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Jan. 20, 2010

Recently, Canonical has been asking its users what new, proprietary software they'd like to see as optional software in Ubuntu-Linux.

Canonical is the company behind the distribution and support of Ubuntu, a popular Linux flavor for computer desktops and notebooks.

Over the past three years, Ubuntu has already included proprietary software in the form of hardware drivers. Ubuntu developers have since decided to place binary ATI and Nvidia graphic card drivers in its Linux distribution because, a rather large proportion of people using Ubuntu need a non-Free driver for reasonable performance from their graphics card, wireless card, or modem, because there is no Free driver available, they had little choice in the matter.

At any rate, when it comes to end-user software, Ubuntu is generally "holding the line" against including proprietary software in their distribution. For example, you won't find Adobe Flash 10.x in Ubuntu, even though it's commonly included in other popular Linux distributions such as Red Hat, CentOS and Debian.

Other programs, such as Google Picasa and Skype, are also already available for certain Linux distributions, but are purely proprietary. You can also write in your own 'must-have' proprietary program, if that is what you want.

Indeed, there are several other distributions, such as Mint, which are perhaps best known for including proprietary programs that Ubuntu has refused to incorporate into the distribution. Until now. Then again, Mint is still rather new and an 'unproven' commodity to some, but this will probably change this year.

In a blog posting by Matthew Helmke, a member of the Ubuntu Forum Council, Helmke wrote, "We are trying to gather industry preferences for the apps that users would like to see in upcoming versions of Ubuntu. While we all believe in the power of open source applications, we are also very keen that users should get to choose the software they want to use. There are some great apps that aren't yet available to Ubuntu users and Canonical would certainly like to know the priority that users would like to see them."

But Ubuntu is hedging its bets, nevertheless. Helmke carefully spells out that "This is not about Linux applications to be included by default, but merely things that we may attempt to make more easily available for Ubuntu users to install for themselves from official source code repositories."

So for now the question is, will Ubuntu make some of these programs available to its users? Some think they will. While there are many people who still insist on free software or no software at all on their PCs and laptops, most desktop Linux users seem to have accepted using some kind of proprietary programs-they'd just rather not if they had a choice.

Just what are these applications that Canonical is considering to make available as options to Ubuntu users you might ask? Well you could in fact find an odd collection of some programs. Some are quite popular, such as Pandora, the online music streaming service, while others, such as Spotify, are rather unknown.

For example, you might find it interesting that some programs were on the wish list of some Windows and Mac users, such as the popular Adobe Photoshop and Apple iTunes, which have never been available natively on Linux.

And while it is still possible to run Adobe Photoshop and Apple iTunes on Linux with Wine or its commercial big brothers, CodeWeaver's CrossOver Games and CrossOver Linux, the makers of these wish list programs have never shown any serious interest in porting them to Linux, let alone Ubuntu.

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Source: Canonical.

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