"The Ubuntu developers have announced the availability of Ubuntu 9.04 alpha 1, the first prerelease for this version. Ubuntu 9.04 is codenamed Jaunty Jackalope and is scheduled for official release in April. The initial plans for Jaunty were published in September, prior to the release of Ubuntu 8.10. Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth aims to boost the software experience and make the popular Linux distribution more competitive with Windows and Mac OS X on the desktop. Canonical intends to push the platform into the mainstream by putting its resources into upstream usability improvements. In addition to the ongoing long-term usability enhancement efforts, Canonical and the Ubuntu development community are focusing on several specific technical goals for 9.04, including improving performance and boot time and integrating web services more tightly with the desktop."
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Member since:2005-07-06
Web apps do more harm than good. They take away the user's control over his/her data. Most of the time they are not free (as speech).
I can understand that MS tries to bundle its "Live" web apps with Windows, but a Linux distro striving for freedom should not embrace these kinds of web apps.
Member since:2006-09-22
I can understand that MS tries to bundle its "Live" web apps with Windows, but a Linux distro striving for freedom should not embrace these kinds of web apps.
Like it or not (I actually agree with you), that seems to be the way the industry is taking and, if Ubuntu wants to be in a good position against the competition, the developers will have no other choice but to embrace these technologies.
I'm not denying the usefulness (does that word exist?) of these services and I think that they do, in fact, play a major role in our everyday online lives (I can't be without my Gmail, hehe), but sometimes having all these people watching what you do, what you watch or what you buy online feels kind of uneasy...
Time will tell, I suppose.
Edit: Just for clarification, I don't actually think that "Web apps do more harm than good", though.
Edited 2008-11-25 01:42 UTC
Member since:2006-10-31
While I agree when it comes to your home computer(s) and data. I think that you might be forgetting the enterprise world. Web apps are great in an enterprise setting because you can put them on a server and access them with any PC without having to deploy anything. Deployment is handled by the browser downloading the javascript, images and etc...
The only thing I don't get is that Ubuntu already has a web browser for that so they must be talking about something else...
Member since:2005-11-12
Web apps do more harm than good. They take away the user's control over his/her data.
Free from a free software perspective yes. From the view of a consumer using commercial sites the consumer demands stimulate innovation and interconnectivity. For example, the G1 Phone, the google phone, I am writing this comment on. While I recognize my data is on Google's servers it is not a big deal. They have the access I and others want. The market demand necessitates this kind of appliance interactivity.
Member since:
2008-03-27
So tightly integrating web apps...like gOS? If so then that's cool, I currently use Mozilla Prism for many things like Google Maps, Yahoo! Mail, etc. and I love it.