Last month on the Phoronix Forums it was made known that Phoronix.com would be hosting an interview with Mark Shuttleworth for the upcoming Ubuntu Feisty Fawn release. The opportunity was also presented to readers that if they had a legitimate question for Mark, we would be willing to ask it. Well, listed below are the questions that made the cut along with some of our own questions. Mark's answers to these questions (along with a few other questions) will be published on Phoronix.com by mid-March.

Mark Shuttleworth - 2007 Feisty Fawn Interview Questions (Phoronix)

While Thawte was built upon Linux and open-source software, where had you gotten your start in the Linux world?

Do you ever see yourself going back into space? Do you see space tourism expanding and becoming possible for middle-class civilians in our life time where one could stay in space for a number of days?

Out of all of your achievements up to this point, what would you consider to be the most rewarding and why?

What advice do you have for up and coming entreprenuers? Having succesfully sold Thawte and being the founder of HBD Venture Capital, what are some of the suggestions that you have for those living in this technology era.

In 2005 you invested in ImpiLinux, which is based upon Ubuntu, but to this point it doesn't seem to receive much attention outside of Africa and is not nearly as popular as Ubuntu. How do you see ImpiLinux progressing as a Linux distribution, and do you see it continuing to cater to the private sector?

Much attention has been drawn into Feisty Fawn for the "desktop eye-candy", but what are some of the other areas where 7.04 (and future Ubuntu releases) will see improvements? With some users criticizing Ubuntu/Kubuntu as being "sluggish" and slower than other distributions, is anything being done to improve the performance on newer hardware?

Last year on your blog you had welcomed any OpenSuSE developers to join the Ubuntu community after Microsoft and Novell had formed what basically is a pact. Have any OpenSuSE developers accepted your invitation, and has this Novell deal effected Ubuntu development in any major way?

Many people believe the success of Ubuntu is dependent upon you due to your technical and financial wealth. Do you believe Ubuntu would be where it is at today if it were not for your fame and fortune?

With a majority of retail games currently using Microsoft's DirectX, the reason many Windows users do not use Linux is simply due to the lack of available games. Do you see more game studios adopting OpenGL or how do you see Linux gaming evolving?

Developers are working on making Ubuntu LSB 3 (Linux Standards Base) compliant, but will this be completed in time for 7.04 Feisty Fawn? Otherwise when do you believe that Ubuntu will be LSB 3 compliant.

How have any discussions been going with tier-one manufacturers (such as Hewlett-Packard, Dell, or Lenovo) with getting Ubuntu as a stock option for their systems? If you're able to say, what mainstream manufacturers have approached Canonical about distributing Ubuntu on their desktops or laptops?

Among the new Ubuntu features expected for Feisty Fawn is network roaming improvements, fail-safe X, Composite being enabled by default, easy codec installation, and binary display drivers being bundled with the distribution. If you had to select one "killer feature" for Feisty Fawn, what would it be and why?

While Ubuntu 7.04 will educate the users about alternatives to binary drivers, Ubuntu has been criticized for intending to include (NVIDIA and ATI) binary display drivers in this upcoming release. Do you have any response to this criticism, or if Ubuntu has been lobbying to any manufacturers for more open specifications?

If there was a single point that you could express to new Linux users when deciding whether to use Ubuntu or one of the popular alternatives such as OpenSuSE or Fedora, what would it be?

It took 74 days for Fedora Core 6 to reach one million downloads. Do you have any estimates on how many downloads Feisty Fawn will see? Or perhaps any download statistics from past Ubuntu releases?

gNewSense started last year as a 100% free software distribution based upon Ubuntu. Among the changes are removinng non-free firmware and non-free software repositories. What do you think of gNewSense and the other Ubuntu derivatives?

The GNOME project has an ambitious goal to acheive 10% of the global desktop market by year 2010. Where do you see Ubuntu and the Linux desktop in general evolving through this time?

There are various initiatives for creating hardware with open specifications or lobbying manufacturers to provide open-source drivers and provide the public with specifications to their hardware. Do you have any thoughts to share on such projects as the Open-Graphics Project or Nouveau?

Last year you became the first patron of KDE. Have you considered becoming a patron or philanthropoist for GNOME?

If you don't mind, many readers would be interested in knowing what you're running on your desktop. Are you running Ubuntu or is it one of the derivatives such as Kubuntu or Xubuntu? Furthermore, is it updated daily against Feisty Fawn or what version are you running? Similarly, for the hardware folks, what sort of hardware are you using for your personal or work machines?

I wanna know why Mark and Ubuntu (Canonical) team is running so fast with the ubuntu releases??

I mean releasing a new ver for every 6 months...Well how about making it a year or so and give alot of new and amazing features with the new ver for the users, such that users will be very happy to see and enjoy the new things and then get ready for the new stuffs in the next ver in the next year.