, will work with any gstreamer-compatible player, which includes most of those available in the Ubuntu repositories.

Why it matters

With most jurisdictions still lax about violations of software patents by Linux users, who remain a quantatively negligible group, the popularity of products like Fluendo’s may be limited.  But as Ubuntu’s user base grows, especially in the workplace, legal solutions for multimedia playback will become more and more important.

Legal alternatives to the gstreamer-ugly plugins are also crucial for demonstrating that Ubuntu is not a community of freeloaders and lawbreakers, as many opponents of the free-software movement often make it out to be.  Overcoming this negative image is essential if Ubuntu hopes to receive more attention from developers who traditionally work outside the open-source ecosystem.

Admittedly, I do my fair share of freeloading, and even lawbreaking, from time to time.  In spite of people like me, however, there are lot of Ubuntu users who are willing and eager to pay for software.  Solutions like Fluendo’s are increasingly important in meeting their needs.

For a long time, the Ubuntu family has had three members–Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu (sorry Edubuntu; we’re not counting you).  But that may change, with a new project, Lubuntu, vying for official endorsement by Canonical.  Here’s a look at Lubuntu, and thoughts on what its future may hold.

The Lubuntu project, which was established a year ago as a community endeavor, aims to create a lightweight Linux distribution based on Ubuntu.  Towards this end, it uses the LXDE desktop environment in combination with the Openbox window manager to keep the demand on system resources low.

Testing Lubuntu

Hoping to see for myself what Lubuntu was all about, I downloaded a recently released live image of the distribution, based on Lucid Lynx alpha 2, and booted it up in VirtualBox.

Once I got past a buggy boot–which was to be expected, since Lucid Lynx remains far from stable–I was presented with a clean desktop and a relatively attractive interface, given the low hardware requirements that the Lubuntu developers are working with.  Here’s a look:

I wouldn’t call these icons and color scheme unreasonably gorgeous, and the theme looks a little too techno-geeky for my tastes, but it’s still a lot prettier than Windows XP.

Exploring Lubuntu’s application stack, I discovered that most of the software that comes installed by default diverges from that of regular Ubuntu.  Lubuntu ships with Firefox, Pidgin, Transmission and Synaptic, but the similarities end there.

It uses wicd as its connection manager (although that’s set to be replaced with NetworkManager and nm-applet), Sylpheed for email, Abiword for word processing and SMPlayer for video playback.  A list of the application stack in its entirety is available here.

While Lubuntu’s application stack may be unfamiliar to most users of normal Ubuntu, it nonetheless appears pretty complete, with most basic functionality covered.  Utilities for configuring the system are a little thin, and it lacks a complete office suite (Abiword is great for word processing, but it doesn’t do presentations or spreadsheets like OpenOffice), but it would satisfy the needs of most computer users.  And more software, of course, is only an apt-get away.

Joining the Ubuntu family?

The obvious competitor for Lubuntu’s niche is Xubuntu, an official Ubuntu flavor based on the Xfce desktop environment and designed for less powerful or older hardware.

I’ve always liked Xubuntu, and Xfce in general, but I’ve never been overly impressed with its performance.  It’s a bit lighter than regular Ubuntu and Gnome, but it’s never blown me away with its speed.  When I need a truly lightweight system for use on old hardware, I go with (now apparently defunct) Flubuntu, which uses Fluxbox for its desktop environment.

But there’s hope that Lubuntu will deliver where Xubuntu has failed by providing a truly lightweight version of Ubuntu.  Linux Magazine found last fall that Lubuntu uses only about half as much memory as Xubuntu when installed to hard disk.  That’s a big improvement.

Moreover, I was able to get Lubuntu to boot–into the live environment, no less–and run reliably with as few as 128 megabytes of RAM allocated in VirtualBox.  That’s also encouraging.

The bottom line

A lot of work remains to be done on Lubuntu to make it stable and bring it up to speed with the other Ubuntu flavors.  But so far, it’s looking very impressive and may finally provide the truly modern and functional, yet lightweight, distribution that many Ubuntu users have been looking for for years.

And one last thought: the developers should think of a name that smacks less of “luser”…

If you’re like me, you don’t put much thought into where your multimedia codecs come from: you run a quick “apt-get install gstreamer-plugins-ugly” on new installs and move on to more important things.  But not everyone’s like me, and as Ubuntu moves increasingly into government and the workplace, patent and licensing issues are becoming more and more important for many Ubuntu users.

Over the next couple weeks, we’ll be writing about multimedia patents and the Ubuntu community.  This first post outlines the situation and explains why multimedia patents matter more than you may think.

Linux and patents

The Linux community has a long history of shirking restrictive software patents and licenses, which should not surprise anyone.  After all, at the core of the free-software movement is repulsion at the notion of having to abide by terms that users may not agree with in order to use their computers.   Many people use Linux because they want to live a life unencumbered by software patents.

Reality, however, rarely lives up to perfection.  Although many Ubuntu users would like to be able to rely only on software licensed under the GPL, a large number of us have to use proprietary code.  From closed-source video drivers to “binary blobs” in the Linux kernel, non-GPL software is often a pragmatic necessity for getting the most out of a machine.

Why multimedia is different

Multimedia codecs, of course, differ from hardware drivers and firmware in that they’re not necessary for a computer to run to its full potential.  But in a world where mp3 and DVD playback is essential for most users, patented multimedia codecs, practically speaking, are as unavoidable as the Nvidia GLX driver.

Patented codecs are also unlike other non-free software upon which many Linux users rely because they have completely GPL-compatible equivalents that work just as well.  Proprietary graphics and wireless drivers are necessary because no equally functional open-source drivers exist; in contrast, the Ogg Vorbis audio codec and Ogg Theora video compressor function just as well by most measures as the proprietary codecs, such as mp3 and the mpegs, that they seek to replace.

In theory, the whole world should compress audio and video files using only free and open-source algorithms.  But it doesn’t. The reality is that playback for mp3s and mpegs is as essential for most Ubuntu users as compatibility with Microsoft Office file formats in OpenOffice.

So how do you strike a compromise between perfection and reality?  In the next post, we’ll take a look at the different options available for obtaining multimedia playback on Ubuntu, which for legal reasons does not come with most popular codecs installed by default, and why this issue is becoming increasingly important.

Canonical is making multiple moves to engage and energize Ubuntu software developers. The latest example involves Ubuntu Opportunistic Developer Week, scheduled for March 1 to 6, 2010. Here are some quick details plus the implications for Ubuntu in business.

Rewind to September 2009. At the time, Canonical was busy polishing Ubuntu 9.10 for its October 2009 launch. But some Canonical insiders (such as John Pugh) had already shifted their attention to Ubuntu 10.04 — a long term support (LTS) release.

The big priority: Making sure Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) had a growing base of ISV support when it arrives in April 2010, thereby improving Ubuntu’s chances of catching on with businesses, service providers and cloud providers.

Two Moves Worth Watching

Fast forward to the present and Canonical has made multiple moves to strengthen the Ubuntu ISV story. Incoming COO Matt Asay arrives with a big Rolodex filled with ISV contacts and boardroom relationships.

Next up, Jono Bacon, Canonical’s Ubuntu Community Manager, is preparing an online learning event called Ubuntu Opportunistic Developer Week. It’s scheduled for sometime around March 1 to 6. During the event, Bacon hopes developers will share stories about how “you put together an application, how it scratched your itch and what tools you used.”

Multiple Small Successes

Sure, Canonical still wants big ISVs like Oracle to support Ubuntu Server Edition and Ubuntu’s desktop and mobile counterparts.

But Canonical seems to be focusing on smaller, quick-hit ISV wins — involving everyone from systems management companies Groundwork Open Source to antispam specialists like Mailspect.

WorksWithU will closely watch the Ubuntu Opportunistic Developer Week for more potential signs of progress.