I’ve used Evolution, the default email client in Ubuntu, for a couple of years to manage numerous mail accounts.  In general, I think it’s a great application.  But as with everything in life, there’s always room for improvement.  Below, I consider the most chronically frustrating and poorly designed aspects of Evolution, and how they could be fixed.

One of the most innovative features to find its way into the Linux kernel recently is support for master mode on several wireless chipsets.  Though there’s been little fanfare surrounding this development, it could soon be giving home users, in particular, another reason to celebrate Ubuntu.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer brought up some interesting points last week when he displayed data showing that Linux, according to Microsoft’s research, enjoys higher desktop market share than Apple.  This observation not only contradicts claims that Linux use remains stagnant, but has the potential to redefine the tired “Mac vs. PC” discourse that has obscured Microsoft’s real challenge–open source–for a decade.

An Ubuntu user published a piece on his blog last week about using .desktop files to deliver malware under Gnome and KDE.  He exposes a serious problem that serves to remind over-zealous free-software advocates that Linux, like everything else, has flaws.  But in a world where Linux market share remains negligible, do these flaws translate to a decline in the actual (rather than theoretical) security of a desktop Linux system?

Generally, a fresh installation of Ubuntu is pretty usable out-of-the-box.  But some aspects of the default configuration seem pretty silly to me.  Here are the ones I’d change first if I were in charge of Ubuntu.

File-system privileges

By default, almost every file on an Ubuntu system is readable by everyone.   This means that, under a non-privileged account, I can read system configuration files that normal users have no reason to view, and which might be exploited by a malicious user to gain root access to the system.

Google enjoys a pretty favorable image within the free-software community.  In some respects, it deserves this reputation, as it strongly supports many open-source projects.  On the other hand, Google is reluctant to open the code of most of its own software.  Given this hesitancy, can we trust the company to be always on Ubuntu’s side?

Google and freedom

Google does a lot of good for free software.  It has sponsored development of wine and contributes patches to Ubuntu.  Many of its employees use a modified version of Ubuntu on their company desktops.  And as one of Microsoft’s chief competitors, Google is an ally of Linux by the simple logic that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

There’s been some speculation (albeit with minimal supporting evidence) that Microsoft is crafting a ’software center’ for Windows that will resemble the package-management system Ubuntu users have known and loved for years.  While I don’t doubt the possibility that Microsoft might try to implement something like that, I strongly suspect that it will fail.  Here’s why.

In an interview with linuxdevices.com, Jim Zemlin of the Linux Foundation, a non-profit organization that promotes Linux, argues that Microsoft’s failure to anticipate the pace of hardware development over the long-term contributed substantially to the trouble that the company now finds itself in.  This is an interesting insight, and adds some precision to explanations of Linux’s penetration of the desktop operating-system market.

A Wisconsin woman recently bought a computer from Dell with Ubuntu pre-installed and was shocked and angry to discover that Windows and Microsoft Office were no where to be found on her new machine.  A few months ago, we were told returns of Linux netbooks were astonishingly high, due to confusion among consumers who expected their computers to ship with Windows.

In what represents the final victory in the long struggle between the free-software community and Broadcom, the developers of the open-source b43 wireless driver announced a few days ago that they’ve succeeded in reverse-engineering firmware for Broadcom-based cards.