The VAR Guy

As a company, Inktank, one of the open source ecosystem’s newest commercial enterprises, is only days old. But it has already made a determined foray into the Linux server market with the announcement this week of integration of the Ceph distributed file system into Ubuntu 12.04. Here’s the scoop, and what it says about both Inktank and Ubuntu.

Ubuntu’s greatest successes are arguably among home PC users and developers who use it in test environments. But there can be little doubt that Canonical remains committed to making Ubuntu the open source desktop of choice for businesses as well. Its latest move in this vein was the recent release of an updated version of Ubuntu Business Desktop Remix. Read on for details, and what they reveal about Canonical’s long-term strategy in the world of the enterprise.

If there’s one thing the Xen hypervisor and Ubuntu Linux probably will always have in common, it’s names that no one is quite sure how to pronounce. But at a less superficial level, the two software projects are also becoming more integrated than ever, with newly released Ubuntu 12.04 boasting unprecedented support for Xen software. Here’s a look and where Xen and Ubuntu stand now, and where they might be headed in the future.

Ubuntu 12.04 is codenamed “Precise Pangolin.” But maybe it should be called “Linux that never sleeps.” And that wouldn’t be a compliment. Au contraire — the operating system’s lack of support for hibernation, or the ability to put the computer to “sleep” using no power, is a major flaw in an otherwise great Ubuntu release. And it doesn’t bode well for Canonical’s ambitions of conquering the desktop.

With Ubuntu 12.04 released in late April 2012, there’s no shortage of reviews of the open source operating system floating around the Web. But Ubuntu’s less phonetically ambiguous cousin, Kubuntu, doesn’t tend to get as much love. So in the interests of fairness, and of thinking outside the box, I decided to give Kubuntu 12.04 a whirl. Here’s what I found.

Operating systems are like wine: They hopefully increase in quality as they age, and — unless you’re a Beaujolais nouveau fan — you often don’t want to drink one that hasn’t yet had at least a little time to mature. But the fact that Ubuntu 12.04 was released only days ago isn’t stopping a number of PC vendors from shipping the new release on their hardware already. Here’s a look at the status of Ubuntu 12.04 and OEMs.

Ubuntu itself may still be a long way away from running on a phone or tablet. But that isn’t stopping Canonical from trying to establish a foothold in the Android market via Ubuntu One, which just saw the release of a new version of its Android app boasting a host of updated features. Here’s the scoop.

Making money — or trying to, at least — in the Linux world became just a little bit easier recently with simplified settings for creating commercial projects in Canonical’s Launchpad software-development portal. That’s all good and well, but the news got me wondering: How many commercial projects are actually using Launchpad? With some quick-and-dirty bash scripting magic, I was able to gain an idea. Read on for the results.

As Linux fans have undoubtedly noticed by now, the official debut of Ubuntu 12.04 — the latest version of the open source operating system and the first “longterm support” (LTS) release in two years — is only hours away. In preparation, here’s a recap of the most important new features in the release, and what they could mean for Ubuntu and the open source channel in the long term.

Marseille, France is known for a lot of things, among them bouillabaisse stew, hostility toward centralized government and a flourishing drug trade. Yet on a recent trip there I discovered something unexpected: Ubuntu Linux running in a commercial environment. Here’s what I found, with some thoughts on where desktop Ubuntu might be headed among small businesses more generally.

As of next month, Canonical’s Ubuntu One file-syncing service will be 3 years old. Since its introduction it has evolved considerably and taken some unexpected turns. At this juncture, then, it seems appropriate to ask: What is Ubuntu One, exactly? What makes it different and where is it headed in the future? Read on for some thoughts.

According to survey results released earlier this year, Ubuntu still has a lot of room to grow in the cloud space.  But it seems to be doing just that, the latest indicator being HP’s release of cloud products based partially on Ubuntu.  Here’s the scoop, and why it matters for the Ubuntu world in particular.

As Linux users look forward to the release later in April 2012 of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, Canonical’s decision to cease sponsoring Kubuntu as an official Ubuntu variant has passed largely under the radar — a sign, perhaps, that Kubuntu’s user base is small. But as the first member of the Ubuntu family to lose official endorsement, where is Kubuntu headed? And more importantly, what does its departure mean for the Ubuntu brand as a whole? Read on for some analysis.

Protecting users (and their data) from themselves is tough enough within uniform computing environments, which is one of the big reasons many organizations hesitate to make the jump to non-Microsoft platforms on their workstations. But now securing data across different operating systems is a little easier with Endpoint Protector‘s announcement of Linux support. Here’s the scoop, and what it means for Linux in the workplace.

When it comes to Ubuntu, Canonical’s Linux distribution, most pundits keep close tabs on April and October. Like clockwork, Canonical always releases Ubuntu upgrades during those months. Indeed, Canonical is beta testing Ubuntu 12.04 (code-named Precise Pangolin) now and expects to ship the new Linux release on April 26. Ubuntu 12.04 is a Long Term Support (LTS) release, which means it may appeal to businesses. But is Canonical doing enough to catch on with corporations?

We may never know every detail about Ubuntu’s user base. But some of its characteristics became a little clearer this week as Canonical’s Gerry Carr began releasing the results of the company’s recent survey of people running Ubuntu, the Linux distribution. Don’t get too excited just yet, as we’ll have to wait a few more days for the full survey findings. But if you’re interested in what’s been learned so far, keep reading…

Mark Shuttleworth’s eagerness to declare victory over RHEL notwithstanding, it’s clear that Ubuntu still has a lot of growing to do in the server room. But it came one step closer to becoming a leader on that front recently with the introduction of official Ubuntu cloud images to Amazon’s EC2 interface. Here are the details, and what they say about where Ubuntu may be headed in the cloud.

At this point, there’s no denying that Linux — despite high hopes early-on — is a late-entry to the world of tablets. But that doesn’t mean open-source enthusiasts have written off this segment of the hardware market. On the contrary, a number of initiatives to make Linux a viable choice for tablet users are in rapid development. Read on for a look.

Mid-March is a time ripe for overhauling traditional power structures — or it was, at least, in ancient Rome. But if former Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth is correct in his claim this week that Ubuntu is overtaking Red Hat in the world of Linux servers, we may be in the midst of a major shake-up in the open-source hierarchy as well. Is Shuttleworth right, or will this trend prove no more enduring than Brutus‘ brief reign after he murdered Caesar? Here are some thoughts.

Who runs Ubuntu? Where, why and how? That’s a question lots of people — including probably even Canonical employees — would like to be able to answer better. Toward this end, a survey of general Ubuntu users is underway. Here’s the scoop.

When it comes to improving hardware support for Linux, there are two traditional strategies: The Do-It-Yourself method, by which geeks write their own device drivers, and the Beg-And-Plead approach, or asking OEMs for open-source drivers and hoping they comply. But Canonical seems to be forging a third path by actually cooperating with upstream manufacturers to bring better hardware support to Ubuntu. Here’s how, and what it means for the lives of Linux users everywhere.

In little more than a month, the latest release of Ubuntu, 12.04 LTS, will be upon us. As we’ve already noted, it brings a lot of new features to the desktop. But since PCs are only a fraction of the Ubuntu universe, we’d be remiss not to take stock of the updates that 12.04 will usher in on servers, the cloud and beyond. Here’s a look.

We’ve now officially entered the season that comes only, er, twice a year: the countdown to the next iteration of Ubuntu. With beta 1 of Ubuntu 12.04 now available, it’s time to take a look at what’s new — and there’s a lot of it — in the latest and greatest version of what is (probably) the world’s most popular open source operating system.