Gael Duval has announced the first test release of Ulteo, a new distribution started by Mandrake-founder Gael Duval. From the release announcement: “Here is the first public version of Ulteo! Its codename is ‘Sirius’ because we want to make it a star.” From the release notes: “This installable live CD is based on Debian and Ubuntu packages. It’s installed on the hard-drive using ‘Yuch’. A daemon, called UGD (Ulteo General Daemon), is always connecting to Ulteo servers to see if a newer, more up to date system is available. It can then upgrade to this new system.” Ulteo is based on Ubuntu 6.06 and uses kernel 2.6.15, X.Org 7.0, KDE 3.5.2, and Firefox 1.5.0.8. The CD image is available for download. Update: Screenshot tour. Rejoice, boys and girls.
The time required for a person of reasonable intelligence to adapt to a new user interface is very short. It is seen by the fact that people view hundreds of websites in a day and are able to navigate all of them even though they are all different.
Is the microsoft windows interface so awesome that we can’t come up with a better by of going things?
While there is no direct answer to your (off topic) question, there is the fact that Linux distributions combine available open source products to create a product, rather than invest the huge amounts of money it would take to develop a completely unique and new GUI, then support and maintain that software.
Familiarity is also worth a lot more than a perceived “better” approach; who is to say the current layout isn’t ‘the best’ for a particular target audience?
I’d agree with you but while Microsoft is trying to bring new ideas to UIs (the ribbon, some start menu concepts), some projects keep making win95-like UIs.
I’m going to give it a try anyway, I really want to see what Gael Duval is so proud of.
I’d agree with you but while Microsoft is trying to bring new ideas to UIs (the ribbon, some start menu concepts), some projects keep making win95-like UIs.
New isn’t always better
Personally I prefer win95/win2K3-like UIs. It’s pretty much the same style as in OS X, Mac OS Classic, OS/2, AmigaOS, BeOS and a dozen other OS’es. Perhaps not very “innovative”, but very useful.
If it works, don’t fix it. And it works.
If it works, don’t fix it. And it works.
It may work for you, not for everyone (for some people DOS used to work just fine, and here we are). I use “classic” style in WinXP just because luna and the start menu are so ugly and non functional that falling back to win95-style looks like the only option (besides alternative shells).
And my point was that if we keep “copying” Windows we will fall behind forever. Oh, and you shouldn’t promote a desktop-oriented OS as “innovative” withount giving some kind of visual “innovation”. The average user couldn’t care less about UGD, they care about eye-candy.
Once Ulteo is finally released, that UI will be outdated (it already is, taking Vista as reference).
Once Ulteo is finally released, that UI will be outdated (it already is, taking Vista as reference).
Not to bash Ulteo or Duvall, but it is based on Ubuntu LTS 6.06. LTS is a stable release and not very groundbreaking. If eyecandy is on the feature list, Ulteo needs to wait for Feisty Fawn (or come up with some nifty stuff itself).
The average user couldn’t care less about UGD, they care about eye-candy.
That’s “Marketing” speaking. There is absolutely no evidence of that. The average user doesn’t care about eye candy. Only the wannabe-geeks care about eye-candy. The average user only cares about getting things to work.
The *Nix Desktop is not copying Windows. It’s the other way around, and has been like that for some years.
Oh, and you shouldn’t promote a desktop-oriented OS as “innovative” withount giving some kind of visual “innovation”.
That’s Marketing bullshit, and you ought to remove all such referencens from your memory immediately. Marketing speech is not compatible with software engineering.
Once Ulteo is finally released, that UI will be outdated (it already is, taking Vista as reference).
Woot? O_o
It’s just a skin. Your line of thinking reminds me of the 14 yo “133t – oh, we’re so cool” pop kids.
Anyway: Average Joe would happily use Windows 3.1 still – it’s the power users and the wannabe-geeks that requires eye-candy. Usually because they are not good enough to fix the flaws in the desktop implementation. Had they been that good, they wouldn’t waste the time on “fancy GUI”.
“The average user couldn’t care less about UGD, they care about eye-candy.”
Wrong. The average user cares about getting stuff done. As long as the UI isn’t distractingly ugly Joe User couldn’t care less.
“Once Ulteo is finally released, that UI will be outdated”
You do understand the concept of “alpha release”, right?
There is no “Microsoft Interface”. You could just as well call it “OS/2 Interface” or “Mac OS Classic Interface” or “AmigaOS Interface” or so on. It would be more correct to talk of a “Mainstream OS Interface”. And that one needs to be cleaned up.
The ‘Start’ button on the bottom left corner is definitly microsoft inspired.
Perhaps, except you mean the upper left corner
The taskbar-thingy belongs to the top and not the bottom :p
Anyway, it might as well be AmigaOS inspired or MacOS Classic inspired or RISC OS inspired or something like that
Here the only screenshot yet:
http://www.ulteo.com/main/images/screenshots/ulteo-alpha1-scr01.jpg
I like the way they’ve configured KDE to be less cluttered. Looks really good!
Is that it? They’ve configured it to be less cluttered. Kubuntu is already less cluttered, what’s new here?
Why don´t you try it if you´re interested? You really can´t tell much by just looking at a screenshot.
Because of the reasonable desire to have some additional information before downloading a 600MB ISO?
Then don´t? Nobody is forcing you to do alpha testing. Besides if you had bothered to read the release notes you would have known that there are more information available than just the screenshot.
Yep, I won’t 🙂 But I could, if I were given more information – it is in their interest to have more alpha testers. And no, the release notes do not contain the kind of information that I was looking for, namely UI customizations.
Looks like a bad clone of WindowsVista…
Looks like a bad clone of WindowsVista…
If you’re talking about the screenshot, it looks to me just like KDE… am I missing something here?
Edited 2006-12-07 11:16
It looks to me just like KDE pretending to be a fckuped up Vista. And faliling miserabily…
What screenshots are you looking at? KDE with plastik looks nothing like vista.
It looks very much like KDE, but I really wouldn’t say it looks like Vista. While I personally don’t really care for the looks and feel of KDE (I tend to get lost) I suppose it rocks the boat for many people.
I for one think it looks quite generic, and like ‘another’ Debian + KDE distro.
It might excel after all, but if it’s main feature is a new update daemon I fear for the worst.
Well, I’d put it differently: Vista sure looks a lot like KDE/Gnome, Mac OS X and some OS/2 and BeOS elements.
One could be tempted to believe that DE-developers across the OS’es actually look at the competition
perhaps we should keep in mind that
a) it’s in an alpha stage
and
b) there’s more to an OS than it’s visual appearance (especially when there’s just one screenshot available)
Edited 2006-12-07 11:37
A daemon, called UGD (Ulteo General Daemon), is always connecting to Ulteo servers to see if a newer, more up to date system is available.
The other clue is on their web site (the release notes linked to in the article – http://www.ulteo.com/main/sirius_release_notes.php):
Read-only layers and the Read-write system layer are put together using UnionFS. The installed Ulteo system is called a “liveHD” system, by comparison with the liveCD concept.
It sounds like the entire file system is made up of the data on your hard drive plus the data on their server, so that if they change a file on the server it’s automatically updated on all machines connected to the server (with no effort required by users).
If this is correct, then you could say it’s a radically different way of keeping packages up to date…
If this is correct, then you could say it’s a radically different way of keeping packages up to date…
And of breaking systems remotely leaving clueless users. Thanks but no thanks.
So they are kinda rsyncing the whole set of system files? Interesting, but I wonder how granular it is. Can you choose specific packages for updating this way?
I’m guessing, but I think the file system on the server would be “read-only”, your local file system “read-write” and all possible applications are “pre-installed” on the (server’s version of the) file system. This would mean that if you want to use an application (e.g. GIMP) you’d just use it (no installation, etc needed).
I’d also assume that for something like Apache you’d get a default pre-installed configuration from the server, but as soon as you modify that configuration you’d end up with your own local version of the modified file that Apache would use after that (i.e. local settings and customisations would work fine). The configuration files for X could be customised in the same way (e.g. for different video cards & hardware, and to select between KDE and Gnome).
In addition, I’m assuming that frequently read (but not modified) files would also be “cached” on the local file system to improve performance and reduce bandwidth/server load.
For the kernel, I’m guessing it’s a generic kernel with device drivers done as loadable modules (the same as a live-CD).
Of course I *am* guessing (but it’s a logical progression from the limited set of fact). Hopefully someone will try it out and let us know how wrong I am… 🙂
OK, found it: “Ulteo systems are not designed to benefit from software package management from a user perpective. We will provide a way to do it, because experts love that, but beware that for now it could break your system consistency and/or lead to an unstable system. For users who are not experts, we will provide alternative ways to run other applications on Ulteo”.
Anyone know?
They are trying to make a distro like “one size to fit them all”? The computers around the world arent too heterogeneous to something like that?
I just tried the ulteo live cd, and my second screen started to show garbage (after X starts if i remember). This didn’t surprise me since dual screen rarely works the first time with X.
The surprise was after a reboot to windows. Well, the second screen doesn’t work anymore, even at POST, it seems completely out of sync. Tried a hard reset, no luck, complete shutdown, nothing… Tried to de/reactivate the second screen on windows, tried to change vertical frequency, without luck… maybe an hsync problem..
What’s going on? Alpha drivers?
edit: Sorry, false alert, everything’s fine now, I had to ‘reboot’ my monitor 8)
Edited 2006-12-07 14:14
http://www.thecodingstudio.com/opensource/linux/?q=node/57
Mandrake was for some years my distro of choice. Had a lot of packages, urpmi worked well. Any installation usually worked well without major effort after installed. Although it had the tools for any power user need, it was referred as the distro of choice for new Linux users.
I kept using it when the Mandriva thing happened, but by the time started looking for alternatives, a change to Debian maybe, or something else. I felt that Mandriva was getting too corporate, and loosing connection to the users. When Gaël was laid off it was the water drop for me to go look for alternatives, and Ubuntu, which had been rising in popularity for some months, become a natural choice: Debian on the inside, the great apt tools, lots of packages, and an easy setup, focused on having a usable desktop installation (which is all you need when you want to get your work done). If something is missing you can always apt-get it.
Gaël created Mandrake, he surely had a vision for it, and that usually changes with time, development, etc. The reason he was laid off could well have been related to this vision that was out of sync with what the new “owners” of Mandriva had in mind. It was best for him so he can now work on creating a new product based on what he thinks the user experience should be. People can say “oh, another distro? who needs _another_ distro?”, but if you remember, Mandrake had it’s value, introduced many people to Linux for many years for it’s simplicity, and was one of the big distros, we can assume some, if not all of it was because of Gaël’s work and vision.
I hope this new project of his has as many success Mdk had, it’s IMO good for the community.
Anyone else stop using Mandrake after Mandriva lost Gaël?
Edited 2006-12-07 14:51
When Gaël was laid off it was the water drop for me to go look for alternatives, and Ubuntu, which had been rising in popularity for some months, become a natural choice
metoo!
Has anyone told Gael that Sirius is the _dog_ star? Here’s hoping it’s not a dog. =)
never mind Sirius, why did you and your ilk sack the genius ?
:p
Here’s a comprehensive Ulteo walk through. Enjoy!
Link:
http://www.thecodingstudio.com/opensource/linux/screenshots/index.p…
Nothing Ulteo about this
I’m truly happy to see Ulteo moving along, and that they really have a vision behind it. I do believe that their goals sound like they want to make Linux more Windows-ish (automatic update, installation without package management), and the interface with its Start button and longish title-bar buttons also seems to go in the Windows direction, but I think there are far worse things than giving newbie users a distro that feels more like what they already know.
I was at first disappointed that they don’t tell us the whole vision at once, but on the other hand that’s probably better than extolling all the great features and then falling short. It’s the Apple approach instead of the MS one–which I think tends to work better and create a lot more positive press. (This of course assuming of course that the product actually keeps developing like they say it will).
Edited 2006-12-08 00:46