The Source

The “Quit” command in applications today is a relic from the days when the original Macintosh had no hard disk and couldn’t multitask. Modern applications have made this command increasingly annoying. Fortunately, though, modern PCs have also made it increasingly unnecessary. Mobile operating systems have, for the most part, eliminated th

Natty will feature a world first – overlay scrollbars in desktop applications. The goal is to put content first and banish chrome, while still paying attention to the needs of the desktop environment – mouse pointers. These were designed and developed by Canonical as part of the Ayatana initiative, improving both focus and awareness for u

One of our goals in the Unity design effort is maximising immersion in content, and reducing the amount of chrome and clutter needed around that content. Unity’s new Overlay Scrollbars are a small but important detail in this bigger picture. Problem Today’s scrollbars are optimized for cursor driven UI but they became easily unnecessary a

We made a small flurry of announcements last week, all of which were related to cloud computing. I think it is worthwhile to put some context around Ubuntu and the cloud and explain a little more about where we are with this critical strategic strand for our beloved OS. First of all, the announcements. We

Tens of thousands of dollars saved on software licensing Summary The Government of Kerala wanted to provide 141 members of its legislative assembly with new laptop computers to help increase productivity and collaboration. Working with Canonical partner Zyxware Technologies and the active support of the Free Software Community in Trivandr

 I have just completed sessions of usability testing of Thunderbird. This time, I had the pleasure of working with Andreas Nilsson, who came to London to observe the sessions. It was very useful to get his feedback and to work collaboratively with him on the analysis and implications of the findings. In addition to

Hey Ubuntu One and Design fans! This is my first post here, and I have to say I feel priveledged to be able to write to you all. Recently I’ve been working with the Ubuntu One team on the desktop syncing apps, and trying to give them some special attention. I feel like these apps

The computing world is extremely polarised when it comes to proprietary vs. open source, and a million industry voices tell a million different stories. Even so, there are still very real differences between the two philosophies and technologies. This white paper focuses on just a few of them, giving you 10 great reasons to migrate

Canonical today announced that for the first time it was making publicly available its complete database of certified components for Ubuntu and Linux — rapidly reducing the the time-to-market for Original Design Manufacturers (ODMs) working on Ubuntu or Linux machines. The catalogue gives ODMs a selection of over 1300 certified components

In the spring of 2010, members of the Ubuntu development team worked with Dell to build and test OpenManage 6.3 for Ubuntu. Several of our engineers took several weeks working with Dell Linux engineers to build out a process for ensuring: – all of the dependencies were met, – helped get the Dell Linux team up

OpenStack today have made a number of announcements about the Bexar release of their cloud stack and we were delighted to be able to confirm its inclusion in the repositories for Ubuntu 11.04 as well as officially joining the community. We have been engaged with the OpenStack community informally for some time. Some Canonical alumni

Canonical today announced the availability of Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) running on Dell PowerEdge C2100 and C6100 servers in an integrated solution enabling Dell's U.S.-based customers to easily deploy Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). The standard edition released today allows software developers and IT organizations to run cloud p

Gaming company cuts server infrastructure by almost half with Ubuntu and VMware Summary Agora Games creates custom online gaming communities and develops video-game middleware. As a fast-growing company, Agora Games realised that it needed to implement a standardised infrastructure that could scale to meet growing demand. It worked with t

Two weeks into our wallpaper contest we’re seeing lots of really interesting entries for the photographic part. As those of you who read the previous post about the contest will know we’re also reserving at least three places this release for non photographic wallpapers. The plan _was_ to use another site to manage these entries.

London 24th January 2011: The Ubuntu Project today announced the opening of a new exhibition at London’s Design Museum dedicated to the Ubuntu Font, in collaboration with international typeface designers Dalton Maag. Entitled ‘Shape my language’, the exhibition will run from 28th January to 28th February 2011. The exhibition marks a signi