Mark Shuttleworth at PyCon: Cadence, Quality and Design

As you might know I love to hear Mark Shuttleworth speak. It's always so inspiring and he's always so positive. Below is an interview with Mark by The Bit Source from PyCon.

Mark Shuttleworth and Antonio Rodriguez are to be the keynote speakers at PyCon 2010, the world's largest conference of the Python programming community. Over 1,000 Python programmers are gathering now at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Atlanta for eight days of intensive education, cooperation, and networking.

More Information about Shuttleworth’s keynote: http://us.pycon.org/2010/conference/schedule/event/122/

No Human Theme In Ubuntu 10.04?

In an interview recorded on February 19 2010, Mark Shuttleworth revealed that a new light theme will replace the Human theme in Ubuntu 10.04. The Human theme has been the default theme in Ubuntu since the first release.

In the interview Mark says:

...we'll have some new styling which is going to be the starting point of another five year view. We've been Human for the last five years and now we're gonna be light oriented.

I'm sure Mark is referring to something like the Elementary theme, which has been a hot topic these last few months.
Some people think that interpreting "some new styling" being "the starting point of another five year view" as an entire new GTK / Metacity theme redesign might be a bit of a stretch. As 23meg from the Ubuntuforums.org points out, it can be interpreted as only the starting pieces of a new five-year outlook landing in Lucid as well.
During the Ask Mark session at Ubuntu OpenWeek, Mark was asked about the artwork for Lucid. Back then he replied:

New window decorations, some new icons for the panel indicators, some new styling on boot and login, no new gtk theme.

I must admit, I'm really in doubt about what to expect in Lucid. There are no artwork drops secduled for this release, but the User Interface Freeze is just around the corner, so we'll soon know what Lucid Lynx will look like.

Linus: Microsoft Hatred is a Disease

In a brief interview with OS News Linus Torvalds talks about his views on Microsoft's contribution of code to the Linux kernel.

Linus hasn't actually looked at the code yet. It's driver code, low-risk and he isn't very interested in driver code anyway. He trusts the maintainers will do their jobs, but of pure curiosity, he will take a look at it when the review phase is complete.
Linus is tired of the all the negativity that surrounds Microsoft in the Linux community:

I may make jokes about Microsoft at times, but at the same time, I think the Microsoft hatred is a disease. I believe in open development, and that very much involves not just making the source open, but also not shutting other people and companies out.

It's always refreshing to hear someone level-headed discuss issues like this. I guess this is also the reason why, after so many years, Linus is still the undisputed benevolent dictator of Linux.

Source: http://www.osnews.com/story/21887/Linus_Microsoft_Hatred_Is_a_Disease_

Shuttleworth about GNOME 3.0

Derstandard.at has an interesting article titled "Shuttleworth about GNOME 3.0 - What's good, what's missing, what needs work"

Sees good possibility of having a common meta-release cycle with Debian - Not sure if GNOME3 will make the next LTS. A good read... here!

Source: http://derstandard.at/fs/1246541995003/Interview-Shuttleworth-about-GNOME-30---Whats-good-whats-missing-what-needs-work

Jono Bacon Videocast

Tomorrow (Wed 15th April) at 11am Pacific Jono Bacon will be doing his first real live video cast here discussing various topics including Ubuntu, the Jaunty release, Art Of Community and the Community Leadership Summit.

Jono will also be fielding your community questions in the video cast: you can ask them in the chat channel that is on that page.

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/at-home-with-jono-bacon

Mark Shuttleworth Interview

The Ubuntu Podcast Episode #24 features an interview with Mark Shuttleworth. Like I've mentioned earlier, I always love to hear Mark talk, so these 50 minutes is just pure awesomeness.

http://ubuntupodcast.net/2009/04/02/ubuntu-podcast-episode-24-mark-shuttleworth/

Mark Shuttleworth - Interview

I can't help it - I love hearing Mark Shuttleworth talk. It's always so inspiring and he's always so positive.

Below is a really good interview that golem.de did titled "We are ourselves the biggest enemy". The video is part of a longer article written in German, but Google is your friend and will translate it for you here...

Video: Mark Shuttleworth - We are our own worst enemy - Interview (Part One) (6:22)

Video: Mark Shuttleworth - We are our own worst enemy - Interview (Part Two) (6:11)

UDS developer interviews

The Ubuntu Developer Channel on YouTube has gone live again. Like last time the site will be stuffed full of videos about Ubuntu development. Ones again Tony Whitmore will be doing interviews throughout UDS this week. As we saw with Ubuntu Live in 2007 it is always interesting to get a glimpse into the future of Ubuntu.

Keep an eye on the Ubuntu Developer Channel this week, as more videos are added. There are only a couple so far, but there should be more soon!

16 video interviews with Linux Kernel hackers

The Linux Foundation has published a series of video interviews from the annual Linux Kernel Summit held Sept. 15-16 in Portland, Oregon. In the videos, 16 developers — including Linux creator Linus Torvalds (shown at left) — discuss their development activities.

The Kernel Summit is an annual invitation-only meeting during which kernel developers discuss the current state of the Linux kernel and plans for future development.

Below is a list of the 16 kernel developer interviews from the Summit. Each is 5-10 minutes in length, and is available for viewing in YouTube, Ogg, and Flash formats. http://www.linuxfoundation.org/events/video/gallery

* Linus Torvalds of The Linux Foundation - speaks about the Linux Kernel Summit and shares his thoughts on kernel quality, regressions and the state of the current release cycle. He also shares his thoughts on userland tools and the Git development community.

* Rafael Wysocki of Novell - discusses his presentation on regressions, the importance of getting more kernel developers involved in the regression mailing list and the importance of testing.

* Chris Mason of Oracle - shares his thoughts on the benefits of the Linux Kernel Summit, the filesystem and reporting workshop, the importance of file systems to Linux users, BtrFS (Butter FS) and Oracle’s involvement within the Linux community.

* Greg Kroah-Hartman of Novell - shares his thoughts on the current Kernel release cycle and how it impacts enterprise releases. He also discusses his work with the staging server, the Linux Driver Project and the importance of the Linux Plumbers’ Conference.

* Mathieu Desnoyers of Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal - describes the LTTng project, the state of Linux monitoring tools and an in-depth comparison of the existing tools.

* Paul Mackerras of IBM - talks about Patchwork, a web-based system that creates an interactive webpage that lists all patches and corresponding comments to allow for easy review and filtering. He also discusses the implementation of the tool by other maintainers for their projects.

* John Linville of Red Hat - speaks about his experience at the Kernel Summit and summarizes the state of wireless LAN networking in Linux and the importance of supporting vendors that are more “open.”

* Stephen Rothwell of IBM - Stephen talks about his work on the Linux-next tree, the process he follows when making a release, the benefits to core maintainers and the challenges involved in maintaining the tree.

* Kristen Accardi of Intel - talks about the Linux Plumbers’ Conference, the evolution of Linux conferences and about open source development being a viable career option for students.

* Dirk Hohndel of Intel - speaks about the past, present and future of the Kernel Summit. He also discusses the importance of open-sourcing drivers and the benefits having drivers be part of the “upstream.”

* Dave Jones of Red Hat - talks about unifying boot time tools for the Linux kernel, his presentation on speeding up boot time and what can be done to improve interaction between the userspace and kernel communities.

* David Miller of Red Hat - speaks about the state of Linux and Linux networking and his experience speaking at Linux Symposium Japan.

* Len Brown of Intel - provides an update on Linux power management, how close we are to parity with other operating systems and how developers can get involved with power management through testing and bug submissions.

* Frank Eigler of Red Hat - speaks about the SystemTap, a tool for systems administrators that lets them see what is happening in a running kernel. He also shares his experience as a first-time attendee of the Kernel Summit and the feedback he received from the core maintainers.

* Ted Ts’o of The Linux Foundation and IBM - talks about the past, present and future of the Linux Kernel Summit, Linux 3.0 and the “hallway tracks” at the Kernel Summit.

* Jon Corbet of LWN.net - talks about the his involvement with the Kernel Summit, Linux 3.0, the state of documentation and the growth of the Linux kernel community and the shifting demographic as involvement becomes more global.

A detailed report on what took place at the Summit can be found here.

Lots of interesting insights into the status and future of Linux!