Will Ubuntu be sexier than MacOS X?

Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical, has said: “The great task in front of us over the next two years is to lift the experience of the Linux desktop from something that is stable and robust and not so pretty, into something that is art. Can we not only emulate, but can we blow right past Apple?”.

He added: “I see this [need] for free software – beautiful, elegant software. We have to invest in making the desktop beautiful and useful. The iPhone, for instance, is effectively a pure software experience”.

Being a Windows/MacOS user, and a close watcher of the Ubuntu distribution (which will replace Windows sometimes in the future, although I will probably keep on using XP as long as I can, just because I’m lazy), I saw this objective getting closer and closer with every new release of Ubuntu.

Today, MacOS X is the best flavour of Linux in terms of usability. Therefore, any Linux distribution should be able to emulate the “look and feel” of MacOS X with a few tweaks and a better integration with hardware platforms.

This, in my opinion, is the real challenge, as a Linux distribution must be compatible with most personal computers while MacOS X has been developed for a specific hardware. The technology, though, should be capable of solving this problem.

Technorati Tags:
apple, innovation, iphone, macos x, open source, linux