Third Party Development on Ubuntu

Mac OS X has one of the most vibrant developer communities around and a testimony to this is how quickly the recently released Mac App Store reached the 10 Billion downloads mark and just to be clear thats this many downloads 10,000,000,000. These are the kinds of Apps developers are producing for OS X:

Ubuntu + Launchpad = Win

Launchpad is a Web application and website that allows users to develop and maintain software, particularly free software. Launchpad is developed and maintained by Canonical Ltd.

Launchpad hosts tens of thousands of software projects that are written for Ubuntu/Linux, hundreds of great applications can be found on Launchpad like Postler, Docky, Do, Cardapio, Steadyflow and Inkscape.

Sturuggles with the Software Centre

The first mock-up of the software centre that I did back in December did provoke a lot of critisism for the colours and gradients used as well as a little praise for being slightly more interesting that the current interface. The main complaints were that the interface was too cluttered, the colours clashed and the gradients were too much. Also the sidebar didn't match the Ambiance theme too well.

Its all about the Software

The Ubuntu Software Centre (USC) has been one of the defining features of the last few Ubuntu releases, the spotlight has recently shifted to the Unity desktop that Ubuntu will use from now on but that doesn't mean that the USC should be neglected.

Unity on the desktop

Unity will be on the Ubuntu desktop and it will come by default with a Global Menu, these are some of my ideas for Unity and hopefully some of the ideas will in one form or another get into the Unity interface.

 Unity Desktop Improvements -

Unity is an easy to navigate and attractive interface already but these are some of the changes that I think should be made to improve it further for the next release.

Widgets for Unity

One thing that the Gnome desktop (and derivatives based upon it) are missing in comparison to other desktop interfaces e.g KDE, Mac OS X and Windows is native widgets. This is something that I think Unity can address by including widgets by default in a style similar to the screen that appears when clicking on the Ubuntu icon in Unity.

Ubuntu Unity - the future of the free desktop?

It was recently announced at the UDS (Ubuntu Developers Summit) that the next version of the Ubuntu Operating System (the most popular free operating system in the world) would ship with the Unity interface by default.