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.

As this site has noted, Canonical and Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth at OSCON called for Linux distributions to leapfrog the quality of Apple’s Mac OS X user experience. Here’s how the Linux industry can fulfill that vision.

Mark Shuttleworth, the man at the helm of Canonical and Ubuntu, went into greater detail last week about his thoughts on making future Ubuntu releases more user-focused. In the past, Shuttleworth has made no pretense that he feels Apple has, historically, offered a superior user experience.

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, recently wrote a post detailing Ubuntu and Canonical’s contributions to the upstream projects that make up their distributions. There he mentioned a challenge he recently issued to the Linux and free software community: build a Linux-based UI and computing experience on par with Apple’s within two years.

Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Canonical Ltd., which maintains the Ubuntu desktop Linux distribution said he doubts Microsoft would file suit against a free software developer unless the software giant wants "war."

Mark Shuttleworth joins us for a video podcast to discuss the upcoming 9.04 release, Ubuntu history, Linux on the desktop, impacts of cloud computing, Ayatana, the community and Ubuntu, Ubuntu and Canonical, Google Summer of Code, Ubunet, and much more!

The next version of Ubuntu Linux aims to support for multi-touch as part of an effort to expand the Linux desktop user experience, potentially bringing the sorts of interactivity popularized by devices like the Apple iPad to tablets and netbooks powered by Ubuntu. But the plan isn't to stop with Ubuntu alone, according to the distribution's founder, Mark Shuttleworth.

Canonical, the lead commercial sponsor behind the Ubuntu Linux project, has a new CEO this week. Jane Silber, the former chief operating officer of the company, has now officially taken the reins from Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth -- and is already talking up what's ahead for the popular Linux distribution.