M
Mark Shuttleworth
markshuttleworth.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2007
Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical, writes about Ubuntu's development, design decisions, release names, and product announcements.
What HN saysHN commenters cite it to settle arguments about Ubuntu's choices, such as Upstart versus systemd, Unity on Wayland, and Unity's origins.
134HN people shared it
66linked it in comments
92stories submitted
3.2Kstory points
3 years agolast shared
2007people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Losing graciously13 people · 515 points · first shared 2014 · 202 comments on HN
- 2Amazon search results in the Dash11 people · 93 points · first shared 2012 · 86 comments on HN
- 3Unity on Wayland8 people · 10 points · first shared 2010 · 2 comments on HN
- 4Ubuntu 14.04 LTS to be named Trusty Tahr5 people · 30 points · first shared 2013 · 28 comments on HN
- 5Introducing the HUD. Say hello to the future of the menu4 people · 361 points · first shared 2012 · 198 comments on HN
- 6Announcing Ubuntu Core, with snappy transactional updates3 people · 650 points · first shared 2014 · 147 comments on HN
- 7Mistakes made and addressed3 people · 123 points · first shared 2013 · 64 comments on HN
- 8Window indicators for Ubuntu ("windicators")3 people · 69 points · first shared 2010 · 36 comments on HN
- 9Beavering away at the brilliantly bionic 18.04 LTS3 people · 8 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 10Introducing the Fan – simpler container networking2 people · 146 points · first shared 2015 · 69 comments on HN
- 11Unity: a lightweight netbook interface for Ubuntu2 people · 92 points · first shared 2010 · 56 comments on HN
- 12Single menu bar for Ubuntu2 people · 69 points · first shared 2010 · 56 comments on HN
- 13Ubuntu vs RHEL in enterprise computing2 people · 57 points · first shared 2012 · 23 comments on HN
- 14Not convinced by rolling releases2 people · 49 points · first shared 2013 · 20 comments on HN
- 15Ubuntu 11.10 named Oneiric Ocelot2 people · 32 points · first shared 2011 · 15 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
rdtsc · 2016-06-10
It was an open request to the community from his blog post. I emailed him first, that's how conversation started.
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/?s=government
yellowapple · 2023-08-02
Maybe you're running Ubuntu and he's Mark Shuttleworth: https://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1182
rlpb · 2023-06-22
> Keeping Upstart after everyone else abandoned it...
False. Ubuntu switched to systemd as soon as its upstream (Debian) did.
See https://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1316
the_why_of_y · 2023-03-30
Often? Only in case of Upstart and LXD (I'm not familiar with the latter's history).
Here's Mark Shuttleworth in 2010:
The next major transition for Unity will be to deliver it on Wayland, the OpenGL-based display management system.
We came to the conclusion that any such effort would only create a hard split in the world which wasn’t worth the cost of having done it. There are issues with Wayland, but they seem to be solvable, we’d rather be part of solving them than chasing a better alternative. So Wayland it is.
https://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/551
Then in 2013, Unity 8 was released with Mir.
Snap was largely developed in parallel with FlatPak (called xdg-app initially).
There was a talk about the plans at GUADEC 2013:
https://www.superlectures.com/guadec2013/sandboxed-applications-for-gn…
lproven · 2022-07-04
Unity was not pointless.
The point was that Microsoft was threatening to sue any company distributing a Windows-like desktop Linux.
https://www.theregister.com/2006/11/20/microsoft_claims_linux_code
SUSE signed a patent-sharing agreement; Red Hat and Canonical said no.
Both developed their own non-Windows-like desktops. RH sponsors GNOME, and many RH people worked on GNOME 3.
Canonical tried to get involved and was rebuffed.
E.g.
https://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/tag/gnome
So it rebuilt its existing "Netbook Launcher" as a general-purpose desktop.
MS didn't sue anyone in the end, but it got what it wanted: massive fragmentation in the Linux world, no harmony, lots of split and duplicated effort.
My analysis, from a decade ago, is here:
https://www.theregister.com/2013/06/03/thank_microsoft_for_linux_deskt…
pseudalopex · 2020-05-04
And Ubuntu followed Debian. Mark Shuttleworth called it "losing graciously".[1]
[1] https://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1316
pavlov · 2017-04-13
I don't think it's that nefarious. She came from an enterprise background and was made CEO to emphasize the importance of enterprise sales to Ubuntu.
Shuttleworth says as much in this blog post from 2009:
"As a former VP at General Dynamics, Jane has more experience of large customers and large organisational leadership, which I see as essential for Canonical over the next five years. We are being welcomed as a partner and supplier to ever-larger businesses, and I want to make sure we are a robust answer to their needs."
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/295
When meeting with Fortune 500 customers, it makes sense to have the CEO participate in negotiations rather than the same person with a more nebulous VP title.
dharma1 · 2015-05-12
For an explanation of Snappy - or how to get/run/use it?
Here is a couple of links for the former
http://thenewstack.io/snappy-ubuntu-a-new-cloud-os-with-support-for-do…
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1434
yawaramin · 2015-03-14
As I pointed out way back when,[1] Mark Shuttleworth really missed the opportunity to name an Ubuntu release the Tenacious Tardigrade.
[1] http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1295#comment-403210
exelius · 2014-10-21
The main alternatives seem to be OpenRC and Upstart. One of the biggest criticisms of systemd by its detractors is that it's unproven and not stable; and neither of these address that concern.
Upstart was developed by Ubuntu, which has stopped supporting it and is adopting systemd because they recognized the need to standardize on a single system. After the Debian committee voted to go with systemd, Ubuntu (being a Debian derivative) followed suit.[1]
OpenRC isn't really a replacement for sysvinit; rather it bolts on some functionality on top of sysvinit. My understanding is that OpenRC is not an incredibly mature codebase and would have needed a lot of work to come up to feature/stability parity with systemd. Because it doesn't fully replace sysvinit, it also doesn't solve all of the same problems as systemd.
[1] http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1316
riquito · 2014-10-03
Since Ubuntu decided to migrate in the future to systemd [1] you may consider it as a good investment
[1] http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1316
throwawayaway · 2014-07-16
It's weird also, given that spotify were pushing systemd[0] hard, shuttleworth[1] conceded - but the version of LTS Ubuntu 14.04 [2] that spotify switched to is on Upstart.
[0] http://www.muktware.com/2014/01/spotify-uses-debian-endorses-systemd-i…
[1] http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1316
[2] https://lists.debian.org/debian-publicity/2014/06/msg00014.html
lvillani · 2014-06-29
> the huge fragmentation in the desktop linux world (cue the Systemd Wars)
With Ubuntu adopting systemd (http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1316), I guess the init system wars are basically over.
sparkiegeek · 2014-06-03
Where are you getting the stats that majority of the cloud is RHEL/CentOS?
Published stats [1] show that Ubuntu dominates cloud deployments.
[1] http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1318
simula67 · 2014-04-02
For those who missed it, Ubuntu is also moving to systemd as default : http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1316
tszming · 2014-03-28
Not in 14.04 LTS: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1316
higherpurpose · 2014-03-24
They should ditch ACPI anyway. It seems it's too unsafe:
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1332
fmoralesc · 2014-02-25
Ubuntu is following Debian on using systemd, "as soon as it offers a credible quality of service to match the existing init" (which might happen pretty fast): http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1316
I don't see software installation unification happening any time soon. There are layers like packagekit that sit above package managers, though (but mostly under-developed because, well, what is the point?).
AFAIK, systemd makes sense in servers (possibly even more than in desktops), because of its support for container setups. Not sure, though.
allendoerfer · 2014-02-19
I look at it this way, too. The brutal approach has been chosen, we can argue about it's effectiveness or individual choices, but the only way we could make it worse would be to start all over again, this long in the game.
There is nothing special about legacy software not functional under the most recent version. Ask the java folks in big enterprises. I highly prefer this approach with a strong focus on a clean API than the other way around.
We should stop arguing about wrong choices and start start losing graciously [0] and fix the missing pieces.
[0] http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1316
JamesZaya · 2013-11-10
I am glad there is a clarifcation from Mark - http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1299.
>Last week, the less-than-a-month-at-Canonical new guy sent out the toughest template letter to the folks behind a “sucks” site. Now, that was not a decision based on policy or guidance; as I said, Canonical’s trademark policy is unusually generous relative to corporate norms in explicitly allowing for this sort of usage. It was a mistake, and there is no question that the various people in the line of responsibility know and agree that it was a mistake.
But if the person who sent the template letter was new, then surely this becomes a training issue?
Trademark violations can soon become PR disasters just like this has become. So perhaps companies and start up's may wish to learn from Canonical's mistake as it can easily happen to them.
No one is perfect. Mistakes happen...
jcastro · 2013-11-10
This was just a misunderstanding, comments from Mark S:
https://plus.google.com/116812394236590806058/posts/5jdibY5iR9b
EDIT: and subsequent blogpost: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1299
m_ram · 2013-11-10
The privacy issues were discussed in Sept. 2012, a month before Quantal was released.
22-Sept: Slashdot thread
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/09/22/1319216/ubuntu-will-now-have-am…
23-Sept: HN thread
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4558049
23-Sept: Shuttleworth blog post
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1182
corbet · 2013-11-01
I believe he must be referring to this: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1295
onli · 2013-11-01
Martin refers to http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1295, I think. He wrote about it in http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2013/10/thoughts-about-the-open-… It is about the Mir-Support of KWin/KDE (Martin is the current KWin developer) - while KDE doesn't want to support Mir right now, and says it is about technical reasons, Shuttleworth suggested it is a political thing, which Martin didn't like at all.
Seems like after his post there were some not so nice reactions. Though the comments on his blog seem to be nice enough, at first glance.
kbuck · 2013-09-08
I don't think it's entirely a corporate move here. Free software contributions aren't infinite; if you have $N developers working on integrating support for display servers, then it's simple math that having to support two display servers means that you'll have $N/2 developers working on each, and will therefore get half the work done (and, since they'll probably still have to support X11 for a while, make that $N/3). Ubuntu selfishly forked Mir instead of choosing to try to use Wayland (especially when they had originally committed to using Wayland[1]), so the burden is on them here. It also doesn't help that Canonical employees were using the inclusion of XMir support as political fodder[2].
[1] http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/551
[2] https://twitter.com/olliries/status/375704285083738112
comex · 2013-07-12
Original blog post:
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1269
Create · 2013-03-22
Don’t trust us? Erm, we have root. You do trust us with your data already. -- http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1182
runeks · 2013-03-04
> 1 ) I was also under that impression, but coming to think about it who created that expectation, the community or Canonical? I don't know.
Mark Shuttleworth created that expectation, when he made a blog post saying Unity would be switching to Wayland: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/551
itry · 2012-12-07
I find this spyware by default as wrong as Stallman. I dont want my machine to send anything anywhere without me explicitly telling it to do so.
What I find even more frightening is Mark Shuttelworths view of this:
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1182
"Don’t trust us? Erm, we have root."
Looks like he gets the issues of privacy and trust completely wrong. Imagine catching your cleaning lady reading your diary. And she says, without a sign of guilt, "Don't trust me? Erm, I got keys to your apartment.".
Time for a new cleaning lady.
Time for a new distro. I happily switched to Mint.
Irregardless · 2012-12-07
> Use Super-A. You can tell Unity exactly what you want to search. And in future you’ll be able to do that from the home lens, too, more easily than the current Lens Bar at the bottom of the Dash.
From http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1182
It sounds like they're working to expand the search functionality with users' best interests in mind, not adding advertisements as everyone seems to think.
> it is being done to track my interests for monetary gain in the form of referral links
They're just search results, not ads. Read the blog post from Shuttleworth.