Ubuntu's Natty Narwhal Goes Mainstream

Natty Narwhal (also known as Ubuntu Linux 11.04) arrived the same day I bought a netbook computer so I've experienced a new installation and an update and from my perspective there is no longer any reason to qualify support for this operating system. It's capable, feature rich, and well behaved. Those who depend on Microsoft and Adobe applications will still need Windows (or WINE) for those. But for everything else, there's Linux.

When I say "mainstream", I mean that a Linux system is unquestionably capable of supporting 100% of most users' computing needs and by that I mean: E-mail, Web browsing, instant messages, word processing, spreadsheet applications, data management, listening to music, watching streaming or DVD-based video, playing games, plain-text editing, limited photo editing, website development, and more.

You may have noticed some slight equivocation toward the end of my list. That's because the best-known powerhouse applications for photo editing (Photoshop) and website development (Dreamweaver) are Windows applications. If you need those applications or any of the rest of the Adobe Creative Suite (Illustrator, Audition, Premiere, After Effects) then you still need a Windows machine. Or maybe WINE.

WINE (known recursively as "WINE is not an emulator") lets users run Windows software on other operating systems. Thus far I have avoided WINE because sometimes it's hard enough to get Windows applications running under Windows, much less on a system that creates a "compatibility layer" between the application and an operating system that was never intended to run the application.

But Linux has come far enough that I'm now planning to give WINE a try.

Is It Apple or Ubuntu?

Click for a larger view.Now that Ubuntu is using the Unity desktop manager, Natty Narwhal looks a lot like OS X on a Mac. In fact, it seems to me that Unity provides an even better user experience than OS X.

You'll see a dock at the left edge of the screen (I haven't yet found a way to move it elsewhere). When applications encroach on the dock, it slides off the screen and reappears only when the cursor bumps the left edge of the screen. As with Windows 7, you can pin any running application to the dock.

In the screen shot above note that (Mac-like) an application's menu stays at the top of the screen, even if the application is running in a smaller window.

Click for a larger view.When it comes to software, you know that this isn't a Mac or a Windows PC because nearly every application you want to run comes with a price tag of $0.00. Canonical Ubuntu Software Center provides a way to download, install, manage, update, and remove more than 30,000 applications or, more accurately, "packages". Some applications may have dependencies on one or more other components and the system knows what these are. So if you select an application that has a dozen dependencies, the dozen additional packages will be downloaded and installed.

Click for a larger view.Based on currently installed applications, the installer may suggest applications that seem appropriate for your needs. The previous screen indicated that there were currently 7 suggestions for me. These include a few text editors, a word processor, and the image editor GIMP.

Click for a larger view.Some applications aren't available via the Ubuntu Software Center so Canonical also provides the Synaptic Package Manager.

Synaptic includes some applications that don't qualify under Ubuntu's Free Software Policy. So you'll find 4 classifications of applications:

5 CatsIf you've thought about Ubuntu, now's the time to act!

Wow! This is an early review based on less than 2 weeks of experience with the new operating system but based on what I've seen so far, this looks like the one that could really work for a huge number of people. (If you're an Ubuntu veteran, though, be prepared for changes. You'll like them once you figure out what's going on, but initially it's a shock.)
For more information, visit the Ubuntu website.

Trying to Keep Up with Adobe

"Keep up" might be a bit optimistic. I'm just trying to avoid being left too far behind as Adobe races toward the future of computing. The unusual mid-cycle release on May 3 established a new normal. CS5.5 isn't a free upgrade as most mid-cycle releases are. And the release offers a host of new features, which mid-cycle releases usually don't. It's also the beginning to a new release strategy for Adobe in that the company is setting up a 2-year cycle with mid-cycle releases designed to address changing technologies.

Some will undoubtedly characterize this as change for the sake of change or change for the sake of the marketing department, but look around. Computing devices have changed a lot in the past 2 years. The Ipad and other tablet computing devices have gained wide acceptance. Mobile phones are now the preferred method of using the Internet for a lot of people. The fact that I'm a dinosaur who picked a netbook computer over an Ipad and who uses a 10-year-old cell phone with a prepaid plan that ends up costing about $15 per month doesn't mean that I'm blind to the changes.

A lot of people use these smaller, mobile devices and sometime (sooner rather than later) that will be "most people" instead of "a lot of people". So the companies such as Adobe who make the tools that make the websites and publications and videos need to keep up with the quickly changing world.

I'm just now beginning to dig in and assess what's new, but I can safely make the following observations:

Short Circuits

Facebooking the News

The Pew Research Center, using data from the Nielsen Company (the people who have done media ratings for decades) say that Facebook has joined Google as a major driver in boosting traffic at the nation's top 5 news sites. As for Twitter, not so much.

The study identifies the top 5 news sites as Yahoo, CNN, MSNBC, AOL, and NYTimes.com. Of the top 25 news sites, all but one pick up some traffic from Facebook. The one exception, understandably, is GoogleNews. About 6% of traffic to the New York Times website comes from Facebook.

Despite gains by Facebook, Google News is still the leader. Google drives nearly a third of all traffic to the top 25 sites.

Twitter continues to be a non-starter in this race. According to the Pew Research study: "Despite its growth and the amount of attention it receives, the micro-blogging service Twitter appears at this point to play a relatively small role in sharing of links to news sources."

Twitter receives a lot of attention but Pew notes that the service still has a much smaller audience than Facebook or Google. More than 3% of traffic to the Los Angeles Times website came from Twitter where it beat Facebook's 2%. For other news sites, the best Twitter managed was about 1%.

Pew's study classifies users as "casual" (those who visit sites 2 or 3 times a month and stay briefly) or "power" (those who return at least 10 times per month and spend an hour on the news site). Of course many intermediate types of users exist.

News sites are still trying to figure out how to make a living on the Internet. The study suggests that site operators may want to look for ways to convince users to return more frequently or to stay longer. That's the only way that an advertising-based system will work. Some sites (the Wall Street Journal, for example, and more recently the New York Times) have turned to subscription plans.

As of today, nobody has all the right answers. In fact, it's likely that nobody yet even has all the right questions.

Skype Goes to Microsoft

Microsoft has announced plans to pay $8.5 billion for Skype and that is the most expensive acquisition in Microsoft's history. Microsoft has expanded into the smart phone market and probably sees the acquisition as furthering those goals.

In announcing the deal, Microsoft said it will include Skype's capabilities in the Xbox, Outlook, and Windows smart phones. Skype currently works on other operating systems and Microsoft says it will continue to support those platforms.

Skype isn't a money-maker because most users limit themselves to Skype's free calling services. About 1% of Skype users actually pay for anything. The company was founded in 2003. EBay acquired Skype in 2005 ($2.6 billion) but couldn't make a go of it. EBay sold 70% of its ownership to a group of private investors about a year and a half ago for $2 billion.

Skype lost $7 million last year on revenue of $860 million. A plan to launch an initial public stock offering that the company announced last year was later delayed.

The investors will make out well on the deal. Three years ago Microsoft bid $47.5 billion to buy Yahoo, but Yahoo refused. Yahoo's worth has declined to less than $25 billion now.

Microsoft's Skype business until will be headed by Tony Bates, who is the current Skype CEO.

I've seen criticism that Microsoft is paying more than it needed to pay for Skype and not getting its moneys worth. That may be but someone at Microsoft clearly sees an opportunity. The acquisition can certainly strengthen Microsoft's position in several key areas that will be increasingly important in coming years.

The agreed price is certainly high enough to inhibit attempts by other companies to out-bid Microsoft. And it's high enough that, unlike the failed Yahoo bid, none of the current Skype owners was willing to hold out. In other words, it was a way to effectively lock the sale. If that was Microsoft's intent, the ploy certainly worked.

When the United States acquired Alaska from Russia in 1867, Secretary of State William Seward was ridiculed for "Seward's Folly". Seward always felt that his greatest achievement as Secretary of State was the purchase of Alaska but, he said, "it will take the people a generation to find it out." Few would consider the acquisition a folly today and that may prove to be the case for Microsoft's purchase of Skype, too.

YouTube Increases Video Rental Options by Three Thousand

This event is probably causing a bit of heartburn at Netflix: Google's YouTube has just added 3000 movies from Hollywood studios to its rentable lineup of offerings. YouTube already has the lead in Internet-connected televisions and portable devices. For the past several years, Netflix has been expanding and improving its streaming service so a battle is brewing.

The new YouTube offerings include full-length films from Sony Pictures, Warner Brothers, Universal, and Lionsgate. New releases will cost $4 (OK, $3.99 if that penny makes any difference except to mush-brained people who think that $3.99 is more like $3 than like $4) and will be available on the same day they become available via other on-demand services.

Now available on YouTube: Films such as The Green Hornet, Inception, and The King's Speech. Some of these were just recently released on DVD. Older movies cost $3 (i.e., $2.99).

Last year YouTube offered films from the Sundance Film Festival and until now had only a small library of films that could be rented online. Paramount, Twentieth Century Fox, and Walt Disney are remaining on the sidelines because of concerns about piracy.