Canonical announced via its blog yesterday that it will be building an Ubuntu-based open-source OS for China, in partnership with the Chinese government and members of the Chinese developer community. The joint-venture, which will produce a version of the Linux-based Ubuntu called “Ubuntu Kylin” for an April 2013 release date, is said to “go beyond localization,” and include specific features and… → Read More
Hot on the heels of the announcement of Ubuntu on phones comes Canonical’s latest announcement: Ubuntu on tablets. This is, in many ways, a no-brainer: Android and iOS have already demonstrated that the same OS can work on both form factors. But the story is a little more interesting when you consider what Ubuntu offers. And developers can start playing with it on Thursday. → Read More
After spotting it on video and briefly playing with it at CES, Canonical’s mobile-friendly version of Ubuntu will soon be available for the truly curious to muck around with. Starting on February 21, developers will be able to load the build onto their Galaxy Nexus or Nexus 4 — on the off-chance that you’re attending MWC like we are, Canonical will be on hand to flash your compatible hardware… → Read More
The odds are stacked against Canonical’s late-comer Ubuntu phone OS. But by seducing hardcore mobile users who love to customize, it could could box out Microsoft and pull lucrative customers away from Android and iOS. Tinkerers buy high-end devices, pay for apps, and attract premium advertisers. So if Ubuntu mobile gains traction, it could earn solid revenue and win the mobile bronze medal. → Read More
Of course proponents will say that the mobile market is still in its infancy and there is a need for an open OS. While I agree, I am not convinced that Ubuntu will become a winner on the scale of Android, its Linux counterpart.
Years will pass before Ubuntu sees developer traction for an Ubuntu phone. The device does not yet have a manufacturer or an operator. → Read More
Ubuntu isn’t exactly a stranger to the mobile space — it started showing off its Ubuntu for Android project in early 2012, but it wasn’t about to stop there. Not long after teasing the prospect of a touch-friendly future for its peculiarly-named OS, Canonical has officially pulled back the curtains on its Ubuntu phone OS and it looks, well, great. → Read More
Free software leader Richard Stallman claims Ubuntu amounts to spyware with Amazon search integrated into the “dash” of its Unity interface. He is calling for developers to shun the open-source operating system. → Read More
Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth says parts of Ubuntu 13.04 will be kept a secret, out of the public eye until its unveiling.
The move, which he writes about on his blog, will sure to create a firestorm in the Ubuntu community, → Read More
Canonical isn’t just the company behind the popular Linux distribution Ubuntu, but with Ubuntu One, it also offers a cloud storage service with 5GB of free storage space, as well as a music locker, and support for Android, iOS, Windows and, starting today, OS X. → Read More
Ubuntu Linux, which started with the tagline “Linux for human beings,” was originally an easy-to-use Linux distribution for desktop users. Canonical picked what they considered to be the best of breed applications from the many thousands available in the Debian Linux distribution, put on a healthy dose of polish, and released their own version. They then repeated this release process every six… → Read More
Inktank has raised $1 million in the form of a convertible note from Canonical Founder Mark Shuttleworth to further services play for Ceph — an open source, next-generation, distributed storage technology.
Inktank is led by DreamHost Co-Founder Sage Weil, who formed the company after developing Ceph over the past several years, starting with his work at the University of Caliornia, Santa Cruz. → Read More
Is Dell becoming an open source company?
Yes, but it is not exactly being planned that way. It is bubbling up like most open source projects do. But in many respects the move to open source is also by design. Dell does not want to be a box maker anymore. That makes open source a desirable option. With open source, Dell can leverage an ecosystem of partners and developers. → Read More
Most days I have only three or four browser tabs open: GMail, Twitter, Google Reader, and whatever link I’ve clicked through from one of the previous three. I know folks, though, who regularly have two dozen or more tabs open. All day. Every day. They struggle to remember which tab has their GMail, only to find no new mail when they get there. Pausing a Last.fm stream requires an inordinate number… → Read More
If you’ve been living under a rock for the last couple of years, you might be excused for not knowing about this Humble Bundle thing. As a long-time Linux user, the Humble Bundles have always been of interest to me, and I’ve always tried to support them financially. It’s also always been interesting to me that Linux users typically pay more for the Bundles than their Windows or Mac counterparts. → Read More
As much fun as it is to view the world in a “Linux versus Microsoft” way, the reality is that a technology monoculture is less useful than a heterogenous one. Even Microsoft knows this: they’ve made a variety of tepid attempts to support integration with other operating systems for decades, because they know their customers are relying on those other systems. More recently Microsoft has even… → Read More
Mark Shuttleworth is the founder and former CEO of Canonical, the commercial company behind the Ubuntu Linux distribution. Today he holds the position “Lead Product Design”, a role in which he shapes desktop and cloud product strategy. I spoke with him recently by phone about the increasing role of Linux in the enterprise, and the shift from traditional enterprise computing to cloud… → Read More
Canonical, the corporate sponsor of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, has been doing a lot of interesting development work across a number of different computing segments: their on-going work with the Unity interface for Ubuntu, Ubuntu TV, Ubuntu for Android, and a whole lot more. Ubuntu, according to Canonical, is the world’s most popular OS for public, private, and hybrid clouds. Not content with… → Read More
Canonical’s Ubuntu TV, unveiled earlier this year, was the first in a series of announcements about “Ubuntu on devices”. The next device in Canonical’s multi-screen strategy for world domination is being unveiled next week at Mobile World Congress 2012, and it’s an Android-powered smartphone. It’s not entirely what you might think, though.
This is not an Ubuntu app running atop Android. Nor is… → Read More
Every time I write about Ubuntu and its (not-so) new Unity interface, I see lots and lots of comments decrying it as useless, an abomination, the worst thing to ever happen to computers, etc. Personally, I’m not so flummoxed by it, but there’s no denying that Unity has been a divisive addition to Canonical’s flagship Linux distribution. The choice to move application menus up to the global bar at… → Read More
CES is upon us, and is no doubt chock full of the usual suspects of consumer electronics OEMs, ODMs, and more. One interesting new attendee this year is Canonical, the folks behind the Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution. Canonical is making a big push to get Ubuntu onto more than just desktops and laptops, and have been busy building relationships with CE companies to get it onto tablets, phones, and… → Read More
The Ubuntu Developer Summit, starting today in Florida, is a gathering of Canonical employees, industry partners and Ubuntu community members to “define the focus and plans for [the] up-coming version of Ubuntu”. That version, 12.04 codenamed “Precise Pangolin”, will be released in April of 2012 and will be the next Long Term Support (LTS) release of the distribution. The changes scheduled for… → Read More
There’s been some hubbub lately about Secure Boot, a hardware-verified, malware-free operating system bootstrap process that aims to improve the overall security of computers. Part of the UEFI specification which is slated to replace the aging BIOS with which many of us are familiar, Secure Boot can forbid the loading and execution of unsigned operating systems. Microsoft is requiring that Secure… → Read More
Vodaphone and Canonical today announced the Vodacom “Webbook”, the fruit of a joint effort to develop a low-cost mobile computing solution for South Africa. Most of the specs are about what you’d expect for such a device, with one extremely interesting twist: it’s powered by a Freescale IMX 51 processor (Cortex A8) CPU in order to lower cost and power consumption. This represents the first… → Read More
The Ubuntu Linux distribution has come a long way since it’s first release in 2004. It started out as a nicely packaged Linux desktop, built from a specific set of packages cultivated from the nearly thirty thousand packages available in the Debian distribution. Regular six-month releases ensured that Ubuntu would always be close to the cutting edge of Linux and free software development. Every… → Read More
Canonical, the commercial backer behind the Ubuntu Linux distribution, have been hosting a file synchronization service called Ubuntu One for a couple years now. A free account gets you 5GB of storage, and the client side controls have been baked into the last couple of releases of the Ubuntu distribution. It works pretty much like Dropbox or similar services, but has been — until today … → Read More
Almost every single keynote at LinuxCon, and certainly every private conversation I had with folks here, involved “cloud” in some way. As Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst observed in his keynote, there’s no single definition of “cloud”. There’s no doubt that Amazon has really pioneered the default cloud offering, but there’s a lot of work going on to build better, more robust, and more open cloud… → Read More
The iPod revolutionized the portable media player market. The iPhone shook up the smart phone market. The iPad is setting the standard for the revived tablet market. What is it about Apple that makes these products so great? In part it’s Apple’s dedication to user experience; but I’d argue that the larger factor in their success is Apple’s end-to-end control of the product. They make the hardware… → Read More
Looking at the Twitter stream of Day 2 at FOWA 2009, it’s clear that Canonical’s Simon Wardley hit all the right buttons with his levelheaded and wryly humourous take on the ongoing evolution of cloud computing, and what it means for the future of innovation in the tech space. He gave a tip of the hat to Ubuntu’s Enterprise Cloud, which supports the emerging EC2 standard, and… → Read More
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