Earlier today, ZaReason sent me a group email offering back-to-school specials on Ubuntu-based computers. I receive similar special offers from System 76 from time to time. Going forward, I hope Canonical finds a way to turn up the volume on these third-party Ubuntu system promotions. Here’s why. And here’s how.

Consider the situation in the traditional PC market. Each Sunday when I open the newspaper, I typically see an insert for the latest Dell PCs and notebooks running Windows 7. When I check my inbox, Lenovo and Hewlett-Packard are sending me more special offers for Windows 7 systems. And of course, most of the ads mention Intel.

In most of the cases, Intel helps to fund those PC advertisements. I wonder:

• Can Canonical and Ubuntu OEMs secure some co-marketing dollars from Intel?
• Or can Canonical somehow set up a fund that helps Ubuntu OEMs to promote their respective PC brands?

Companies like ZaReason and System76 deserve applause from Ubuntu community members. In ZaReason’s case, the company is offering a “back-to-school special” where, for one week, customers can receive a 5 percent education discount when they use LEARN42 as a discount code. The sale runs until midnight on Sept 1, 2010.

Will more Ubuntu OEMs offer similar promotions? Can Canonical find a way to help organize and promote the promotions? I don’t have the answers at my fingertips. But it seems like there’s something to be learned from the co-marketing efforts of Intel and Microsoft…

If you’d asked us in 2007 or 2008 to summarize Canonical’s grand strategy, our answer would have centered around beating Red Hat and Novell on the Linux server front.  But fast forward to the present and a lot has changed.  That’s why it’s time for a reevaluation of Canonical’s goals and future, and its relationship with other major players in the Linux ecosystem.

For a long time, Ubuntu’s success as a traditional server platform seemed crucial to Canonical’s viability.  While the desktop version of Ubuntu has fueled the distribution’s enormous popularity within the Linux community, it was hard to imagine Canonical becoming self-sufficient without competing head-on with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE and other major commercial server-oriented distributions.

That expectation made sense.  After all, selling support for enterprise servers running services like Apache and MySQL has traditionally represented the only tried-and-true Linux business strategy, and it seemed natural for Canonical to follow suit.

Reevaluating Canonical’s Strategy

While Canonical has certainly pushed Ubuntu Server Edition as a direct competitor to RHEL and Novell, however, traditional servers have represented only one component of the company’s strategy for generating revenue and securing influence within the open-source ecosystem.

In addition to Ubuntu Server and the suite of related support services that Canonical sells, the company has invested heavily in other initiatives in recent years.  Consider in particular the following projects:

1. Ubuntu Unity, a version of desktop Ubuntu customized for netbooks.  Announced last May, the project positions Ubuntu to remain a leading operating system within the netbook market.  Its only major commercial competitor is SUSE Moblin.
2. Ubuntu Light, which debuted at the same time as Unity, is a lightweight version of Ubuntu that promises to boot a full desktop environment within a few seconds.  This is not a novel idea, and it remains to be seen whether Canonical will succeed where other organizations have failed.  All the same, it represents a significant new direction for the company, as well as a potential revenue stream if OEMs can be convinced to buy Ubuntu Light.
3. The cloud-init package, combined with the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud images, underlines Canonical’s attention to the developing cloud niche.  Red Hat and other competitors have also invested heavily in the cloud, but in this newer market, Canonical enjoys a more level playing field than it does on the traditional server front, where RHEL has been entrenched for many years.
4. Ubuntu One: so far, Ubuntu One has remained mostly a copycat of the much more ubiquitous Dropbox, a tool for sharing files between different computers.  But the upcoming release of Ubuntu integrates Ubuntu One into Nautilus at a deep level, and the service is already a prerequisite for using Ubuntu’s Music Store.  It’s unclear what exactly Canonical intends to do with Ubuntu One in the future, but plans for the project appear to include much more than mimicking Dropbox.
5. Launchpad, introduced by Canonical in 2004, now hosts more than 18,000 software projects and has become an important resource for the open-source community.  It’s a safe bet that the site, which has no ads or subscription fees, isn’t generating any revenue for the company.  But it is an invaluable tool for spreading the Canonical brand and leveraging influence over open-source development.

Taken together, the diverse projects in which Canonical has invested paint a picture in which the company is much less interested in competing directly with the likes of Novell and Red Hat, and much more focused on pursuing new niches where it doesn’t face entrenched competition.

Of course, since Canonical remains private, it’s impossible to know how well its various initiatives are paying off.  But it is certain that the organization has chosen a path towards sustainability that would have been hard to predict a few years ago, and whose future direction may prove equally surprising.

The dreams of Ubuntu users looking for commercial-quality games that run natively on Linux came a little closer to fulfillment this week, as the open-source project 0 A.D. pushed out its first alpha release.  Even better, the game can now be installed in a few clicks thanks to a new PPA.

According to project developer Aviv Sharon, the alpha version of the game differs from earlier snapshots, like those we’ve covered in the past, in that the most recent release is generally feature-complete and “consists of everything you’d need for a playable game: Maps, units and all the actions they need to know how to do from movement to attacks, resources and ways to gather them, constructing and destroying buildings, etc.”

Here’s a look at the current state of the game, courtesy of the developers:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Of course, being “playable” doesn’t imply that the game is close to being totally complete.  Although it is now possible to play a full game against human players, victory conditions have yet to be implemented, meaning there’s currently no official way to win.  In addition, although units are now smart enough to auto-attack enemies, AI for computer opponents is still in development.

Launchpad PPA

While the feature-complete status of the game marks a major milestone for the nine-year-old project, perhaps even more significant, at least for Ubuntu users, is the release of an official PPA on Launchpad hosting installation packages.

Previously, the only way to install the game was to compile from source or use sorely outdated packages from third-party sites.  Now, however, installation on Ubuntu is as simple as three commands (or their equivalent using the GUI):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:wfg/0ad
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install 0ad

Distribution-specific instructions are also available for other versions of Linux, and a Windows installer can be downloaded from the project website.

Making the game easy to install should do a great deal to make it more popular within the Linux community, even in its current unfinished state.  Compiling from source is not for the faint-of-heart, but with a PPA available, 0 A.D. will be much more accessible to people who aren’t hardcore geeks and/or don’t have a couple hours to spend building the binaries.

Future Plans

When can we expect a totally complete game?  Sharon says 2011 or 2012, but cautions, “No promises here….If things remain at this pace or faster, I think that is realistic, but we do not want to overpromise.”

For the time being, developers remain focused on implementing victory conditions and the computer AI.  On the latter front in particular, the project is looking for assistance, and Sharon points out that the game presents fertile ground for programmers–including students and academics–interested in AI development and research or in experimenting with new AI techniques.  If you fit that profile, you’re encouraged to become a contributor.

Why It Matters

Whether you’re a programmer or gamer–of even if you don’t play games at all–0 A.D. represents something vitally important for the Ubuntu and Linux communities.

In many senses, gaming represents the final frontier for desktop Linux: Free software has proven itself competitive in all other major computing niches, from office productivity to video editing, but the number of commercial-quality games available for Linux can be counted on one finger.

With its incredible art and intelligent gameplay, however, 0 A.D. stands poised to change all that, by demonstrating that an open-source project powered by volunteers can produce a modern, cross-platform game on par with the expensive Windows-only packages developed by commercial houses.

Whether you believe the iPad hype or not, it’s clear that touchscreen devices represent an important emerging hardware niche. Canonical responded to that reality recently with the release of uTouch 1.0, a software stack designed to ensure solid multi-touch and gesture support on Ubuntu.  Here are the details, along with some thoughts.

Apple certainly didn’t invent the touchscreen market (just like it didn’t invent the OS X kernel, or the Safari browser, or a lot of other software that it ripped off from open-source developers, but I digress…), which has existed for years.  But the popularity of the iPad, combined with smaller mobile Internet devices and touchscreen-enabled laptops and tablets, has underscored the importance of this niche over the course of the last year.

Indeed, Gartner projected last April that fifty percent of computer users age 15 and younger will use touchscreen computers by 2015 (although it advances more conservative figures for the adoption of touchscreen devices in the enterprise).  Similarly, another analysis estimated the touchscreen market to grow by 5000 percent in 2010, with exponential growth continuing in coming years.

Multi-Touch and Ubuntu

At first glance, the multi-touch revolution may not appear very significant for Ubuntu or the free-software world.  So far, the most popular consumer touchscreen devices, like the iPad and Kindle, have been highly proprietary and poor candidates for running Linux (sure, geeks like this guy can make Ubuntu run on closed devices with enough hacking, but they haven’t gotten very far beyond booting the kernel).  Where Linux has penetrated the touchscreen world, it has been mostly on cellphones in the form of Android, which has little in common with desktop-oriented distributions like Ubuntu.

But that’s likely to change as PC makers follow Apple in releasing “slate” devices designed for general productivity, and as touchscreens become standard fare on laptops and netbooks.  The days when developers of desktop Linux can count on the keyboard and mouse being the chief input devices are numbered, making support for multi-touch hardware essential.

That’s why uTouch, which brings a comprehensive gesture-support API to Linux, makes sense.  Hardware drivers for most touchscreen devices have existed for a while, but there was no easy way for application developers to take advantage of the power of multi-touch functionality.

uTouch, which will ship with Ubuntu 10.10 in October, helps to address this deficiency.  As Canonical promises:

With Ubuntu 10.10 (the Maverick Meerkat), users and developers will have an end-to-end touch-screen framework — from the kernel all the way through to applications.

Canonical’s Contributions

It’s worth mentioning that Canonical’s sponsorship of the new multi-touch API should serve as a response to some of the criticism leveled against the company in recent weeks in the wake of a blog post charging Ubuntu with leeching off the work of other open-source projects.

It’s certainly true that a huge proportion of the code that constitutes Ubuntu is sponsored by organizations other than Canonical.  It’s also true that some of the projects that Canonical does undwrite, like Ubuntu One and Launchpad, are proprietary or were for a long time.

In the case of uTouch, however, Canonical has contributed software vital to preserving the competitiveness of Linux as a desktop operating system.  And since it’s released under the GPL, all members of the free-software ecosystem, whether they use Ubuntu or not, have the opportunity to benefit.

The upcoming release of Ubuntu 10.10 promises a variety of new features for Ubuntu’s desktop and server editions. But it will also bring significant changes for Ubuntu’s lightweight cousin, Xubuntu.  Here’s a look at some of the most important updates for the Xfce-based Ubuntu variant, including several that will increase its independence from standard Ubuntu.

Admittedly, until I downloaded the Xubuntu alpha 3 release, it had been a while since I tried the distribution.  I used to run it on some lower-end machines, but I gave it up a couple years ago because the performance improvement over Gnome-based Ubuntu was not drastic enough to justify the features missing in Xfce, at least for me.

For a truly lightweight system, something like Lubuntu seemed more appropriate than Xubuntu.  After all, at its core, Xubuntu has traditionally retained a high level of dependence on Gnome, making it hard to distinguish in many respects from standard Ubuntu.

Maverick Xubuntu

I might have to change my view of the distribution after testing the Xubuntu 10.10 release, however.  While it’s still not the most resource-efficient system available, it has increased its independence not only from Gnome but also from the standard Ubuntu application stack, replacing many of Ubuntu’s stock programs with lightweight alternatives.

For starters, the Parole media player has replaced Totem, the standard music and video-playback application in most Gnome-based Linux distributions. Here’s a look:

For the most part, Parole looks and acts pretty similarly to Totem.  But it’s designed for Xfce, and thus helps Xubuntu stand out as a distribution of its own.

Another signification departure from regular Ubuntu is the replacement of Gnome’s task manager with Xfce’s own alternative, xfce4-taskmanager:

A task manager is a task manager, and there’s only so much that can be done to make it unique. But as with Parole, the fact that this is an Xfce-specific application helps Xubuntu carve a niche for itself distinct from the one that Ubuntu already fills.

Other notable applications that distinguish Xubuntu from Ubuntu include the Exaile music manager, Pidgin instant messenger and Orage calendar client, as well as Abiword for word processing.  In addition, Xubuntu’s crisp dark-blue artwork is a clear departure from Ubuntu’s purple theme.

Of course, despite efforts to distinguish it from Ubuntu, Xubuntu still retains some Gnome dependencies. It ships with the Gnome games package and File Roller, for example, and uses Gnome VFS.  Nonetheless, it’s encouraging to see more uniqueness in the distribution, especially given the uncertain future of the Gnome-Ubuntu relationship as the release of Gnome 3.0 approaches.

Canonical remains committed to Landscape — the remote systems management platform for Ubuntu. But one of the Landscape team members has joined Dell, according to sources close to the hardware giant. Here’s the update.

I want to be careful with this post. It’s important to note that employees come and go — but software and IT services typically live on. With that qualifier in mind, I’ve heard that Landscape marketing veteran Ken Drachnik has joined Dell. I first heard chatter about the move during several meetings in Austin, Texas, this week. I’ve sent a note to Drachnik to see what he’ll be working on at Dell.

Back at Canonical, COO Matt Asay confirms that Drachnik has left the company but he says Landscape continues to receive more resources within Canonical. In the days ahead, I will pursue deeper info about Canonical’s latest Landscape efforts.

As you may recall, Canonical has positioned Landscape as a systems management tool for Ubuntu servers, desktops, mobile devices and cloud resources. Landscape is available as a SaaS service (called Landscape Hosted Edition) or as an on-premise solution (Landscape Dedicated Server Edition). It can also be used by VARs and managed services providers (MSPs) to remotely manage customers’ Ubuntu networks.

Landscape is one of several efforts that could generate new revenue streams beyond traditional Ubuntu support. Canonical has developed a few Landscape customer case studies but I haven’t heard from too many readers who are running the platform. Meanwhile, it sounds like Dell will announce some updated Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud efforts within the next few weeks. Stay tuned.

Mid-August is upon us, and that can only mean one thing (corn on the cob and the Saint-Napoleon notwithstanding): the next release of Ubuntu is inching ever closer to maturity. With the debut late last week of the third alpha of Ubuntu 10.10, it’s time to take a look at how Maverick Meerkat is shaping up.

If you visit this site frequently, you may have noticed that our coverage of Ubuntu 10.10 thus far has been sparse. We’ve discussed the btrfs file system and new cloud-init features, but there haven’t been many changes to report on the desktop.

With the appearance late last week of Ubuntu 10.10 alpha 3, however, some tangible new features have finally debuted for desktop users. Here’s a look at a few of the most significant changes.

Social Networking

Ubuntu’s “social from the start” initiative began with the release last April of Ubuntu 10.04, which introduced Gwibber into the default application stack. Maverick integrates social networking at a deeper level, embedding tools for sharing content on networking sites from directly within Rhythmbox and the Software Center:

Clicking the “Share” link launches Gwibber, from which you can post to your favorite site to tell all your friends about your favorite songs and applications.

Software Center

In addition to social-networking integration, the Software Center has received other notable updates in the form of interface changes and new features:

As the screenshot demonstrates, the “Departments” section has been split into columns. In addition, there are boxes for highlighting featured and new applications.

Also new to the Software Center is a history feature that provides an easy way of tracking updates and other changes to installed applications:

This isn’t an entirely new feature–dpkg always keeps logs accessible from the command line, and Synaptic Package Manager has a built-in graphical interface for viewing them–but the Software Center provides a simplified summary of the dpkg history, which will be more to the liking of non-geeks.

Volume Applet

In the past, I’ve been tough on the volume applet in Ubuntu, which has been totally redesigned for every release for no discernably good reason. Maverick sticks with tradition by ushering in a completely novel volume applet, but this time it actually offers new features:

The applet plugs into Rhythmbox to allow users to control songs and skip to new tracks. You can even switch between playlists. Pretty cool.

Ubuntu One

Last but not least, Canonical is continuing to push Ubuntu One, with the Nautilus file browser now shipping with built-in tools for sharing folders over the service:

Personally, I probably won’t contemplate ditching Dropbox until the long-promised Windows client for Ubuntu One actually comes to fruition, but these new features are certainly attractive. They’re also worth tracking for anyone interested in Canonical’s longterm business strategy.

Conclusions

These represent only the most noticeable of the changes planned for Ubuntu 10.10; there are certainly others already out there, and yet more may appear before the final development freezes are reached later this month.  We’ll continue to follow Maverick as it nears its final release date of October 10.

I’m greedy when it comes to software: I like having code that works, but I also want the very latest stable versions of my applications.  Ubuntu does a good job satisfying the former demand, but it lags behind other distributions when it comes to keeping its repositories up-to-date.  Fortunately, this issue has caught the attention of Ubuntu developers as of late, who have been discussing changes to the backports system.  Here are the details.

Before going further, I should acknowledge that Ubuntu’s policy on software packages–which is to keep versions the same for the lifetime of each release–is well reasoned and deliberate.  It helps ensure consistency across different iterations of Ubuntu and protects unwitting users from bleeding-edge, unstable code.

On the other hand, the packaging policy means that Ubuntu’s application stack quickly grows outdated after each release.  Unless users seek software outside the official channels, they don’t get any version updates for Firefox, OpenOffice, Gnome or other applications until the next Ubuntu release–and in the free-software world, Ubuntu’s six-month development cycles (or longer for users sticking with LTS releases) can be a long time to wait.

Backports and PPAs

The one vehicle for addressing this issue is backports, which provide version updates of select packages when developers think there’s a good reason to do so.  In theory, this should provide a healthy balance between stability and the need for up-to-date software.  As Iain Lane recently pointed out on the Ubuntu developers’ mailing list, however, “getting stuff backported is too hard,” and in practice, very few packages tend to be updated via the backports system.

Lane also noted that the lack of backports has led to a proliferation of unofficial Personal Package Archives, or PPAs, that provide more recent builds of applications.  Based on personal experience, I’d say he’s right: a quick look at my apt sources.list shows that I’m currently using third-party PPAs in order to maintain more up-to-date versions of browsers, firewall tools and torrent clients than those available in the official repositories.

The popularity of PPAs should come as no surprise: Launchpad has 17,203 of them, of which nearly 6,000 are active.  And since Ubuntu 9.10, adding PPAs has been a one-liner, thanks to the apt-add-repository tool.

Rethinking Backports

Unofficial PPAs aren’t necessarily a bad thing–although they do theoretically pose security and stability risks to people who use them without caution–and none of the Ubuntu developers are condemning them.  But Ubuntu contributors are recognizing that the ubiquity of third-party PPAs underlines the ineffectiveness of the current backports infrastructure, and they’re discussing ways to fix it.

One suggestion is to streamline the process required for uploading a backport, eliminating much of the bureaucracy that currently slows things down.  Another idea is the creation of official backports PPAs, which would exist alongside the current -backports repository.

So far, no consensus has been reached.  Nonetheless, it’s encouraging to see this issue acknowledged and discussed before it gets out of hand, and we look forward to seeing how the backports system might be revamped in response.

It’s been roughly two-and-a-half years since Nine Lives Media Inc. launched WorksWithU, the independent guide to Ubuntu. When we started this site we made a few assumptions about how the Ubuntu community and Ubuntu business markets would evolve. How have those assumptions evolved from 2008 to 2010t? Here’s an eight-point reality check.

We’ll cover…

1. Ubuntu In the Server Market

WorksWithU’s 2008 Perspective: By 2009 or early 2010, we expected some of the major server hardware makers to offer Ubuntu Server Edition as a pre-installed option on some of their systems.

Mid-2010 Reality Check: Some early Ubuntu Server Edition partners faced their own challenges (prime example: Sun getting acquired by Oracle). Meanwhile, most of the x86 server vendors focused the bulk of their efforts on Windows, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Novell SUSE Linux support. Several niche Ubuntu desktop and notebook makers — most notably System76 and ZaReason — have introduced Ubuntu servers.

Still, we didn’t anticipate the server market transitioning to more of a hosting and cloud services market. The economic recession forced many businesses to re-think whether they wanted to deploy servers and applications internally, or simply leverage pay-as-you-go hosting and cloud models. Canonical has adjusted appropriately. A growing number of hosting providers now offer Ubuntu as a platform, and Canonical has introduced Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud for companies that want to build private cloud networks.

In short, Canonical didn’t necessarily penetrate the server market in the traditional fashion. But cloud and hosted computing may give Ubuntu back doors into corporate data centers.

2. Ubuntu On The Desktop

WorksWithU’s 2008 Perspective: Dell’s decision in mid-2007 to pre-load Ubuntu on selected PCs certainly caught our attention. That single event was one of the reasons we took a closer look at the emerging Ubuntu partner ecosystem. Dell’s Ubuntu move arrived shortly after Microsoft launched Windows Vista. So, we suddenly suspected more PC vendors would give Ubuntu a look on the desktop.

Mid-2010 Reality Check: Dell has had its share of desktop successes with Ubuntu. The company claims to have shipped more Ubuntu systems than any other PC vendor in the world. But is that good enough? During the first half of 2009 through mid-2010, Dell’s U.S. website only offered Ubuntu netbooks with the occasional laptop promotion sprinkled in. Ubuntu desktops were nowhere to be found on Dell’s U.S. website… until late July 2010.

Other PC vendors have dabbled in Ubuntu, but the real successes involve two familiar names to the Ubuntu crowd: ZaReason and System76. Ubuntu’s best chance for mainstream desktop deployment seems to be in emerging economies, where many government organizations, businesses and schools are seeking low-cost, easy-to-deploy systems. In many cases, those organizations don’t have any Windows legacy PCs in place.

3. Ubuntu On Notebooks and Netbooks

WorksWithU’s 2008 Perspective: We spotted the netbook trend pretty early. By mid-2008 at OSCON, Canonical was showing off Ubuntu Netbook Remix Edition. By the end of 2008, Ubuntu netbooks were widely available in U.S. retail stores. Merry Christmas, Ubuntu lovers. Microsoft, meanwhile, stumbled badly because Windows Vista was too bloated to run on ultra-small netbooks. Canonical had a hit on its hand. By February 2009, HP jumped on the Ubuntu netbook bandwagon. We expected the trend to continue…

Mid-2010 Reality Check: Ubuntu netbooks are still widely available from online retailers. And we expect some more big-name announcements later this year. But Microsoft, backed by the successful Windows 7 launch, has emerged as the dominant platform in the U.S. netbook market. Also of note: Netbooks continue to sell well, but the media seems preoccupied with tablets, where a war between Apple’s iPad and Google Android seems to be brewing.

4. Ubuntu On Mobile Internet Devices

WorksWithU’s 2008 Perspective: In June 2007, Canonical had high expectations for so-called Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs), which fit somewhere between the smart phone market and the netbook/notebook market. Canonical expected a range of MIDs to offer WiFi capabilities and to serve as mobile communications devices. WorksWithU offered pretty balanced coverage: We tracked potential MID momentum but didn’t necessarily see a lot of activity in the fledgling market.

Mid-2010 Reality Check: Tablet computing chatter — involving Apple’s iPad and Google Android — has largely replaced the old MID discussions. Apple has a hit on its hands, major PC vendors are turning to Android for tablets, HP acquired Palm and WebOS to get into the tablet game, and Microsoft is scrambling to respond by late 2010. We’re also watching the Google Chrome OS development efforts, which involve Canonical. Where does Ubuntu fit in? We need to take a closer look at the market.

5. Canonical’s Revenue Streams

WorksWithU’s 2008 Perspective: Frankly, we assumed Canonical would generate revenues through traditional IT services — by supporting Ubuntu and Ubuntu Server Edition for corporate customers. Recent estimates peg Canonical’s annual revenue around $30 million.

Mid-2010 Reality Check: WorksWithU didn’t anticipate Canonical’s decision to pursue some additional revenue streams. Namely, the Landscape systems management, systems monitoring and cloud management solution; and the Ubuntu One personal cloud service for storage, music and other content. Critics say Canonical is stretching itself too thin with too many business development efforts. But WorksWithU is intrigued, especially since so many open source companies bet their entire business on a single product and often fail to escape niche status.

6. Ubuntu’s ISV Software Partners

WorksWithU’s 2008 Perspective: WorksWithU expected major ISVs — Oracle, SAP, VMware, etc. — to gradually embrace Ubuntu by late 2009 or so. But in some cases the Ubuntu ISV (independent software vendor) program faced a key hurdle. Specifically, some ISVs were holding off until Canonical shipped Ubuntu 10.04, a long term support (LTS) release, in April 2010.

Mid-2010 Reality Check: Canonical has gained some momentum in the ISV department. Generally speaking, Red Hat and Novell still dominate the Linux ISV buzz. But relationships between Canonical, IBM, Groundwork Open Source and several other ISVs seem to be growing. And WorksWithU expects at least one more Ubuntu-related ISV surprise toward the end of September 2010. A clue: A big email software provider may fall for Ubuntu…

7. Ubuntu’s Channel Partner Program

WorksWithU’s 2008 Perspective: WorksWithU expected Canonical to increasingly pursue VARs, resellers and integrators to support Ubuntu within customer settings. Canonical has certainly focused on the channel and partners. But cloud computing and hosted computing have signaled some shifts.

Mid-2010 Reality Check: Canonical is spending more time focused on potential hosting partners, since web hosts can wind up deploying thousands of physical and virtual servers in their data centers.

8. Canonical’s Management Team

WorksWithU’s 2008 Perspective: Generally speaking, we expected the Canonical management team to be responsive to our media inquiries. Thankfully, they certainly are responsive. But we always wondered if Shuttleworth would expand the Canonical management team as the company’s areas of focus continued to expand.

Mid-2010 Reality Check: We got our answer when Shuttleworth transitioned his CEO title to Jane Silber in March 2010, and also hired Matt Asay as COO. We’re still watching to see how the Canonical management team blends and evolves. The company still doesn’t share much info about its financial performance. But when it comes to Ubuntu-related media inquiries, Canonical remains responsive.

Bottom Line

In many ways, the Ubuntu community has evolved far differently than WorksWithU initially expected. Back in 2008, WorksWithU likely spent too much time wondering how Canonical would promote Ubuntu in traditional PC and server markets vs. Windows. Fast forward to 2010, and new opportunities (the cloud, hosting centers) and new challenges (Google Android, Applie iPad) have forced WorksWithU to rethink our Ubuntu coverage multiple times.

As you likely know, I spend considerable time hopping between our media sites — The VAR Guy, MSPmentor and WorksWithU. Each time I log into the WorksWithU blogging system, I’m amazed by all the reader comments.

Thanks for taking this journey with us.

Alongside the desktop and server editions of Ubuntu, Canonical has put considerable effort into Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud recently.  This investment is poised to pay off with Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat), which will introduce several enhancements to the cloud-init package when it debuts next October 2010. Here’s a preview of some of the changes that Ubuntu cloud users have to look forward to.

cloud-init, the successor to ec2-init that expands the latter’s functionality beyond Amazon’s EC2, is a tool that makes it easy to customize generic Ubuntu cloud images.  Rather than having to tweak a cloud-based system manually after it first boots, users can deploy cloud-init to automate tasks like adding repositories and importing ssh keys when an image is initalized.

New in Ubuntu 10.10

As of Maverick alpha 2, the cloud-init package in Ubuntu provides several new features.  These include:

• The adoption of ext4 for the root file system, replacing ext3.  This update seems a bit overdue, since other editions of Ubuntu have used ext4 by default for several releases now, but it’s nice to see UEC come up to speed and take advantage of ext4’s better performance.
• ebsmount, a tool for mounting Elastic Block Store (EBS) devices, will be included in the Universe repository for Maverick.  This change should add a lot of flexibility for users who want to maintain storage volumes independent of their systems.
• New stanzas have been introduced for cloud-init; in particular, they will make it easier to enable byobu, control cloud-config modules and preseed debconf.
• Last but not least, it will now be possible to upgrade the kernels of Ubuntu 10.10-based UEC and EC2 images after initialization.  This functionality–which doesn’t have to do with cloud-init specifically, but is nonetheless relevant–is due to be officially announced when Maverick alpha 3 is released on Thursday.  Like the new stanzas for cloud-init, the ability to update kernels will certainly add some valuable customizability to Ubuntu cloud images.

To desktop users and even some server administrators, the updates listed above might sound like esoteric changes of marginal value to most Ubuntu users. But given the bets Canonical has placed on Ubuntu’s ability to compete in the cloud market, the improvements to cloud-init represent an important component of one possible major revenue stream to support Ubuntu development.

Moreover, the cloud-init updates are only one example of Canonical’s recent efforts to advance its standing within the cloud market.  The company also recently announced its deployment of DB2 virtual applicances and an endeavor to integrate UEC with other popular platforms.  The cloud clearly represents a central element of Canonical’s push to establish Ubuntu as a viable operating system well beyond the desktop.  We’ll continue to keep our eyes open for new developments in this area.