The life of South African Mark Shuttleworth has been a kind of geek dream: found and sell Internet company for $500+ million in mid-20s; spend $20 million to become the second space tourist; and create a GNU/Linux distribution with a cool name that has become the most popular on the desktop.

Here, he talks to Glyn Moody about Ubuntu's new focus on the server side, why Ubuntu could switch from GNOME to KDE, and what happens to Ubuntu and its commercial arm, Canonical, if Shuttleworth were to fall out of a spaceship.

Do you worry that GNOME is becoming too involved and enmeshed with Microsoft technologies? If the patent problem with GNOME becomes too great, might you switch to KDE one day?

I think it's very healthy that we have multiple desktop platforms, and that they're both committed to free software and sources of innovation and inspiration and competition. We picked GNOME mostly because of its approach to the release cycle and because it had a real strong commitment back in 2004 to usability.

Since then, KDE has also embraced the idea of usability as a primary driver, and they've done some really interesting things on the technology front. I keep a level of awareness of KDE, and I run KDE at home just to make sure I have a sense of where it's going and how it is doing. I like the rivalry. We might [switch]; it's good to have that option.

With regard to GNOME and Microsoft, I'm not concerned. My view is that to win, you have to have your own vision.

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