ubuntu

The first version of Ubuntu scheduled for next year will be called Hardy Heron and will be the second of Canonical's Linux products to feature long-term support.

Ubuntu Developer Jono Bacon posted news of the new version on a mailing list and his blog on Wednesday.

He invited interested people to submit feature requests for the release at its Launchpad site. Canonical will hold an Ubuntu Developer Summit in October 2007 in Cambridge, Mass., to hash out details and implementation plans, he added.

Ubuntu's next update, Gutsy Gibbon, is due in October and will sport the version number … Read more

What happens to the disrupter when it is disrupted? That's the question I asked myself while reading this article in LinuxWorld. As more enterprises grow comfortable with Linux, is it possible that they will move from their first Linux vendor (generally Red Hat) to Ubuntu as a way to lower costs further?

The article describes a small telco in Australia that recently dropped Red Hat for some of its servers in favor of Ubuntu. The article stresses that the decision wasn't about cost:… Read more

This deal isn't necessarily practical unless you plan on swinging by Memory World in Singapore relatively soon, but the electronics seller is advertising an exclusive Acer Aspire notebook preloaded with Ubuntu for about $660 ($999 Singapore dollars). (Link courtesy of SingpaporeHardwareZone.com)

But even for those of us non-locals, it's definitely interesting. It makes us wonder if Acer might be considering Ubuntu as a preinstalled option for U.S. customers too. Company spokeswoman Alison Williams said, "For now, Acer America (U.S., Canada, etc.) has no plans for Ubuntu on our Aspire or TravelMate PC lines." … Read more

I was fortunate to keynote this year's Ubuntu Live conference. I rarely give the same presentation twice, as I figure people are paying to hear something new. In UL's case, I spent a long time thinking through lessons I've learned from my time with Novell/SUSE and my interactions with Red Hat, and tried to come up with ways that Ubuntu could be successful yet leverage what makes it different.

In many ways, I find myself agreeing with Stephen O'Grady's Ubuntu Live keynote. Not surprising, since I think highly of Stephen. Stephen suggests that community defines the Ubuntu experience, and should be one of its primary differentiators:

To take the pebble, then, Ubuntu needs to reframe the debate. To do that, it must turn the conversation from basic operating system shootouts to the operating experience. A conversation that, in my opinion, favors Ubuntu.… Read more

PORTLAND, Ore.--Tim O'Reilly is giving a keynote speech at the Ubuntu Live conference, even as I type. I spoke just before him, and he's now throwing out much of what I said. :-) (I argued that we need to be more religious about open source, not less, by which I meant "filled with passion," not "filled with fury toward unbelievers," which is not a religion that I've seen much of here.)

O'Reilly is talking about the rising tide of Ubuntu, using book data, search data and other things (see right) that lead him to believe that Ubuntu is clearly growing in popularity. Tim warns, however, that we need to not get infatuated with open source qua licensing but rather need to think about how it (and, in this case, Ubuntu) fits into the larger technology conversation.

For instance, what would happen if Ubuntu succeeded in becoming the dominant "L" in the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Python/Perl) stack?… Read more

I go away for the weekend to Lake Powell and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and I come back to some highly intriguing news from Open-Xchange: the release of the company's Express Edition. First there was the standard server product, then the hosting solution, and now Express.

Express is cool on a number of different levels. First, unlike proprietary e-mail systems, Open-Xchange doesn't foist on the IT administrator a range of hidden costs. You get the full-fledged e-mail and collaboration server without paying a nickel extra for the operating system, directory service, etc. You pay for the product, and nothing more. (This seems like it should be the norm, but it's not.)

This is especially good to know given the market at which Express Edition is targeted: the small to medium-size business. SMBs don't have huge pockets filled with cash to buy ancillary software, hire an expensive administrator, etc. They just want it to work, and Open-Xchange's Express Edition seems to fill this need particularly well. (I'm downloading it to try it out, and will let you know if it lives up to its billing.)

Second, and extremely interesting to me, Express Edition runs on Ubuntu. Why does this matter? Well, for one thing it shows Ubuntu's stablity and performance. But on an even more interesting note, take a look at Open-Xchange's management team, and in particular its CTO, Jürgen Geck. You might remember that he was the CTO at Suse....Or check out Open-Xchange's co-founder and EVP of engineering, Martin Kauss. Yep, he was a Suse guy before, too. The list goes on....… Read more

Canonical has released its first test version of Gobuntu, a variant of the Ubuntu Linux software that's devoid of proprietary software.

Canonical Chief Executive Mark Shuttleworth announced the version's availability this week on his blog. The test version of Gobuntu, based on the upcoming "Gutsy Gibbon" version of Ubuntu due in October, can be downloaded from the Ubuntu Web site.

Regular Ubuntu includes proprietary software such as video drivers that enable accelerated 3D graphics. Shuttleworth called on programmers to lend a hand building Gobuntu into a version on its own right.

"This is a call … Read more

Matt Hartley writes in Mad Penguin that Ubuntu has essentially won the Linux war. While Matt seems to be talking about desktop use (he stresses ease of use and only compares Ubuntu to OpenSUSE and Fedora), there's actually more truth to what he writes than he may know.

He reasons:

There are plenty of areas where Ubuntu has fallen flat on its face, but for mainstream users, it has completely eclipsed the competition. And this remains a sore spot for many Fedora and SuSe users. My words to them: get over it, it's a different market.… Read more

David's friend calls him in a panic. There's something wrong with his computer, and it's clearly malware.

However, when David attempts to reboot the Windows machine, he discovers that the problem lies much deeper--the whole operating system, it seems, has been corrupted beyond repair.

How does David resuscitate his friend's computer and save his important data in the process? Learn David's creative solution in this week's Spyware Horror Story.