Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth has big dreams for Linux. That shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who's been following the progress of Ubuntu, which releases a major update every six months and keeps getting more and more user friendly. But user friendly is just the beginning. Shuttleworth wants Linux to be prettier too.

Mark Shuttleworth founder of Ubuntu and his CTO Matt Zimmerman held a press conference this AM to pre-announce the launch of Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope, which will become available this Thursday April 23rd. Aside from the product details on the upcoming release, Shuttleworth provided insight into what he sees the Oracle buy of Sun means to Ubuntu, and the wider open source ecosystem itself.

MAKE desktop Linux more attractive than Mac OS X. That was the challenge that Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth issued to open source developers in July 2008. Now, almost two years later, Shuttleworth seems ready to put his money where his mouth is.

Last summer, Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of the Ubuntu distribution and of Canonical, Ubuntu's commercial sponsor, challenged the free and open source software (FOSS) to deliver a desktop experience superior to Apple's.

Last summer, Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of the Ubuntu distribution and of Canonical, Ubuntu's commercial sponsor, challenged the free and open source software (FOSS) to deliver a desktop experience superior to Apple's.

Ubuntu founder and IT entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth tells Computing SA that picking open source software was not only good for South Africa but also important for the rest of the African continent.

Another conference, another sexist comment in a keynote speech by a leader in the open source community. And September was going so well!

I just sent the following to Mark Shuttleworth, founder and leader of the Ubuntu Linux project. [...]

"I was poor. I was desperate. I wanted to be on this bandwagon of this Internet thing, and I wanted to find a business that wouldn't require large amounts of bandwidth or large amounts of capital. The key was Linux. It was Linux that let me connect to the Net so I could start soaking up this knowledge," said Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu Linux.

In addition to Ubuntu he also established HBD Venture Capital and is involved with several other free software projects. Earlier today we had spoke with Mark Shuttleworth to discuss the latest happenings in the Ubuntu world including Dell shipping Ubuntu PCs, getting open-source drivers from hardware vendors, and what is coming down the road for Ubuntu.