Ubuntu has an identity crisis

What everyone seems to be forgetting is that this is a comment, like the Daily Mail's words from the editor. If you don't like it, stop reading it..

"Even Ubuntu itself is a pretty daft name."

So, only North American or Western European names are sensible? An interesting reflection on the prejudices of either the fictional CEOs or the author.

Slow news day?
That would be Ubuntu 7.10 then.

Ivan

Didn't we all agree some time ago that the drunken ramblings of Andrew Thomas would be sub-titled with his name on the front page just below the article title so we would not unexpectedly have to put up with his steaming piles landing ***PLOP*** in our lunchtime browsing?

Here's some info for you Andrew, it isn't called Gutsy Gibbon, it is called Ubuntu 7.10. Gutsy Gibbon is an internal codename. You'd know this if your head wasn't so far up your a***.

We all know how much you love Microsoft (you low-life shill), yet how could forget such memorable Vole codenames as: Snowball, Frosting, Dolly, Asteroid, Trainyard, and Bobcat, among others.

I can't imagine why Mageek keeps you on as you contribute nothing to The Inquirer. Every one else seems to have some understanding of the industry in which they work, and at the very least cause the IT PR industry some trouble. 

You occasionally contribute a regurgitated PR release and spew an uninformed "opinion" (otherwise known as a typical Thomas rant) piece.

And before you all brand me as a "Linux geek", I have always used various Microsoft OS. In fact, I've never even installed Linux (yet).

You, my friend, are a RETARD. Grow up and find something worthwhile to write about. 

You must be a very very dull person to nit-pick about something as simple this! Btw, he disto is officially called "Ubuntu 7.10".

I agree with you completely, but isn't the whole point that Ubuntu is only targeting home users? We have SUSE Linux Enterprise for businesses.

If I'm not mistaken the animal names are merely project code names prior to release. Post-release they are known by the version numbers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_codenames

Who has an identity crisis?

Hi Thomas

The latest Ubuntu Linux release is called Ubuntu 7.10.

Take a look at the website:
http://www.ubuntu.com/

7.10 refers to the release date of October 2007.

Gutsy Gibbon is the project code name.


Regards,

Liam

I have very bad first contact with Ubuntu. I order 3 CD from www.ubuntu.com, Ubuntu 7.04, Ubuntu 7.04 64 bit, and Kubuntu. 

When I came to my house, I have to pay IDR 7.000 or $0.7. The first bad thing is, they send the wrong order. I got 2 Ubuntu 32 bit and 1 Ubuntu 64 bit. Where is my Kubuntu? Ok. 

First thing first. I launch my VMWAre 6 and setting it with 256 MB no HDD. Booting from the CD, The VMWARE HANG. Ok. I got 3 CD. Try the next one. All the same. OK may be Ubuntu doesn't love VMWARE. 

Booting ubuntu 64 bit in real PC. The Booting is very looooooooooooooong timeeeeeeee. Finaly it show the desktop. Ok. Let see I want to see the control panel. I search it everywhere and didn't found it. I see the Install Nvidia driver link. Wao Ubuntu is amaizing. The only live CD that have Nvidia driver. Cool. I klik the link, it's tell me to connect internet and download the driver. DAMM. I try to "play" with ubuntu, and very dissepoint. Ubuntu has been known to be one of the best linux. To Me Ubuntu is "Linux for the Alien".

I have been "playing" linux from RedHAt 5 to Mandriva 2007. All the linux is has the commond and becoming more and more user friendly. ALL but UBUNTU. I have been order the Ubuntu 7.10 to give Ubuntu the Seconds Chance. Oh I forgot, according to my friends, My ubuntu CD is corrupt. 

That why it's booting very loooooooooong timmmmmmmmmmeeeeeeeee. HOW CAN I GET WRONG AND CORRUPT CD FROM UBUNTU OFFICIAL? Ok I it enough. Vista is suck, but Ubuntu is more Suck. Many linux better that Vista, except Ubuntu. Windows 2008 is the Best windows according to me. 
Thx.

I hope that you are receiving some money for saying that nonsense words. 

Two articles I read from you where you just keep beating on Ubuntu, we all know is not perfect but at least it's free if you are disappointed please don't use it, stick your paid error free OS.

If somebody had to sell Ubuntu to their board, they wouldn't offer them a Gutsy Gibbon. 

They would recommend Ubuntu 7.10, supported by Canonical, run by Mark Shuttleworth, billionaire founder of Thawte.

There are plenty of sensible names to throw at people. Open source programmers prefer silly ones.

Check ubuntu.com and see whether they offer Gutsy Gibbon to your hypersensitive managers, or something sensible as Ubuntu 7.10.

They are called codenames. Might want to check up on them...

Like 'Whistler', 'Janus', 'Bobcat' and 'Harmony' !

(hint - not everybody calls operating systems by their internal code names)

Any competent IT manager will simply neglect to mention Ubuntu's fruity code-names and use the version number--if that at all. 

Does a CEO even care, or need to, about the version of a Linux distribution his company is running? Even if the CEO chooses to do some research on the website, the only thing the Ubuntu site shows its its version number and its features.

The official name is Ubuntu 7.10..
...Geeks refer to it as Gutsy Gibbon, but for business you will use the name Ubuntu 7.10 which sounds more serious than Windows 2007 in my opinion.

Geeks also refer to Windows XP as Whistler or Windows Vista as Longhorn - are those names more serious?

Come on! This article worrying that internal release names impact decisions in the boardroom is crazy. Look if I am the IT guy giving the preso, first rule of presentation is 'know thy audience'. So instead of 'Gutsy Gibon' or 'Dapper Drake' what is going to be on my presentation slide is 'Ubuntu Release 7.04 LTS Server'. No less, no more. 

No issues, I get the nod, and can proceed to the cashier's window to fund the project.

Names is something we are used to. How serious is the "windows" name? Windows hit big percentages at desktop use and then became the dominant OS.

Canonical know exactly what they are doing. The only one having an identity crisis here is probably you. Ubuntu is a superb OS and the dominant Linux OS. 

Windows... FFS...

IMAGINE YOU'RE HEAD OF IT at a large company. You're standing in front of the board explaining why you want to switch from Windows to Linux. You have all the technical benefits and cost savings up on the screen.

Everything's going swimmingly until you let slip that you want this bunch of middle-aged fogeys in sober suits to bet the farm on something called Andrew Thomas.

The Monday crew must have ran out of things upon which to rant about Vista. This article is garbage.

What about Longhorn. Does it sound better?

To those who raised to the bait of Andrew's latest rant there is only one thing to say:

"Do not feed the troll"

...everyone comes down (hard) on Mr. Thomas, but continually reads his articles.

Incredulus Odi - you say, and I quote, "Didn't we all agree some time ago that the drunken ramblings of Andrew Thomas would be sub-titled with his name on the front page just below the article title so we would not unexpectedly have to put up with his steaming piles landing ***PLOP*** in our lunchtime browsing?" NO, I did not agree to that as I'm sure many others also did not. You complain his name is not on the front page yet you clicked on the link to this article, saw his name, and STILL read the article. You can not complain to anyone about your "wasted" time reading this article when you knew beforehand who wrote it.

Not to pick on you exclusively Incredulus Odi. The others here that are against Mr. Thomas do the same thing. If they didn't, how would they know to comment?...or are their comments just a bunch of assumed BS about an article they never read?

I enjoyed this article. I see The Inquirer as two things. First, a good source of news and second, a good source of entertainment. The authors usually combine the two when writing an article, but for those times that the article isn't so good, I look at it solely as entertainment. I don't take it too seriously and perhaps some of you shouldn't either.

Mr Thomas youve sure got the Linux fanboys throwing thier toys out of the pram on this one, what an entertaining monday morning read.

And before you all flame me im gibboned up to the eyeballs :P

You are right, Ubuntu needs better release names. Red Hat Enterprise Linux, probably the most popular commercial Linux in the world, doesn't use funny names like "Gutsy Gibbon" or "Dapper Drake". Red Hat uses really professional names, like Zoot, Taroon, Nahant, and Tikanga. For that matter, Red Hat just sounds more professional than Ubuntu. And, of course, the old Red Hat releases used really professionally sounding names like shrike, psyche, and bitmore. Fedora uses professional names like zod, moonshine, and rawhide. Debian uses professional names like Etch, Sid, Sarge, Woody, and Potato. And don't forget OSX, which uses Leopard, Tiger, and Puma. Yep, Ubuntu definitely needs to follow their lead. (BTW, for those who missed it, I am being sarcastic.)

This has got to be the most retarded article I have ever. Use version numbers as previously stated.

an overall solution would be:
BUY MICROSOFT VISTA.

At wells fargo the head of IT is right under the CEO, this pitch would be to him from people under him, not FROM him to a board of people who know nothing about what's going on.

If there was a free open source OS that could open and install any Mac or Windows program or file with no difficulty or performance loss, they could call the thing Fluffy Bunny Butt and people would still convert to it in masses.

Sadly, Ubuntu doesn't work particularly well on less than 256Mb - but it _is_ free as long as you're able to able to download it without paying per megabyte.

By the same token, if you try installing Vista on whatever hardware you're currently using, that will undoubtedly fail spectacularly too - in fact, XP is barely usable on 256Mb.

ooooh!
BURN!

Andrew U do suck

Mageek, please fire this idiot

Man, what in the world are you? If there's a bot for online articles you would be one of them. You really should improve the quality and usefulness of your commentary on OSes before people automatically stop reading around the top of the page when they see "Andrew Thomas".

Finally someone pointed this stupidity out. Seriously, what the hell is up with the names?
Gutsy Gibbon?? Hedgehog? This sounds more like a joke.
"Yea, lets implement that Hedgehog operating system! Or what is it now, a Gutsy Gibbon? Yea, that sounds professional and serious." WTF!!
Ubuntu doesn't sound that good as well.

Someone at 'the name making department'' should be fired. I mean its a pretty good distro, but as far as the names go..

Hok, no one cares about your odd ramblings. Go to the support forum, this is NOT an ubuntu support forum. Btw there are tons of other distros, look for more polishlinux.org/linux/ here.


Anyhoo. They HAVE to come up with something serious in order to be taken seriously....

you know in America being a prostitute is only legal in vegas.

Ubuntu naming sux. I know those are just code names, but people rather use them, not the official names. Ubuntu is not most popular distro anymore and I think it should not have so much attention. I was using it for quite a long time and i was a little disappointed. Now I'm using Arch Linux (another bad name), but it's more geeky distro and it cant be compared.

Did you really use it ?
If not your comment is null.
If yes ,please tell us what do you think about it.
O yea and your beloved Vista was code named Longhorn which in boardroom presentation will give you the same kick in the butt in the way out.

Ditto the Ubuntu 7.10 sentiments.

Wow what an interesting article... Almost as good as "Ipods are a major leap backwards". *rolls eyes*

2/10 for the troll attempts Andrew.

Not a very spectacular follow-up to that ill-conceived anti-iPod tirade, Andrew. Your paper-thin argument in that article was duly torn to pieces in reader comments.

And now here is another highly opinionated and poorly delivered article which makes it painfully obvious - as others have pointed out - that you do not even bother to check your facts.

Besides, what was that about "safe, sensible decisions?" Since when is it the sensible thing to judge a product solely by its name? (Let's forget for a second that Gutsy Gibbon is just an internal codename.) Being the amateur non-web-journalist that I am I naively thought the sensible thing to do was to perform a detailed analysis of the product, weigh the advantages and disadvantages, compare it to the competition, and of course make sure that it meets your needs. But what so I know?

The article is very hard written, but it keeps things in it that are fact.

If you call the Version Ubuntu "Gutsy Gibbon" or Ubuntu 7.1 does not interest.

The names are not that "impact hammers" suchs as Windows Experience or Windows Vista. 
Even "Tiger" is better.

So if you ask, what is better in the new ubuntu Version than in the previous?

One thing that you can answer is "Compiz" is now activated on default. It uses Compiz Fusion as plugin manager and bases on redhats open xgl.

Do you think someone will understand you? I think no.

So how is this whole thing called in Vista? "Aero" and it looks ok (maybe not so cool like xgl). But you have one word, not complicated not funny, just "Aero".

But i aditionally agree with a another poster. I think the mission of ubuntu is not to get to the office? So i think this is the reason thy this article is a little missplaced, but i agree with the content.

Greetings

For an enterprise it would be rather surprising to take a decision about which OS to adopt pondering on the OS project name, when software compatibility and long term support are the /real/ concerns at that scale. I believe Ubuntu offers LTS releases for that, even though I can't tell which compatibility with Ubuntu tool vendors do offer. We're not talking about toothpaste or shampoos: funny names have really NO relevance here.

Dude, learn how to write in english before you come here with that load of cr*p.
If you would really want to use virtualization technology, you should consider acquiring VMWARE itself, or doing the damn ubuntu install on a HDD instead of using the live cd

Nonsense.. just stupid

Incredulus,

when last you heard people calling Vole's OS as Snowball, memphis etc?? or how often have you heard them? Not many times, right? Because they were not promoted that way. 

But i can see (probably u cant) many people still calling ubuntu's latest as Gutsy Gibbon or simply 'Gutsy'. Hardly refer to the version number.

People DO refer to the latest OS in its codename only. There are several people out there using this OS who do NOT know that these are 'codenames' and not 'actual names'! 

The 'codenames' are wat making people understand the Ubuntu versions. 

If you still insist that OS is known by version numbers then can you quickly tell what's the next version number is? But you can tell the next version is 'Hardy Heron', can't you?

Btw, dont use places like these to personally flame others. Only shows you are pr1ck. oops!

Windows Whistler too? Keep trying.

in som languades VISTA means MAYBE

Goodness! You're making a mountain out of a molehill. People buy stuff if they find it good enough to match their expectations. A lot of companies use Linux-based servers and terminals. Anyway, that's not the point. Gutsy Gibbon is not the OS' official name. It is Ubuntu 7.10, a fact that is mentioned nowhere in your article. Following your logic, companies should not use Apple's Mac OS X Panther, Jaguar, Tiger or Leopard because it isn't "professional" enough. This may be your opinion, but honestly, have you visited a company or met a professional who objects to this? You haven't mentioned a word of it in your article, so I'm guessing that you haven't. Ubuntu is not a daft name. It is an African word. In the world of business, if a product is good-enough, it sells.

AT adds: Just managed to get Ubuntu installed, eh? Or are you just a very slow reader?