Ubuntu has always been the big brother of the Linux initiative to be on consumer desktops. It has continually innovated how we perceive Linux and its seemingly cryptic roots in the operating system world and has gained mainstream acceptance with Dell laptops. With all of this positive press their is still a lot of catching up to do to compete with Apple and Microsoft. In a move to make using multiple computes a more unifying experience Ubuntu has released Ubuntu One.
Ubuntu One is a lot like Live Mesh from Microsoft, which synchronizes your data across multiple computers and lets you access it from any windows based machine. While this is a cool idea the windows live mesh service is restriced to windows based machines and is “truly” accessibly from IE (go figure). While Ubuntu One will work through any standards compliant browser, it will not work with any other OS, rather you can only view and download files through the online interface. With a one percent market share in the OS market it really makes me wonder what general consumer is going to actually use it.
There are two plans available for Ubuntu One, the free version for two gis of free storage or ten dollars for ten gigs of storage. Personally I agree with the file storage size for the free subscription, there needs to be more storage for the paid plan if they really want to connect all the data between Ubuntu computers.
I think it is a cool idea, really I do, but the practicallity of it isn’t there. Ubuntu has to small of a market share to make this feature even remotely useful and they should really think about making deals with hardware manuafactures to get correct and working drivers.
