Clement Lefebvre Interview

Interview with Clement Lefebvre

“I would like to thank Clement Lefebvre for his time and for the opportunity for this interview.  

An with that lets get on with the show.”
     - Amigaman2

“My name is Clement Lefebvre, I'm the founder and leader of the Linux Mint distribution. I'm 30 years old, French, living in Ireland, married with 2 children. I'm currently working for a telecommunication company as a Java developer.”

“I was first introduced to Unix at university. I learnt basic system administration, unix shell scripting, shared memory and C development. Hacking other people's XWindow sessions was fun, but it was at home I really enjoyed it the most. Some people got their hands on some Slackware floppies (distributed by Walnut Creek if I remember well) and so Linux ended up on my home PC. It's been both my main operating system and my favorite toy since 1996. I'm all about motivation so from the moment I liked it I started to learn it fast.”

“I was writing reviews and articles about Linux and I needed a domain name to publish them. So the name came first. Eventually after reviewing all major distributions for a little while and because I kind of knew how things worked under the hood I decided to give it a try, just for fun. It started as an experiment at first. With Linux Mint 2.2 Bianca things really started to get bigger and after receiving a lot of feedback on the previous releases I decided to invest time in developing the desktop further and in making a comfortable desktop OS for home users.”

“As every distribution out there we come with different goals, different ideas and different priorities. We also work differently and we eventually please a different audience. In brief, we bring choice, yet another flavour of Linux, yet another desktop. So far we've been very successful at pleasing our users and we've never tried to compare ourselves to other distributions or to Ubuntu in particular. We just do what we think is right, we continuously try to improve the quality of our desktop and to achieve this we push innovations and new developments a lot.”

“There hasn't been any communication between Canonical and Linux Mint so far. Ubuntu is our biggest upstream component so what they do means a lot to us but we haven't been working together on anything yet.”

We keep an eye on other distributions and when we see something we like we integrate it in ours. I don't personally see it as a competition but as an opportunity to learn from others and to further enhance what we're focused on: our own desktop. All the innovations we produced and the development we've done is open-source and for everyone to share and re-use. I'm not interested in comparing Linux Mint to say Ultimate Edition, if I see something in UE I think would benefit Mint, then I will try to integrate it, if the UE developers likewise think they could benefit from adding our tools to their desktop then they should do so and we'd encourage them to?”

“Mint helps users (both novice users and experimented ones) in achieving complicated use-cases in a trivial way. We like to simplify tasks that people need on a daily basis. For instance, you don't need to know about FTP or services like RapidShare if all you want to do is send a large file to a friend of yours. You just right-click the file and select "upload", and then you get an URL to it. Same goes with installing software, a package manager is nice if you want to go in the details, but when it comes to applications themselves (not "packages") then it should be trivial for you to browse, search, install and uninstall. For this we've got a Software Manager which shows the most popular applications, with screenshots, user ratings..etc. You can also remove any application directly from the menu, and in the upcoming Linux Mint 7, you'll also be able to install software directly from the menu, without the need to launch either the Software or the Package Manager.”

“Well let's put it that way: choice is good. For people who don't like to choose out there nature does things well and we've got something called "buzz". The ideal scenario is for the market to provide as many choices as possible but to stress a few of them and make them the de facto standards. This way, everyone's happy.. people who want to choose, and people who don't want to give choice any time. Let me take an example. I recently looked for a nicer phone and it took me 2 weeks to finally come with what I wanted to buy. I was delighted with the choices I had, I even used OpenOffice.org Calc to help me compare. In the end I went for a T-Mobile G1 because I know I'll enjoy playing with the Android SDK. In the meantime, Michael, our sysadmin, bought an iPhone 3G. The only reason it took him some time was that he had to gather the money for it. He didn't look at the alternatives, he wasn't interested in the Omnia, in the Touch Pro or the Touch HD... he justed wanted "a cool phone" and he had no time to waste on deciding which one it was going to be. So again, everyone's happy. I got the one that truly fits me, and Michael got something cool without wasting any time. When it comes to operating systems it's the same. If you're not into choosing your own OS you probably don't want to run Linux. For people who don't want to choose, Windows is there on their computer, already installed. Don't get me wrong here, we're not the victims of some machiavelic historical fraud. People get the market they deserve, and that market is optimized at getting the best out of them and their demands. Then of course, there are people who don't want Windows but don't like to choose either... and for them there's Mac OS and to a lesser extent there's Ubuntu. So that's already 3 popular alternatives with a lot of "buzz" for people who don't want to spend time looking at what's out there. For others, there are hundreds more, most of them free of cost and libre, downloadable and runnable as liveCDs. What more could we want? Plenty of choice for enthusiasts, and clear and obvious de facto standards for others. How can this be bad?"

"Another thing I'd like to stress is: Why would you worry more about other people running the same OS as you than that particular OS satisfying your particular needs? The more mainstream an OS becomes the more compromises it will have to make, and ultimately the less it will fit you in particular."

”

“We're not trying to improve Ubuntu, we're trying to make a nice and elegant desktop operating system. Ubuntu isn't the goal, it's one component among many we're using to achieve that goal. We chose the Ubuntu package base for the same reasons we chose Gnome or OpenOffice, because it was the best option for us to achieve what we wanted to do. We keep an eye on other alternatives too. We maintain a KDE edition for instance and we showcased a Debian-based edition (as an Alpha release, just to give it a try)”.

“Everything we do is open-source and we encourage other distributions to port, fork, or install our technology. Our tools are also fully compatible with Debian based distributions and they should work on these without any changes. Ideally we'd like our innovations to find their way upstream, not in Ubuntu, but in Gnome and in Debian.”

“Many small companies have been in contact with us about this. Nothing big has been done yet and we haven't signed any partnership with anyone. Linux Mint is freely redistributable and I guess you can find it here and there bundled with hardware.”

“No. We're doing fine the way we are. If that comes up and if Ubuntu wanted to collaborate with us or "take up" our project, we'd obviously talk about it and consider it but it's highly unlikely we'd merge.”

“I want it to grow and to reach non-Linux users. Our main challenge is to control that growth and to adapt our ways of working so that we stay in touch with our community. Our success is for the most part due to the fact that we listened to their feedback. We've got a great desktop already and a lot of ideas to further improve it. The challenge for us is to make sure we work efficiently, that we focus on our goals and that we don't get too far away from our users.”

“I would be delighted to.”

“Media coverage, hardware-bundles. For people who use computers as appliances and aren't interested in IT, Linux is actually one of the best options. It doesn't require any maintenance, you don't need to learn how to protect yourself from spyware, viruses, how to clean your registry or defrag your hard-drive...etc. There are a lot of people out there who just want to access their email, do a little bit of office work and browse the Web. For them, many distros would more suitable than Microsoft Windows. If we manage to get out there on the market, pre-bundled with hardware so that people going to Wallmart or to Dell.com simply have an option to get a Linux box, the same way they have an option to go for a "Mac" nowadays.. then we'll win the market. When it comes to suitability I'm confident Linux will have more potential than Windows itself. So it's only a matter of getting people's attention and letting the snowball effect do its job :) .”

How do you make it easy for new users?

“Mint comes as a liveCD so you can try it without installing it. It also comes with a Windows installer so you can even install it on your "C:\" drive (sadly that denomination makes sense to a lot of people) without modifying your partitions. It can access your files, share them on the network, it comes with most of what you want working out of the box (Office suite, web browser, email, chat, messenger, flash, pdf, java..etc), it's fast (compared to Windows anyway), it's stable, and it's probably among the easiest operating systems to use .”

Why do you have two update managers one distro centric an the other generic?

“We have one update manager: mintUpdate. And then there's Synaptic, the package manager, which is also able to upgrade the system (although we do not recommend it since Synaptic isn't aware of regressions and assumes all updates are safe) .”