There's a nice story on the BBC news site:

The public perception of open source software is changing fast, said Mark Shuttleworth, who leads distribution of the Ubuntu operating system (OS).

"There has been a sea change in the way people think of Linux, which is very healthy," he said.

"We have seen a real shift in the last six months from folks seeing open source as either a super-specialist thing for people who run data centres or as an enthusiast thing, to something which is energising a lot of the straight commercial PC industry," said Mr Shuttleworth.

Hardy comes out on Friday. Ladies and gentlemen, start your bittorent clients*.

*Because it's easier on the servers than a metric assload of HTTP downloads.

Jorge Castro just sent me a link to this story from El Reg. From TFA:

"The desktop market suffers from having one dominant vendor, and some people still perceive that today's Linux desktops simply don't provide a practical alternative."

So now you know. Hardy comes out next week, by the way, so feel free to go and download an RC ISO and help with the testing :).

Incidentally, in the comments to that article was this:

"Linux is intolerant of users who do not hold a BSc in Computing and who dislike hacking wads of configuration files by hand; and we don't care because we are elitist arses."

The above is true for all versions of Linux (including Ubuntu). It is a real shame that the Linux world doesn't seem to want to create anything which can actually be used by normal end-users.

I really, really wish that this opinion wasn't as pervasive as it so obviously is. So here's a question for you: what can we, the Linux users and developers of the world, do to help make it more accessible for John and Jane Q. User? What is it that you need the most?

Why not go and grab a copy of the Hardy Live CD when it comes out (or use the release candidate if you prefer) and bung it in your PC. You can reboot into Ubuntu without making any changes to your computer and you can give it a road test (bear in mind that running from a CD doesn't make it the fastest thing in the world). If you like it, why not use Wubi to install it through Windows so that you don't have to worry about things like managing your bootloader (which you should never have to worry about unless you want to)?

Go on, give it a shot. You've nothing to lose and lots to gain.

[Edit]

It's been pointed out to me that this isn't really news, since RedHat have never really taken the desktop all that seriously. Also, they're still apparently offering some desktop distributions, though I haven't yet read up on the what and whys of that.

It's also been pointed out that there are a number of comments in RedHat's press release that are pretty clear swipes at Ubuntu, which is a shame but not unexpected.

I don't do memes as a rule, but this one's been doing the rounds on Planet Ubuntu, so I thought I'd give it a shot, too.

So, the results of the query are:

graham@bloodnok: ~$  history|awk '{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] " "}}'|sort -rn|head
93 bzr
66 python2.4
46 sudo
44 cd
39 grep
22 make
19 ls
18 vim
11 tail
11 lpvim

So now you know.

I shouldn't be writing this now; I should be packing for Edinburgh, where I'm going to be going for the weekend. But I felt that it was my duty as a Canonical employee and moreover as an Ubuntu user to state the following:

Hardy rocks!

Now, okay, it's still in beta, which by necessity means that there are bugs to be worked out. So far I haven't come across anything major. Indeed, as I write this I can't think of anything that's happened that has really bugged me at all. The only thing that springs to mind is the occasional crashing, for no apparent reason, of the gnome-panel. It's irritating, but nothing to make me rend my garments and stamp my feet.

If I were forced to use a single word to describe Hardy it would be: slick. It runs fast, even on my ageing desktop machine, even with Compiz's desktop effects turned up to the max. It's slick as a greased - I was going to say weasel but I really should say heron, I suppose. The theme - if you don't like brown then change the fucking colour scheme and stop whining -  looks excellent; so much so that I've dropped my hitherto-favoured UbuntuStudio default dark theme. I adore the default Hardy wallpaper. I think, moreover, that it should be made into a t-shirt (and where t-shirts are concerned I know what would make a good one - you'll find out why I say this some time in May, I think). Anyone who can bring me a t-shirt designed from the wallpaper before I create one myself will get a prize (I have no idea what form this will take).

So consider this a ringing endorsement for the Hardy Heron, with the caveat that it's still in beta. Hopefully it will get better from here-on in. There were one or two places (Compiz, notably) in which Gutsy got worse for me once beta ended (i.e. it stopped working in those regards until I reinstalled).

As an aside, Neil Gaiman just posted this, which tickled me:

As a side note, running Windows Vista on the Panasonic w7 is making me really nostalgic for 1986. Whoever thought I'd get to type things then stare at a blank screen for a bit and one-by-one watch the letters appear? Cory and Mike's "Why Don't You Run Linux?" talks are staring to seem much more sensible.

Go towards the light, Neil...

Oh, and yes, I do know that I'm well behind with posting my three-hundred and sixty-odd days photos. I doubt I'll get chance to get any uploaded before I go away, but I promise I'll catch up when I come back. Hopefully Edinburgh will provide lots of photo-fodder, even if it is, as forecast, more than a bit damp. We shall see.

Anyway, in the meantime, go out, get Hardy, install it, enjoy. And if you find problems with it, report them at Launchpad so that the distro team can sort it out in time for release. You have been told.

I'm - to use an American expression - jonesing to install Ubuntu 8.04 (The Hardy Heron) Beta, which has just been released (massive props to the distro team for their typically herculean effort). And this time it's going to be a full install, not an upgrade.

See, when I upgraded to Gutsy during its Beta phase last September / October everything went pretty smoothly but quickly went down hill. Six months of trying to diagnose why Compiz won't work on my desktop machine when it used to work perfectly (my graphics card hasn't been blacklisted or anything, it just stopped and has never started again) has led me to believe that some of the hacks that I had to put in place to get everything to play nice under Feisty all that time ago had survived through the upgrade and had made Gutsy more than a bit twitchy.

So this time around I'm going to do a full install, which'll let me do other things that I've been after doing for a while, like swapping some partitions around to give me more space in /home and also encrypting them whilst I'm at it, as I've already done on my laptop. Hurrah.

But of course, it's not that simple. I'm so terribly tempted to do it now, download the Ubuntu Studio Beta ISO (I prefer Studio to plain Ubuntu because I make a lot of use of the audio editing goodies) and install tonight, but I do actually need a machine to work on next week, it being Launchpad release week and therefore a week in which I need to be available at all times.

However, the week after next is a less urgent week, so I might do some instally goodness then. Expect a report on the Heron shortly afterwards.