Canonical Blog

With numerous new government backed Open Source initiatives kicking off in The Netherlands, we’ve decided to lead the way and ensure that Ubuntu training is widely available. Having training locations in every major Dutch city, AT Computing and Ictivity Training will provide authorised Ubuntu training from this summer. The first Ubuntu Certified Professional class is scheduled to commence in July; for additional dates or inquiries about closed sessions, the following 3 addresses are your key: www.ubuntu.com/training; www.atcomputing.nl.; http://www.ictivitytraining.nl/.

UK based Skills Matter will also offer Ubuntu courses from July 2009. With a strong grass roots community and an industry-wide reputation for bringing the latest in open source technology courses to its customers, Ubuntu has all the ingredients to be the next success story. More about the company and available courses can be found here: www.skillsmatter.com

Instructors from all partners will be attending the Canonical run Train The Trainer event at the end of June.

Computex starts on June 2 in Taipei and, as every year, sees the world’s PC industry come together to discuss the development of the next generation of notebooks, netbooks and soon-to-be-released products. Canonical has been attending for the last three years and now, if the announcements are any indication, is very much at the centre of things.

We will be demonstrating the Moblin v2 version of the Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR), which is based on the current beta code from Intel. We are also announcing our intention to develop a version based on the full release of Moblin v2, which we expect will be available very shortly.

Screen grab of Ubuntu Moblin Remix (beta technology; not released)

The Intel collaboration does not stop there. We are also announcing the availability of UNR, tuned specifically for the new Intel classmate PC. The new classmate PCs feature swivel-screens that can be laid flat like tablets. They also support touch and automatically adjust for portrait and landscape depending on how the child orientates the PC. UNR supports all these features and is available as a pre-install option immediately, by contract with Canonical.

Our work with Intel is reasonably well-known so it is an encouraging sign of growth to be included in a number of other announcements from major players in the industry. We will announce the results of collaborative work with SanDisk on its new solid state drives. Our engineering teams have worked to optimise the Ubuntu experience on these drives, which are a key component in the netbook space and increasingly the notebook space too. The seek times we have seen are very impressive compared with the most common hard disk drives found on most notebooks today.

Real Networks is announcing the availability of its Real Player for Mobile Devices for Ubuntu. This media player and codec pack is available to original equipment manufacturers planning to ship Ubuntu on any machine type. A marquee name media player shows the progress Ubuntu has made towards becoming a mainstream choice. There are no plans currently to make this available for consumer purchase.

So, Computex is going to be fun. Our Taiwanese office (based in the rather-tall Taipei 101 building)  continues to grow as do our activities on the island and, indeed, in the People’s Republic of China. It’s going to be a busy show but one that I think will see more progress towards Ubuntu becoming the open platform of choice for industry and consumers alike.

Gerry Carr -  Head of Platform Marketing

Announcing the release of Landscape 1.3 - the next version of Canonical’s management and monitoring software that lets you manage multiple Ubuntu systems as easily as one. In addition, Landscape enables you to monitor all your systems from a single Web interface reducing the complexity of managing multiple systems. The theme of 1.3 is Cloud and scalability.

Cloud Computing: EC2 Support
Landscape 1.3 introduces support for Amazon’s EC2 Cloud service. Users can now start, stop and manage their Ubuntu instances on Amazon EC2 from within Landscape.  Just enter your EC2 credentials directly through Landscape to start, stop and manage one of our pre-configured versions of Ubuntu that include the Landscape Client.  We have both 32 and 64 bit server versions available in both the US and EU regions. Once you started, you can use Landscape to manage and monitor them as you would your physical systems. Landscape saves you time by allowing you to manage your physical, virtualized and Amazon EC2 instances from one page.

New Custom Graphs
Users can now create and store trends of key system parameters allowing them to view and act on issues before they impact system performance. This gives System Administrators the flexibility of writing a script to monitor any machine readable parameter that is important to them such as temperature, memory and disk usage.

Knowledge Base
We’ve taken the experience our support engineers have gained with Landscape and created a library of articles that are now available in our knowledge base. There are hundreds or articles that you can search through that will save you time by allowing to quickly find and learn about common procedures and fixes.

The Landscape 1.3 client is available today and is included with Ubuntu 9.04 server edition (Jaunty Jackalope). Read more at the Landscape blog or get product details here

Ken Drachnik - Landscape

The Linux Professional Institute (LPI) has recently (April 1^st) updated its LPIC1 objectives significantly to come in line with advancements made over the past four years. This provides Canonical with the opportunity to readdress the Ubuntu Certified Professional (UCP) certification. As such, new UCP certification objectives have been finalised and the two courses, Ubuntu Professional courses 1 and 2, which prepare students to achieve the certification, are being condensed from two five-day courses to one five-day course. The five-day course will focus solely on the Ubuntu elements of the certification and preparation for the Ubuntu 199 exam.

UCP is designed for junior-to-intermediate-level system administrators working in organisations that are about to deploy, or have already deployed, Ubuntu desktops and servers in the office. The condensed (and focused) course will further assist students in quickly acquiring the skills they need to deploy Ubuntu in a corporate environment.

Ubuntu Training Partners will offer classroom-based training for this course from May 2009. An Elearning version of the course will be available from June. If you have been waiting for the right opportunity to get your staff trained on Ubuntu, this is it! For more detailed information about both courses, check out the Ubuntu Training site.

Microsoft, FUD and the netbook market

Brandon Le Blanc from Microsoft posted an interesting post about Netbooks and Linux last week. While we agreed with his comments about customers wanting choice and looking for outstanding hardware options, we disagree with much of his analysis and unsurprisingly the overall ’spin’ of the post.

While FLOSS software has been improving year on year, the launch of the Asus eeePC with Linux in late 2007 sparked a extraordinary chain of events. We saw an increase in the number of models of computers shipping with Linux, the acceleration of the PC industry’s knowledge of how to work in a non-Windows environment and the repeated extension of XP’s shipping life.

The launch of Windows 7 this year will see the beginning of new chapter in the competition to deliver choice and great customer experiences on standard PC hardware. That is the future - it is worth sharing our perspective on what has happened to date.

Customers welcome choice

We all know that customers like choice and we also know that competition is always good for consumers. We are humble enough as an open source project and company to know that not everyone will want to use Ubuntu. However here is an interesting fact - when customers are offered choice on equally well-engineered computers around a third will select Ubuntu over XP.

Ubuntu offers

• a safe, virus free environment without having to run expensive anti-virus software that slows PCs down
• great open source software like Firefox and OpenOffice.org

• an operating system that boots quickly and stays responsive after years of use

Of course there is a significant benefit for users who do not select Ubuntu or another Linux distribution. The price of XP crashed last year due to competition. So even if you bought a netbook last year with XP - feel free to smile when you see an Ubuntu PC. It’s amazing what an open market can achieve.

Return rates on Linux - Separating fact from FUD

The really big news for the industry is that well-engineered Linux netbooks have similar return rates to XP. What makes a real difference to return rates is not whether it’s Linux or not, but the quality of the device’s hardware and the ability to fully partake in web and media experiences, such as:

• Adobe Flash player being pre-installed
• Basic media codecs being pre-installed (these add a few dollars to the cost of a PC)
• Extensive hibernate and resume cycle testing (many OEMS have had to develop and implement new QA processes to work with Linux)

Customers have every right to expect these basics in their netbooks and we recommend them to manufacturers. Even with Ubuntu’s philosophical and technical opposition to proprietary software, we are clear about the importance of these plug-ins to average consumers. Hey, we even recommend the purchasing of Windows Media Audio and Video codecs to OEMs!

The PC industry learning how to ship with Linux / Ubuntu

Not too long ago, not a single PC manufacturer was shipping Ubuntu. As we go into 2009 - we have never had as many manufacturers nor as many devices being prepared to launch as we do now.

Dell, HP, and Toshiba are all shipping Ubuntu. In Taiwan and China, the extraordinary chain of suppliers who make computers at under $500 possible are learning how to work efficiently with high levels of quality assurance on Linux.

People shouldn’t expect every manufacturer in the market to ship with Linux. It takes time and investment to learn how to do well. Slowly but surely those numbers are growing meaning more units with Ubuntu.

Peripheral Support

Brandon proudly boasts to an admittedly impressive level of peripheral support for Microsoft - the clear implication being that Linux does not match it. Ubuntu and most Linux distributions support over 3000 printers over 1000 digital cameras, and over 200 webcams. It also supports them without the need to search for drivers on dubious websites or load drivers from a CD. Just plug and play.

Looking forward

We are tremendously excited about the netbook category, about launching PCs based on the next version of Ubuntu 9.04 - wow they boot fast. We see continued innovation with the launch of products that support multi-touch, continue to extend battery life and integrate 3G connectivity and GPS functionality.

Most of all - we look forward to continuing to deliver great product to customers who value choice. We are not saying that all of the world should or will use Ubuntu, however the suggestion that customers don’t like Linux is the sort of oversimplification that a great data-driven company like Microsoft might want to steer clear of.

Chris Kenyon - Canonical, OEM Services

P.S Continually repeating that we ‘confirmed’ a 4x return over XP when we did nothing of the sort is really not worthy of a great company like Microsoft. If we are going to compete, let’s do it on real facts and actual statements. You’re better than that, Redmond

Following the growing success of Ubuntu Server Edition, and in response to requests from both students and partners, Canonical has now launched an Ubuntu Server-dedicated course, called ‘Deploying Ubuntu in the Enterprise Environment’.

This five-day course is designed for intermediate-to-advanced system administrators working in organisations which are about to deploy, or have already deployed, Ubuntu desktops and servers in the office.

Participants will acquire the skills they need to deploy, configure and maintain Ubuntu Server Edition within an enterprise infrastructure. As well as building skills for new Ubuntu Server deployments, it has been tailored to meet the needs of companies switching from UNIX, Red Hat and other Linux distributions.

Canonical is trialling an online ‘virtual classroom’ version of the course for two weeks from Monday 4 May 2009, with limited seats sold through the Canonical store. The trial is offered at a special price and includes a special guest speaker, Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the Ubuntu Project. We expect it to be very popular, so if you are interested, don’t delay.

Ubuntu Training Partners will offer classroom-based training for this course from June 2009.

Visit the training website for detailed course objectives and more on virtual classroom training.

Moving Ubuntu into the enterprise, especially on the server, has been a significant undertaking. While the Ubuntu Server Edition has been around since late 2005, it really came into its own in mid 2006 with Ubuntu 6.06LTS — the first Long Term Supported version. The LTS versions are released every two years and supported for a full five years on the server.

Since then the product has been enhanced significantly, shipping with the best open source tools. For those wishing to take advantage of the latest kernel builds and utilities the Server version tracks the regular Ubuntu’s six-month cadence. It is proving to be a very popular platform with hundreds of thousands of corporate and SMB users globally. If you have not seen the most recent server statistics then you should. Registration required.

With the current economic crisis, we’re seeing more enterprises looking for greater value and lower costs in their server infrastructures. One of the interesting findings from a recent survey (see figure below) is the range of hardware technologies on which Ubuntu finds itself. Just last week we spoke to a Chicago-based finance house that runs entirely on Ubuntu server and runs their open and proprietary stack on Ubuntu on Hewlett Packard machines mostly, with some Dell in the mix. These heterogeneous environments are pretty common and the range of software it is run on pretty wide. Our survey also indicted that hardware support is very important to our users.

Which is why it is great news that HP are partnering with us to move towards full certification of Ubuntu on Proliant servers - more about this over the next few months. This will give another layer of assurance to users and customers - particularly in the enterprise - with market leader HP recognizing the growing importance of Ubuntu to enterprise and SMB customers. The certification means HP will list Ubuntu as a supported operating system and verify the work undertaken by Canonical to ensure full certified compatibility. Furthermore both companies are fully co-operating at the engineering level to provide full underlying confidence for HP customers using the certified servers.

This is great news for users who’ve adopted Ubuntu as their enterprise class server software and even better new for those using HP Proliant servers.

Mark Murphy - Alliances Manager, Canonical

Hardware Profile - CLICK TO ENLARGE

Canonical has recently signed and trained up instructors from Fast Lane and Bridge Education, the  latest two partners to join the Ubuntu Training Partner Programme. Ubuntu courses are now available in many locations across the USA.

Two, 5 day courses which form part of the Ubuntu Certified Professional certification train System Administrators on how to deploy and make the most of Ubuntu in the office.

A 2 day course assists desktop users in the home and office to transition smoothly to Ubuntu and use key applications, including mainstream office applications, Internet connectivity and browsing, graphic art tools, multi-media and music.

Courses are available in classroom and self-paced elearning formats. For details of the current 3 month classroom schedule, click here
Closed and pre-booked sessions are also available by contacting the partners directly.

Ubuntu training activities will be expanding significantly throughout 2009, with new courses and delivery mechanisms available to students globally. Stay tuned for updates over the coming months as learning to work with Ubuntu gets even easier.

Over the last two months Canonical and the Ubuntu server community ran a user survey to delve into the detail of Ubuntu server use. You can see the original launch plan here. The audience was self-selecting; we promoted it through the Ubuntu website and some other popular Linux server forums. Our friends at the analyst house, Redmonk, advised us on some of the questions and we have shared the raw data with them for their learning. In the end 6819 people representing the same number of organisations completed the survey. This was no easy task as there were many questions so our thanks to all the participants.

The survey is available here (registration required) and there is extensive commentary available with the survey itself. At a very high level it paints a picture of Ubuntu in use for common workloads in production ready environments across a vast number of sectors. The respondents tended to come from Europe and North America, which is probably an accurate reflection of business use of Ubuntu Server Edition currently. The size of organisation stretch from the lone wolf right up to 10,000+ organisations - to reflect this we have taken some splits of the data to see where response varied by size.

In short, if you are using or contemplating using Ubuntu Server Edition this is essential reading.

Gerry Carr - Head of platform marketing

An example of the data available in the Server Survey

We have just announced our beta of Ubuntu Server Edition for cloud computing. It uses Amazon’s established cloud service EC2. We’re supplying customised images that are quick to deploy and efficient in production. The images are based on Ubuntu Server Edition so have the same great security, performance, reliability and range of applications. Since they use the EC2 service it means that you can have a new server up and running with a few mouse clicks.

There’s been a lot of interest in cloud computing by developers and cutting edge users for a while. When unlimited processing power is available at the flick of a switch there are lots of intriguing possibilities from an application development perspective. With IT budgets under substantial pressure, new and cost effective ways of deploying services are coming to the centre stage. Deploying server instances in the cloud could offer real benefits to business users as it’s fast, and utility pricing means you’re only paying for the resources you use. I’m sure we’ll see cloud computing continue to grow in importance very quickly.

Ubuntu Server Edition is an ideal fit for cloud computing as it’s modular, efficient and designed to be easy to manage in large deployments. During the beta programme we’ll be providing a set of official Ubuntu 8.10 images for EC2 with maintenance updates and security updates. The intention is to make Ubuntu server available on EC2 as a supported deployment platform in the future.

We’d love as many people as possible to take part in the beta and give us feedback. If you’d like to sign-up you’ll need an Amazon Web Services (AWS) account and you should be aware that Amazon will charge you for your usage of EC2. There’s no additional charge for using the Ubuntu images, the maintenance is completely free. So if you’d like to take part in the beta programme please register on the Ubuntu on Amazon page.

Steve George - Director, Corporate Services