Ubuntu’s great, right? I’ve really been a (bigger) fan of Ubuntu recently, and I wanted to justify my position through this blog post. I’m doing something new this time: writing the conclusion as the introduction. I write these posts on Google Docs initially, and I had no idea this ended up being over two pages. Great stuff!

A little background.

What is Ubuntu? It’s a Linux distribution. It’s definitely incorrect to call it Linux. Linux is more than just Ubuntu, and Ubuntu is more than just Linux. If you need a better explanation, then look it up because I don’t want to be the one to explain it :).

I’m primarily a Linux user. I have my opinions about the three main platforms (Windows, Mac OS, Linux). I dislike it when people have opinions about platforms they haven’t used thoroughly. They don’t make any sense at all, and usually they are just repeating what someone else says. Right now, everything I use runs Linux. Even my Macbook has only Ubuntu. It wasn’t always the case, but I think the time has come for me to replace everything with Linux.

My first experience with Linux was with Fedora Core 3. My dad installed it on an older desktop we had, and it didn’t even have a GUI. Well, let’s just say my interactions were limited. That was probably early 4th grade for me. After that, I moved on to Debian. Again, I don’t have a good recollection of what I did with it. Everything changed when I installed Ubuntu (6.06, I think it was).

For a while, I used Ubuntu on and off. It didn’t really become a primary distribution for me until about 9th grade. I was a gamer and it was too frustrating to run games on Ubuntu. As time went on and my workload grew, I stopped playing games and decided to roll Ubuntu all the time.

The community.

Enough of the boring background information, let’s go on to the reasons! First off, Ubuntu is a massive distribution. Most people use Ubuntu and Linux interchangeably, and it makes sense why. Ubuntu has been the go-to distribution for most newcomers, and the community is huge. I like that.

Stuff doesn’t always work on Ubuntu. That’s one of the reasons I didn’t like Linux. I didn’t want to mess around with wireless drivers and stuff—I wanted things to work! Well, with the help of the community, I usually found quick solutions for just about anything. Whenever I had an issue, I would just Google it and I usually found someone else on the Ubuntu forums with the same problem. Collaboration is awesome.

Using Linux on my Macbook is a hassle. It’s just a pain to get things to work right. I remember last year when I had a distro-hopping spree. I went through Arch, Debian, openSUSE, CrunchBang, Fedora, and Ubuntu. Out of all of them, I found that Ubuntu had the best support for hardware. Multitouch, wireless, and screen brightness controls just worked. It’s also important for me to say that I used Ubuntu a while before my distro-hopping spree, and none of those things worked well. The community had significantly more Macbook users, and they made change happen.

Sure, there are communities for other distributions, so what’s so special about Ubuntu? Again, size matters. The Ubuntu community also had a great mix of new and experienced users that you usually didn’t find anywhere else.

The goal.

Mark Shuttleworth’s goal for Ubuntu was for it to be the Linux distribution for everyone. Well, it is. I like how both beginners and experienced users can use it as they wish. One of the reasons I don’t use Arch is that it’s annoying for me to get everything set up. I don’t want to waste my time installing everything. Being a Linux server administrator for a hosting company, I’m far from a beginner. Sure, I can get by using just a terminal, but I like to be able to do things easily, such as setup a backup system with a user interface.

Canonical.

Canonical is awesome. Mark Shuttleworth is the man. Some companies are evil, but not the one behind Ubuntu. It’s amazing how Canonical can push the development of Ubuntu to have continuous 6-month releases. It’s predictable, it works, and I know what to expect. The day a new version of Ubuntu ships, I know the team is getting ready for the next release.

It’s not all about the desktop! Ubuntu Server is fantastic! Canonical is becoming a big name in the enterprise, with its whole Ubuntu Cloud jazz. In the past few years, Ubuntu has become more professional and more focused. To me, Ubuntu and Canonical seem like RHEL and Red Hat done right.

Oh, and I can’t forget about Ubuntu TV and Ubuntu on tablets. Wow! This is serious stuff. We’re talking about Mark Shuttleworth here... if he wants to do something, he’s going to do it. This is the guy who bought himself a ticket into space just because he had the money to do it.

Unity.

Many people have been slightly furious about Unity, and I understand why. It replaced the usual desktop that everyone liked, and people didn’t respond well to the change. Sure, Unity was incredibly buggy at first, but it’s gotten a lot better. Honestly, I like it better than GNOME 2 at this point. Multitouch is definitely neat. Over the years, Ubuntu has become significantly better. Everything works incredibly well, and the new features are always amazing.

This was my 2-inch response to a talk by Richard Hamming, called “You and Your Research.” The actual talk is, from what I have heard, available on YouTube. It's definitely something to look up.

I think one of the most obvious yet important statements in the entire talk is “you have to neglect things if you intend to get what you want done.” As students, we’re constantly dealing with situations where we just have too much to do. As we grow up, we find that we can’t do everything, and some things must be neglected. I think it’s a difficult choice—to give up, but it’s definitely a necessary choice, and one that we must learn to make.

Hamming talks about what it takes to produce significant and meaningful results. I agree completely with his claim that an emotional commitment is an essential aspect. I find that when it comes to my work, the best results aren’t only caused by an emotional commitment or sincere dedication. It’s usually an obsession. In order to push yourself to get what you want, you really have to focus fully on the problem.

From CNET:

One of the biggest stories at the 2011 show was the mainstreaming of dual-core phones. Not only did we get the Atrix, but also Motorola rolled out the Droid Bionic and LG presented the Optimus 2X (aka the T-Mobile G2x). More dual-core followed throughout 2011, but even the latest batch of handsets would be left in the dustbin by a quad-core device.

Nothing is official yet, but rumors over the past two months have pointed to a possible HTC device with the new Nvidia Tegra 3 1.5GHz quad-core processor. If you're keeping track that's the same processor that turned up in the recent Asus Transformer Prime.

At the time of this writing, HTC hasn't scheduled a CES event, but Nvidia is hosting a press conference January 9 where it could make a Tegra 3 announcement. And since we doubt that it would move ahead without a manufacturer partner, we expect that a handset or tablet manufacturer will join the company onstage.

My opinion

CES was huge for Nvidia this year. It reached its 52-week high soon after the event. What can we expect next January? I'm not too sure. Nvidia has a reputation for developing high-performance products, but is that really what people want? Tegra 2 is amazing. It offers exactly what people need—performance and battery life. It's not overkill, and it's not for the enthusiasts. It was a great release.

Tegra 3 is also great, but I don't think it's for everyone. Most people don't need a quad core in their pockets! What we're seeing is the whole “because we can” gimmick. Technology is evolving faster than we can adapt to it. The technology sector has been a little rough lately. I'm just going to watch Nvidia this time.

I don't really have an introduction for this one. I honestly just wrote everything/anything I thought about. Hopefully you'll get something out of this. I introduce my forecast about business on the web, so let's see if I'm right.

Two examples.

I’ll start with something people can’t really relate to: fonts. In my case, there were two choices to make. FontSpring or Typekit. FontSpring sells fonts with a one-time fee. You buy specific fonts, use them, and that’s it. You have the files, and you can do (almost) whatever you want with them. It’s great.

Typekit is a bit different. They run a subscription-based model where you pay a yearly fee and use whatever fonts you want. There are limits: you can’t download the fonts, and you can only use them on the web. For most people, this isn’t a big issue. Sometimes, it’s a deal breaker.

A tough choice? Not exactly. While these two business strategies seem completely different, they don’t have the same purpose. You don’t really have to choose one over the other. The essential question is basically, “how much do I need?” If you’re not going to use a bunch of fonts, use FontSpring. You might end up saving a lot of money. On the other hand, if you find yourself using a variety of fonts and don’t want to drop hundreds of dollars on each one, choose Typekit.

Now, here’s an example that almost everyone can figure out: music. We’ve all seen Pandora, Spotify, Google Music, and the others, but which one’s the right choice?

Let’s say you’re a casual listener. You can either buy an album, which is around $10, or you can get a month-long subscription from Spotify, which is $9.99 per month, and listen to the same album. Yes, I’m assuming you’ll get the premium membership. Just roll with it. This situation isn’t a whole lot different from the fonts. You can download an album and do whatever you want with it, but you don’t have that much freedom with Spotify.

Again, if you’re a person who buys a couple of albums a month, then you’d obviously choose to go with Spotify. It’s all about how much.

The rise of services.

Now that we’ve thought about some things, I’ll establish my thesis. We’re going to see a rise in subscription-based services on the web. Just forget about one-time fees. It’s inevitable because it’s the way things work. Payment for intangible goods and services is inherently subscription-based because it’s not like we actually own those products. I’d rather let my music be a service rather than a good. I get more choices, and I end up paying a lot less.

Another idea is software. Paying for software is trash. It’s just wrong. We’re at a point in time where it doesn’t make sense to sell software anymore. There’s just no market for it. I’m not against proprietary software at all. Proprietary software isn’t always a bad idea. It’s just that selling software is bad. This will be the topic of another blog post, but if you’re going to develop software and sell it as a good, STOP. Do not misframe.

(Just dumping thoughts here... sorry. If I actually tried to make this good, I’d never get around to publishing.)

Services are good. I claim that you can’t succeed by selling intangible goods online anymore. Subscription-based models are the way to go.

What’s next?

Books, movies, fonts, magazines, etc. Digital media. I’d like to see subscriptions for those. We’ve already seen most of them already, and Amazon has recently taken up a venture to offer a Netflix-like service for books. Excellent! This is the way we should be moving. Why? Because it works. We have also seen subscription games from companies like OnLive. We need more of them, because I think the only issue is price. As soon as more publishers and developers realize the benefits of this new model, we’ll see better prices.

Yeah, I’m done. Not bad for a first interesting blog post, right? Comments are appreciated—just be civilized.