Ubuntu App Showdown: Final Results

It’s been three months since the commencement of the Ubuntu App Showdown, and the results are finally in. Let’s recap.

About the Ubuntu App Showdown

The Ubuntu App Showdown was a three-week event started on June 18 and ending on July 9. The event was sponsored by System76 and Qt. Developers had three weeks to develop an application (or two) that would be evaluated based on the following review criteria:

• Novelty: The application had to be developed by an individual or team and had to be composed of entirely original, open source code.
• Appearance: The application should have been developed with design in mind.
• Stability: The application should run well and smoothly, without crashes or obvious bugs.
• Platform integration: The application should integrate with Unity, utilizing notifications, indicators, progress badges, etc., where needed.
• Innovation: The application should provide some functionality not previously available in Ubuntu.
• Scratches an itch: The application should be useful and fill a gap that Ubuntu had been missing.

Personal Submission: MenuLibre

If you’re tired of hearing about my fancy menu editing application, you can skip on down to the results. Otherwise, how about one more round?

I created MenuLibre after being disappointed by Alacarte’s bugginess and general lack of appeal. I wanted something lightweight and good-looking that would function well in this menu-free future we’re entering with Unity and Gnome Shell. More importantly, I wanted to provide an alternative to Alacarte (for its GNOME dependencies) and LXMenuEditor (for its Java dependencies) for the lightweight desktop environments XFCE and LXDE.

MenuLibre works well, looks good, and is lightweight, both in resource usage and dependencies. Check it out over at the home page.

Results from the Judging Panel

The original results were announced on August 7th; see my original post here.

1. First Place went to the stylish Google Reader desktop application LightRead. This lucky winner received a System76 Gazelle Professional laptop and a Nokia N9 phone.
2. Second Place went to the webapp integrating application Fogger. The Fogger developer (who was also very lucky) received a System76 Lemur Ultra laptop and a Nokia N9 phone.
3. Third Place went to the puzzle game Picsaw. This winner made off with a shiny new Nokia N9 phone.

These results were only the beginning, with the Community Vote starting on August 15th and running for two weeks. And the winners of the community vote are…

Results from the Community Vote

The community vote consisted of an (extensive) online survey where anyone in the community could vote for their favorite application. Each Community Vote winner would receive their very own Nokia N9 phone. The winners have been announced.

1st Place: Ridual

Ridual is a brand new, dual-pane file manager.

2nd Place: OrthCal

OrthCal is an indicator application that helps you keep up with the Eastern Orthodox feasts.

3rd Place: Cuttlefish

In my opinion, Cuttlefish is really the star of the Ubuntu App Showdown. It enables your computer to perform certain actions (opening/closing applications, disabling Bluetooth, muting your computer) based on a variety of stimuli. It works well and offers an easy-to-use interface and a tutorial video on YouTube.

More to Come

There’s a lot of good things that have come from the Ubuntu App Showdown. We’ve added over 100 applications in a short amount of time, many of great quality. The approval process is being reimagined and improved based on the large amount of feedback received. And perhaps most importantly, thanks to the tremendous success of the first App Showdown, we can expect more in the future! So, if you’ve got an idea for another incredible application, but didn’t get a chance to introduce it in this time around, don’t despair. 😉

What are your thoughts on the Ubuntu App Showdown? Do you think it was a big success, or somewhat of a letdown? Were you secretly rooting for MenuLibre? Let me know in the comments!