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ZeusABJ
October 3rd, 2006, 09:28 PM
Hey Chanders,

For starters, thanks so much for your hard work on the USP. The USP (combined with the Ubuntu Control Center) has gone a long way to improve my overall Linux desktop experience tremendously. On to my issue, I flipped through some of the threads here and I did not notice anyone else asking this question, so I'm going to come right out with it. Do you know if anyone from the official Ubuntu team is considering the prospect of including the USP and UCP as a standard component of any future Ubuntu releases (like Edgy maybe)? I've been looking at screenshots of the recently released Edgy beta, and to be honest I'm a little disappointed to see the same “standard” gnome interface there. Also I don't see either of them listed here:

https://features.launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/edgy/+specs

I know everyone has their preference, but one of the things I admired most about SLED was the fact that the Novell team really took the time to polish and customize the Gnome interface into something more usable. I guess I was hoping the Ubuntu team would see that and take it to heart, but so far I'm seeing no indications that is the case. I personally feel a distro that combines the strengths of Ubuntu (usability, community support & ease of install) with the strengths of SLED (professional feel overall, well-polished custom UI & built-in support for popular media formats ) would be the one to really win over windows users. The USP and UCP represent a step in the right direction to add true ease-of-use to Ubuntu and win over the Windows users (in my opinion). I hope Shuttlworth and Co. have the foresight to recognize their value and include them standard.

airtonix
October 3rd, 2006, 10:56 PM
yaaa hay ya thay say verly.....

Bringeth thy UCP and USP.....in much gusto.

Suggestion #5,390,348,290,863,254 :
make the config files xml....and use xslt to transform the appearance, thus giving us the abilitie to use either a central server to manage a office enviroment and make use of those cool xml/xslt extensions for firefox and the apps that are in the repos.

ps..plain html and css usage would also be higly desirable.

hindsight: I suppose this will be highly possible when gtk-webcore becomes mature?

chanders
October 3rd, 2006, 10:58 PM
@ ZeusABJ - I have to agree with you. I like the command line but sometimes it's just nice to have something simple functional and beautiful all at the same time.

That being said, I did not present USP and UCC to the Canonical development team to be considered for release with edgy. The main reason is because these were pet projects and I still think that they lack some very basic functionality before they could be considered stable enough to be included.

Doing development work is quite tedious and to be quite honest there is little to no documentation to help which makes it even more difficult, not to mention that open source development usually falls prey to real life and lack of enthusiaism. Having others like Malac, Mat and the other developers input code have helped tremendously, both in functionality and moral.

It is my goal to have USP at least stable enough and enough bugs ironed out that it can be considered for edgy+1. I know that USP has a following and as long as we have USP users I will personally work on USP....

Ptero-4
October 3rd, 2006, 11:23 PM
One thing. you should allow the user to decide at install whether he wants to install/enable UCP/USP or use the normal gnome/kde/xfce desktop, or just don't install UCP/USP but include them in the CD.

ZeusABJ
October 4th, 2006, 07:27 PM
Well I really appreciate all your hard work Chanders. I'm still really new to Linux and have to agree the lack of documentation is annoying. I wish I could do more to help, but my current skill set just isn't up to par. I just know I can't live in a Windows world anymore so I've tried to at least donate to a few of the distros I like best (like Ubuntu and SLED). Side projects like this really do a lot to help people like me make the transition and add that special ease-use-use element we need. I really hope the team at Canonical sees the value in what you do and makes some sort of effort to include some of your work in edgy+1.

Thanks for taking a moment to answer my questions! Looking forward to USP2!!!

JSVH
October 9th, 2006, 12:24 PM
I agree 100%! Having a desktop that looks great and is functional is a must! A great looking desktop will get peoples attention, and all of Ubuntu's other advantages will sell them. This sould be a goal for edgy +1.It is probably some of the best markiting that could be done. Get people attention, let them see how great Ubuntu is.

-John

ZeusABJ
October 14th, 2006, 03:26 PM
I agree 100%! Having a desktop that looks great and is functional is a must! A great looking desktop will get peoples attention, and all of Ubuntu's other advantages will sell them. This sould be a goal for edgy +1.It is probably some of the best markiting that could be done. Get people attention, let them see how great Ubuntu is.

-John

No arguments here, though I have to tell you all this Iceweasel business really has me concerned about the future of the Ubuntu desktop. What were the Debian guys thinking?! The Linux community needs to realize that the wolf is at the door. Micosoft is getting more restrictive than ever with their latest release of Windows. Now is a golden opportunity to pull in new users, but we have to show them that Linux is a stable platform and that developers won't get into silly arguments and fork things just to get their way.

](*,)

Sigh, here's hoping that mess works out...

4tro
December 10th, 2006, 03:52 PM
maybe USP should aim for the standard ubuntu repo's first ^^ and it's own repo of course.