Ten years ago, just ahead of a trip into space, Mark Shuttleworth took out an insurance policy on his reproductive future. “I put a couple swimmers on ice,” he says. “There was going to be a gamma ray source about a foot from my balls under my seat on the Soyuz. So I made a [...]

Free of charge, free of viruses and designed to outpace its rivals on low-end systems – Ubuntu has some obvious advantages.

Also with an eye to the future, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth on Tuesday spent an hour answering questions about what else is coming down the pike for Ubuntu in version 12.10 and beyond. As part of Ubuntu Open Week this week, Shuttleworth’s “Ask Mark” session offered a compelling glimpse at what’s to come.

Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux distribution is making a big push into the enterprise and cloud, where it will go head to head with long-time enterprise Linux incumbent Red Hat and its Enterprise Linux (RHEL) distribution. However Shuttleworth is not sure that Red Hat’s pricing structure will make the firm competitive.

Shuttleworth continued, “It’s absolutely true we have no interest in the core fundamentals of the Linux kernel, none whatsoever. The Linux kernel was flying before Ubuntu was founded, what was missing at the time was the commitment to the end user experience, the quality of the whole integration that Ubuntu essentially brought. I don’t think [...]

In less than two weeks, the latest version of Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux distribution, Ubuntu 12.04, Precise Pangolin, will be released. This new Ubuntu is looking good. How good? In a recent interview with Julie Bort, Canonical and Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth said, “We expect to ship close to 20 million PCs in the next year.”

Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth says … so what? He’s got big plans for Canonical and he’s trying to solve a bigger problem: can an open source company make money if it always gives its software away for free and only charges for other stuff?

In an e-mail, Shuttleworth explained to me that, “Stabilizing and maintaining the kernel is very important to Ubuntu. We have 25 or more kernel engineers at Canonical, focused on device enablement from ARM through to Xeon, and QA [Quality Assurance]. Our focus is on the user experience, making things ‘Just Work,’ and quality.

Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth wrote a blog post today pointing out that the popular Linux distribution has seen an increase in enterprise server adoption over the past year. He published a graph which indicates that Ubuntu deployments have surpassed those of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) among the top one million most popular websites.

Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth has found some encouraging statistics on Ubuntu adoption for public-facing Web sites powered by Ubuntu. Unfortunately, Shuttleworth has taken a single data point and tried to suggest that it’s an indicator that companies are choosing Ubuntu over Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for “enterprise computing.”

When you think of Ubuntu Linux, what do you think of? I would guess you think about the Linux desktop. While Ubuntu is certainly a big player—maybe the biggest—when it comes to the Linux desktop, Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu wants you to know that “A remarkable thing happened this year: [...]

Much has already been made of Canonical’s forthcoming Ubuntu Linux 12.04 LTS, not least by Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth himself, who has described it as the first time Ubuntu has taken the innovation lead over Macs and Windows.

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS is the fruition of Canonical’s work over the past three years to make free software “beautiful on the outside too–easy to use, visually pleasing, and exciting,” Shuttleworth wrote in a blog post on Monday.

Not content with having thrown out the “traditional” computer desktop in favour of the radically new Unity desktop, Mark Shuttleworth now hopes to transform the desktop even further. And this even before most Ubuntu users have got used to the last changes.

Open-sourcers are taking Ubuntu Linux in the direction of Google TV and Microsoft’s Xbox 360.A list of priorities for something called Ubuntu TV have been thrashed out by Ubuntu developers with the blessing of Mark Shuttleworth. The Ubuntu daddy has corralled the points here.

I probably don’t have to present Mark Shuttleworth… he was already a Debian developer when he became millionaire after having sold Thawte to Verisign in 1999. Then in 2002 he became the first African (and first Debian developer) in space.

Canonical is in a hurry. After the successful release of Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot, it’s time to plan for next, more important, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS release. Ubuntu 12.04 is codenamed “Precise Pangolin” and following are the important changes in the upcoming Ubuntu 12.04 release, as decided upon during recently concluded Ubuntu Developer Summit.

The Ubuntu Developer Summit 2011 is approaching and, as is customary, Mark Shuttleworth has laid out his objectives and themes for the fourth Ubuntu LTS (Long Term Support) release, Ubuntu 12.04, recently named Precise Pangolin.

Mark Shuttleworth: It’s a perennial pleasure to pick pertinent and/or pithy placeholder names for Ubuntu releases. At least, I like to think of them as pertinent and/or pithy. I’ve had diverse feedback, shall we say.

If you have watched the Linux community long enough, you know that every year is inevitably proclaimed to be the year where the Linux desktop will finally break through.

TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod caught up with Mark Shuttleworth, the man behind Ubuntu Linux, on Thursday and asked him about the future of Linux, patent battles in the software industry, his views on Apple and his future plans. This is a slightly edited transcript of that interview.

Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth is a big fan of Google Chrome, and says the browser could replace the standard Firefox in future versions of Ubuntu Linux.

To help us celebrate the 100th issue of Linux User & Developer, Ubuntu founder, Mark Shuttleworth, agreed to take the reins from our regular Ubuntu columnist (Dave Walker) and take us through why he believes it was the right decision for Ubuntu to embrace the future with Unity…

Shuttleworth opened by saying that the main point of Ubuntu 11.04 with Unity was “to bring the joys and freedoms and innovation and performance and security that have always been part of the Linux platform, to a consumer audience.”

Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical, Ubuntu’s parent company, who wrote, “We made some mistakes in our handling of the discussion around revenue share with the Banshee team.”

Mark Shuttleworth has been wining and dining tin man Michael Dell over his plans to put the Ubuntu Linux operating system onto the cloud. Dubbed the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC), it will be available from Dell this week as the Dell Canonical UEC Solution

Ubuntu founder and CEO Mark Shuttleworth reportedly said during a conference call last month that a move to daily updates would help the Linux distribution “keep pace with an increasingly complex software and platform ecosystem as Ubuntu goes on more devices and syncs up Android and iPhones,” the Register wrote.

Mark Shuttleworth recently told reporters that Ubuntu will likely be moving from its current six-month release schedule to daily updates. A step of this nature would help Ubuntu keep up with the rapidly changing and increasing complex software and hardware landscape.

It’s been almost a year since Mark Shuttleworth relinquished the reins at Canonical, stepping down as CEO to take a more hands-on approach in the company that is the backer of the Ubuntu Linux operating system. Judging by the various sharp turns Ubuntu has taken in the past year his steerage is starting to have [...]

Under his leadership, Ubuntu has created a unique position among the three most popular operating systems in the world. If I put these three (Ubuntu, Windows and Mac) operating systems side by side, I find Ubuntu, as a standalone OS, to have a clear edge over the other two.