No way canonical is going to release 10.04 LTS with no 3D support for
nvidia users. One way or another, it will work, even if that means
scrapping plymouth. Hopefully they will work out the details, and in all
likelihood they will, meaning it will ship with plymouth plus 3D support
for all the major video cards...

I hope that you are right. I have used K/Ubuntu since Feisty and tested each
version from alpha on. However, I am not so confident given some of their
recent decisions which are being widely criticized on the net. Those are the
inclusion of more Mono and scrapping the GIMP from the CD. Mono has been
consistently high in terms of people wanting to rid Ubuntu of it on
Brainstorm. Obviously they aren't listening to their own users on a platform
they invented for that purpose. It does not fill me with confidence that
they care about users, just about appearances. I feel that Canonical is
being driven by a small clique of developers and not the community at this
point.

The reason why that GIMP was drop is to fit all that data on one CD. You can
install GIMP through synaptic. It was lose GIMP or Open Office. OO use used more
than GIMP.

I realize the decision needed to be made, but disagree that it had to be
between OO or the GIMP. They could have removed Mono which would have
removed F-spot which has had a bug in it for 2 years that has not been
fixed. It overwrites EXIF metadata and makes it useless as an organizer
which is what it basically is and it is already a poor photo editor. It
also would scrap Tomboy but you could replace it with Gnote.

Removing Mono would also serve the purpose of reassuring enterprise users
that they do not have Microsoft looking over their shoulder and place
Canonical on equal footing with Novell without signing a protection pact
with Microsoft. Including the GIMP on CD would be helpful for people not on
broadband.

The strangest decision of all is to include PiTiVi. This came out of
nowhere. It is not even mentioned on Brainstorm the platform that Ubuntu
supposedly consults since they set it up for that purpose. This is probably
due to Shuttleworth's Mac envy since the Mac comes with a video editor. But
the Mac is distributed on a DVD and Ubuntu is not. Plus, PiTiVi is still
plagued with bugs and is not ready for such a high profile. It could come
back and hurt Ubuntu when users are dissatisfied. It would be better to wait
until it is up to the job and to wait until there is a demand.

I would love to see the download stats for PiTiVi vs. the GIMP.

They could also remove Mono and replace it with KDE base, then replace
F-spot with Digikam and Krita. That would resolve the Mono problem which
they pretend not to be a problem but it is consistently high in brainstorm
to remove Mono and almost half of Linux users do not want it on most polls
that I have seen. It is a polarizing issue that can be avoided. Digikam and
Krita together could replace F-spot and the GIMP. Digikam is a better photo
organizer and Krita is a decent photo editor.

I notice that Lucid has KDE base already so this is not really an addition.
Removing Mono would add even more room to make Ubuntu a better distribution.
You could add K3b, VLC and even wine. Who knows what they could add?

Well, I think everybody is right in a way. But the problem could have been
solved by making and placing several Ubuntu alternatives, either in CD or DVD
version and searchable lists of software that each of them contains. For
example, one containing Gimp and not open Office, another one containing Open
Office and not gimp, another one without Mono, Tomboy or F-Spot but containing
Gnote. I installed Gnote right now under Debian. It looks a lot like Tomboy.
I became an enthusiastic Debian user the day before yesterday. I installed it
on my older IDE hard disk and I think it will stay for quite a long time. I do
not like their flash player. Otherwise, it is fun. Especially, fun looking for
programs, trying to install them and searching on the web for info on installing
them. For some software it asks the install DVD. It is good to keep it around.
My last version of ubuntu will remain Hardy Heron but i will install the
newest OpenOffice on it (I painfully managed to do it under Debian).

I've got a machine set to dual boot XP Pro & 64 Studio which is Debian
based. So far, I'm liking it.

even as a photographer I support dropping GIMP from the install disk.
its really not a critical app. even when they get it up to speed it
will not be like installing an app on windows.

seeing as your a photographer what software do you use??

digikam/shofoto they support 16 bit colour depth and handle basic
adjustments and editing. I can manage B&W conversions fine as well. I
have GIMP on my system though it gets used more for graphics/logos than
photos and I have Picassa which I mean to play with some day. Krita is
the same though its not installed right now...try it some day.

I am not a CG artist so this works out fine for me. My wife has PS 4
because the student discounts made it attractive but that said she
plays with the toys more than i do.

she shoots digital Point and shoot with overrides by preference and I
shoot film and digital slr and occasionally a p&s because its the
camera I have at the time.

It occurs to me that I usually have the development version of gimp
installed rather than the stable from the repositories.

I use the GIMP and the Windows Canon software that came with my DSLR via
VirtualBox with XP. I also have a Windows Corel suite that I inherited from
someone and I use it because I am a Corel user from way back and am familiar
with it. I use a Wacom Bamboo tablet for some creative things. I also use
Inkscape for vector work. I shoot in RAW and like Rawstudio and Ufraw for
transferring RAW images to Jpeg. I use Digikam for managing my photo
collection and quick editing.