jonobacon@home

On Thursday 28th April 2011 we released Ubuntu 11.04, the Natty Narwhal. It was a big release for us. It was the first desktop release that shipped Unity; our new desktop interface designed to bridge the chasm to get Ubuntu and the Free Software it encompasses to the masses. Unity in this release was very [...]

I remember when I first got involved in Linux and Free Software, the Linux desktop was a pretty ugly place. Much of the reason for this was that getting a graphical display running was in itself a bit of a luxury, and one earned with lots of config file hacking and poking. When you did [...]

Mark just announced at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Orlando that we will be shipping the Unity environment in the Ubuntu desktop edition. Unity is the environment we shipped on the Ubuntu Netbook Edition for the first time in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat, and users and OEMs have been enjoying the experience. It is an [...]

Some time back the Ayatana project introduced the Application Indicator Framework, based upon technology created by the KDE project. We have been shipping this technology in Ubuntu for a few releases now and it makes the top-right part of the desktop a smooth, efficient, and pleasant experience, getting over the inconsistent and limiting notification area [...]

Earlier this week at GUADEC, the always affable Dave Neary presented his GNOME Census work. Unfortunately, I was not there to see it, but I read his excellent post on the topic. One of the reactions from the survey was that Red Hat are responsible for 16% of the contributions to GNOME whereas Canonical are [...]

I have always been a fan of helping in any way I can to encourage people to support small organizations and businesses who are doing their best to be successful by working hard and providing a friendly, honest service. For the earlier part of this week I am in The Hague at GUADEC, and I [...]

I am totally digging the sound menu that is shipping in the development branch of Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat: It feels well designed, implemented and sleek. Great work mpt and Conor!

Recently we have been investing in creating an implementation of a panel-based menu that we are planning on shipping with the 10.10 version of the Ubuntu Netbook Edition. As with our other projects, this is entirely Open Source and you can download, test and play with it from this page. So far for testing purposes [...]

In the Ubuntu 10.10 cycle we have committed to implementing application menus in the Ubuntu Netbook Edition release of Ubuntu. There are many benefits to this approach, but I will you to the design rationale that was announced recently. I personally think this is going to be a tremendously valuable feature and continues to optimize [...]

When I started out on my Open Source adventure, my desktop looked like this: Today, it looks like this: Wow. That is all.