Orange army
We know there’s a collective roll of the eyes from many regular readers when we run our (bi)-annual Ubuntu release covers. But there’s no escaping the sales boost every orange-soaked cover gains on the yearly 04 release schedule. It’s actually heartening to see so many people looking forward to, or at least welcoming, the release of a new version of Ubuntu by rushing out and snapping up our little magazine.
The truth is that Canonical, and its prime distro Ubuntu, remains a key driver for Linux both on the desktop and in the enterprise world. Red Hat and SUSE certainly have made their own mark in enterprise, but Canonical is seeing wins in the telephony industry, ‘cloud’ market and the emerging IoT world of devices from Pi-like boards to self-driving cars and robots, as we covered the LXF223 show report.
So in many ways it’s no shock to hear that Unity 8 has been killed, the dream of convergence dispelled and its CEO dismissed. It seems Mark Shuttleworth, self-appointed benevolent dictator for life, has dictated that Canonical and therefore Ubuntu needs to concentrate on projects that make it money. This must be devastating for the people involved and you can learn more in our news on page 6. But a return to a Gnome desktop (on top of Wayland) will be fantastic, a focus on projects that deliver can only benefit everyone and we’re looking forward with optimism to Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.
But orange distros aren’t the only Linux fruit, so this month we’re looking at the best KDE-based distros in Roundup, how to systematically benchmark any Linux distro, reporting on all the excitement at the UK’s Maker Faire 2017, and we review the Pi-sized Asus Tinker Board and dole out the usual top selection of mind-expanding tutorials. What a time to be alive!