The VAR Guy

Here’s part three of The VAR Guy’s five-part countdown, highlighting 50 trends and takeaways from the Ubuntu Live conference in Portland, Oregon. Items 30-21, with more to follow soon…

50-41: Part One of the List

40–31: Part Two of the List

28. HP Misses Opportunity: Bdale Garbee, Linux CTO at Hewlett-Packard, wasn’t around for his keynote this morning. Canonical insiders insisted Bdale simply had a scheduling conflict.

29. But HP Still Scores: Canonical mentioned that a major university is deploying Ubuntu on 5,000 Hewlett-Packard PCs.

28. Ubuntu Tunes In Internet TV: Joost, that hot Internet TV startup, is running roughly 200 Ubuntu servers, according to Ubuntu Live presentations.

27. A Million Strong: MySQL’s CEO estimates that there are 12 million open source developers worldwide. And he believes they spend about four hours a week on open source projects. Fast math means that’s 1.2 million full-time equivalent pros in the open source sector.

26. Slimming Down: nComputing, a company that specializes in multi-user solutions, is generating considerable buzz and attendee interest. The killer application: Schools that want all students to have access to computing — without needing to buy a PC for every student.

25. The VAR Guy Will Drink to That: Two Starbucks locations are within g a few hundred yards of the conference sessions. No wonder The VAR Guy seems so active today.

24. Next Year Ubuntu Goes Enterprise: Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth remains intensely focused on the desktop, but he also spent considerable time at the conference describing Canonical’s enterprise focus for 2008.

23. Anybody Need A Translator? More than 17,000 people help translate Ubuntu into localized languages around the world, Canonical estimates.

22. More than 13,000: There are now more than 13,000 local community members who evangelize and support Ubuntu in their regions, according to Canonical.

21. Feeling the Heat: Doug Fischer, VP and GM of Intel’s System Software Division, says the chip giant’s relationship with Intel is “on fire.”

20-11. The Next Part of Our List