Rory Cellan-Jones

[motorcity909]

Does anyone remember Ubuntu 9.10 being mentioned bu the BBC tech reporter, Rory Cellan-Jones, along with his rather scathing '24 hours with Ubuntu' blog post?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/10/24_hours_with_ubuntu.html

I'm trying to see if RCJ will take a look at 11.04 when it comes out as he promised back in 2009 to revisit it then and never has.

There's no published email on his BBC page http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/rorycellanjones/ so I've just added an off-topic comment to his latest blog about the Amazon music cloud asking if he will take a new look at Ubuntu now.

Let's see what happens!
Dave

[gnomeuser]

I think poor Rory has suffered enough, perhaps wait till the next LTS release is out. Especially given that we changed the user experience on him.. again (I recall him trying UNE).

[motorcity909]

Bit of harmless lobbying, makes the world go round.

Given how he blogs about anything Apple throws out I'm sure he's used to it. Five Apple blogs just in the three months of 2011.

And as a BBC licence fee payer, my feedback is encouraged by the corporation.

[nothingspecial]

Yes, that poor bloke got a real hard time. I remember him making an account here to join the discussion.

To paraphrase what I (think I) said at the time.

He is a journalist, not a technology expert. I believe he started as a financial reporter and as a result of some excellent articles on the "dot com boom" got the job as the BBC's technology correspondent.

His brief was to report the launch of windows 7, let's face it, a big story in the technology world. He took it upon himself to mention the latest Ubuntu release in balance without really understanding what he was talking about. I think he'd admit that was a mistake. He was trying to be fair but got a lot (a record amount on the BBC's technology page I believe) of flac.

I wouldn't be suprised if he never wanted to hear the word "Ubuntu" again.

[Johnsie]

Non-tech people should never be in charge of in-office software migration. These things require alot of thought, planning and user training before they are introduced. That's why it costs so much to migrate to new systems.

Most decent offices have an go-to expert who knows almost everything about how to use the OS being used.

These 24 hour of Ubuntu tests are not good, because they usually involve people just jumping into a migration with very little planning. A decent company will not do a migration in that manner.

[ukripper]

Funnily enough BBC infrastructure runs on Linux based OS (as I read in Linux Format couple of years ago). I think Rory should peak in his own closet to know the benefits he may achieve using Linux based OS.

[frncz]

Similarly, the UK government has been looking at open source alternatives to Microsoft:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12905303
but the last line indicates that Apple may be the alternative!

[Joeb454]

I didn't know which to send the message to, so I included both in my tweet, with a link to this thread ;)

http://twitter.com/#!/ruskin147
http://twitter.com/#!/BBCRoryCJ

[ukripper]

I didn't know which to send the message to, so I included both in my tweet, with a link to this thread ;)

http://twitter.com/#!/ruskin147
http://twitter.com/#!/BBCRoryCJ

nice one cheers!

[nothingspecial]

If you do end up persuading him to do a week with Ubuntu, he needs to be made aware of the support boards here.

If he does run into problems a bit of free friendly help might make the difference between a positive or negative conclusion.

[motorcity909]

Good to see some positive responses to my OP. :)


BBC infrastructure runs on Linux based OSConfirmed on Netcraft - all Linux & Apache

http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.bbc.co.uk

[Johnsie]

That's only their web architecture, which incidentally failed badly yesterday(live and contingency). One would assume that their desktop workstations use a Windows/Exchange/Outlook/Office etc with possible a small number of mac and even less Linux desktops.

[ukripper]

According to LF BBC iplayer architecture, Backup solutions, using XFS instead of EXT all linux based but nothing was confirmed of Desktop workstations being used as linux. I can imagine them using more Macs than windows though. Most designers and media in London use MACS for desktop needs.