| Shuttleworth steps down as Ubuntu 10.04 alpha steps up |
Dec. 17, 2009
 Canonical announced that Mark Shuttleworth will be stepping down as CEO in March to be replaced by Canonical COO Jane Silber, reports eWEEK. Meanwhile, the Ubuntu project has released its first alpha of Ubuntu 10.04 ("Lucid Lynx"), which speeds boot-time while kissing the GIMP editor goodbye.
Ubuntu sponsor Canonical announced the management transition in a call with press and analysts on December 17, writes Darryl Taft in our sister publication eWEEK. After surrendering his CEO title in March, Shuttleworth will continue to focus on specific projects within Canonical, including the company's move to support cloud computing, says the story.
"Ubuntu remains my primary focus," Shuttleworth was quoted as saying. "I have been working on the cloud initiative we put in place. So I'll be doing product design and working with partners." Shuttleworth (pictured at right), was said to have stressed that Silber's ascension to the CEO position did not represent a change in strategy, noting in a written Q&A that, "Over the last couple of years Jane and I have shared the leadership of Canonical."
In the Q&A, Silber, who is said to have both engineering and management experience, was quoted as saying, "Mark will continue to play a major role in Canonical, and we expect this to be a smooth transition." According to Taft, she added, "One thing this move will bring about is a clearer separation of the role of CEO of Canonical and the leader of the Ubuntu community."
Shuttleworth remix
Through the power of his personality, not to mention considerable investments from his own funds, Shuttleworth has pushed Ubuntu above the crowd as the world's most popular consumer Linux distribution. A South African born entrepreneur, Shuttleworth studied finance and information technology at the University of Cape Town and went on to found Thawte, a company specializing in digital certificates and Internet privacy. He sold Thawte to VeriSign in 1999 and founded HBD Venture Capital and The Shuttleworth Foundation.
Shuttleworth moved to London in 2001, and began preparing for the First African in Space mission, training in Star City and Khazakstan. In April 2002, Shuttleworth flew in space as a cosmonaut member of the crew of Soyuz mission TM34 to the International Space Station. In early 2004, he founded the Ubuntu project based on Debian Linux.
Since then, Shuttleworth has been a major force in advancing Ubuntu and establishing the concept of a Linux distribution designed for typical consumers. In addition to forging early partnerships with companies including Sun Microsystems, Intel, and Google, he has recently joined with IBM to offer a cloud-based version of Ubuntu with Lotus Notes applications called IBM Client for Smart Work.
The partnership is part of a larger recent effort to lead Canonical both into netbooks (with Ubuntu Netbook Remix) and into the enterprise business, where it aims to compete with Red Hat for Linux-based cloud computing software deals.
Although most likely unrelated to the management transition, Shuttleworth ran into a bit of controversy with members of the Linux community regarding a speech he gave at LinuxCon several months ago about software release cycles. Shuttleworth was widely criticized for making both sexual and sexist comments during the speech.
Lucid Lynx leaps to life
The Canonical-backed Ubuntu project this week released the first of three alphas for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Long Term Support), code-named Lucid Lynx. Due for final release in April, Lucid Lynx builds upon Linux kernel 2.6.32, moving up from the Linux 2.6.31 kernel in the recently released Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala). It also offers the latest GNOME 2.29.3 desktop, and the Kubuntu version offers a beta of the KDE SC 4.4 desktop, says the Ubuntu project.
In addition, says the project, the GIMP is no longer offered as a default graphics editor, due to its complexity and large disk space, and will be replaced by PiTiVi. The HAL (hardware abstraction layer), meanwhile, has been completely removed from Ubuntu, which is said to improve boot and resume time.
According to OMG!Ubuntu, the new release offers a new update button on the Ubiquity installer, allowing "the installer to update itself prior to installation of Ubuntu, fixing any nasty bugs or issues and possibly updating the slide-show in light of changes or tweaks."
The new version is also said to trim down Ubuntu's allotment of games, leaving only AisleRiot Solitaire, Gnometris, Mahjongg, Mines, and Sudoku. Other new features are said to include improved breadcrumb buttons on the Software Center, a new Byubo tool that offers additional system stats, and a super-user appendage to the title bar for "windows that run as root (sudo)."
Availability
The eWEEK story on the Canonical management transition may be found here.
Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) is now available in an alpha 1 LTS release, here, with the usual large allotment of bugs and other issues that should limit this to experimental use only.
The OMG!Ubuntu story on Lucid Lynx should be here.
-- Eric Brown
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