The professional Ubuntu (Intro)

When I came the first time to UbuntuStudio.org I promised myself the next time I'll be upgrading my Ubuntu I will install this professional flavour of the "human distro".
So, when the Feisty Fawn was born I decided to move from classical Ubuntu to Ubuntu Studio.
Currently the first screenshot (click to see the full size version) you see on the left is the result of some customizations.


Some lines back I highlighted the word "professional"; I did so to focus your attention on an aspect of Ubuntu that is often guiltily omitted: Ubuntu lacks an "I-don't-know-what" that will make it truly professional.
I know, I know, Ubuntu has several "pro-level" apps, offers a highly usable and friendly desktop, is becoming more mature every day, is already a competitive alternative to MS Windows, but I think it really misses a "behavior" that puts it on the same level as Mac OS X is.
No, I'm not jocking, I really do mean that with some adjustments Ubuntu could be a competitive alternative even for those people that every day need a stable, simple, homogeneous and "serious" working environment (talking about you, OS X).

The point in this post is that we can't wait to Ubuntu to become this way, so we can go two different ways:

1. Help Ubuntu change and become more professional (I absolutely do not mean to make it more OS X like): Launchpad is supposed to be the center of the community, so manifest there your requests for a better Ubuntu and help developers with bugs (the least you can do is help who provides you such a good system with such a little expense (zero, nada, nothing, zéro, null, nil, nothing ...))
2. Try to customize yourself Ubuntu or any derivative distro, like I did and like we are going to explore in this post

Notice the two preceding points are complimentary: I really encourage you to follow both of them!

Before we develop the central topic of the post I want you to acknowledge the human distro to be a heavy modular one: Linux is modular to a near-to-the-maximum extent and Synaptic and the system of packages and meta-packages that constitute Ubuntu is a perfect and user-friendly complement to this modularity.

We were speaking of "professionalism", why turning to "being modular"?
Because I think the two things are strictly correlated when it comes to operating systems.
So I'll explain how to achieve professionalism through being modular.

Link to the first article >>