Ubuntu Partners with Intel for Mobile Device Support May 8, 2007
Posted by Carthik in news.27 comments
From BBC, we get to learn that Ubuntu and Intel are working together to get to the point were Ubuntu-powered mobile devices such as cellphones and PDAs. They talk about the Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded project which hopes to have its first release in October 2007.
Pervasive Ubuntu – oh yeah!
It’s really cool to see Intel pushing the envelope with Open Source friendliness. Maybe AMD needs to catch up and brush up the ATI drivers – open source them and have a fighting chance in the newly growing desktop Linux market.
By the way, I came to know of the BBC article via Ercan, a reader, who adds:
I enjoy your ubuntu blog. I like the general updates on ubuntu but don’t forget the tips and tricks.
Tips, hmm, yes… it is hard to come by good ones everyday – and it becomes harder as Ubuntu gets better. I will work harder or it, Ercan. 🙂
Ubuntu Open Week: Get Your Questions Answered April 20, 2007
Posted by Carthik in news, ubuntu.19 comments
…by, among others, Mark Shuttleworth.
The Ubuntu Open Week is a week of sessions on the IRC chat channel #ubuntu-classroom where you can learn more about Ubuntu. You have sessions about getting involved with translating, patching, packaging, bug fixing, getting involved with communities, the desktop team and much, much more. The open week runs from Monday 23rd April through Saturday, 28th April.
Melissa has an additional request — that you help spread the word! 🙂
Download or Upgrade to Feisty Fawn (7.04) April 19, 2007
Posted by Carthik in news, ubuntu.19 comments
Feisty Fawn is here! Here’s the Press Release.
The Release Notes contain things you should watch out for when installing or upgrading, including the most common installer bugs and other issues. Read it before you install or upgrade.
The 7.04 tour guides you through what’s new. Phil Bull’s 41-item list of what’s new in Feisty is an awesome collection of the new bling.
You can download Feisty by bittorrent, or you can download the cd images. Using bittorrent would be right thing to do.
Upgrading
If you are upgrading from Edgy, read the upgrade notes. Please note that the graphical method using the Update Manager is recommended over the command line method using APT. For 22x faster upgrades, read my earlier post 🙂
Thank you, Ubuntu developers, MOTUs, Documenters, Bug Fixers, Forum members, IRC chatters, and Ubuntu users. Let us not take predictable, regular, ultra-cool releases for granted. My heart is so big right now, it might just explode. Thank you for this release, and for the release from the mundane, the bloated, the untrustworthy, and the unstable!
Mark’s Interview at DerStandard.At April 18, 2007
Posted by Carthik in interviews, news, ubuntu.9 comments
Mark talks candidly about Ubuntu. Turn to page 4 for where Mark describes who Linux is good for, and what makes him think Linux is not ready for commercial pre-installed computer sales. Sensible, rational, and very lucid.
Ubuntu Is Not 6 Years Old… Yet April 12, 2007
Posted by Carthik in news, ubuntu.16 comments
I read this article on how IBM’s DB2 database is supported on Ubuntu at CRN.
The article states:
Six-year-old Ubuntu is seen as an up-and-coming Linux distribution. Some industry observers call it the fastest-growing Linux in the enterprise.
Hmm, well, Ubuntu hasn’t turned three yet, so I wonder where they got the “6 year old” detail from, and am I the only one who finds the second sentence above vague and wishy-washy?
Beryl & Compiz Reunite to Form “Composite Community” April 5, 2007
Posted by Carthik in news.9 comments
Beryl and Compiz come together again. There is talk of a Compiz-Core with Compiz-Extra being where the main action will be.
– The Compiz-Extra division (what we think of as Compiz) will merge with the
Beryl project to form a new community with the temporary name of “Composite
Community”.– The codebase of the new community will consist of the best plugins,
decorators, settings tools and related applications from the Beryl and Compiz
communities. We will create a code review panel consisting of the best
developers from each community who will see that any code included in a
release package meets the highest standards and is suitable for distribution
in an officially supported package. Support for existing packages will be
continued at least until the first stable release of the new project.
Here’s the announcement from the Beryl Dev Blog
Congratulations to all involved!
Feisty CDs to be Available Through Shipit April 4, 2007
Posted by Carthik in news, ubuntu, Ubuntu Sites.63 comments
Unlike Edgy, which was not available through shipit, free cds of Feisty Fawn, the upcoming release may be available for free shipping.
I logged into the shipit website and was greeted by this:
Yippee!!
Update: You can now pre-order the CDs
Ian Murdock Uses Ubuntu Too February 27, 2007
Posted by Carthik in news, ubuntu.20 comments
Ian Murdock – the “ian” in “Debian”, founder of the Debian distribution likes to use Ubuntu on his desktop. At least one of his desktops.
Ian’s latest blog entry had this screenshot. You can spy Ubuntu’s logo in the top left. Ian confirms that this is indeed an Ubuntu desktop in the comments. I was glad to see it, and thought I’d share it with you.
We have heard from Ian before, talking about Debian-Ubuntu compatibility.
(lets try the new digg this feature at wordpress.com)
ESR Switches to Ubuntu! February 21, 2007
Posted by Carthik in news, ubuntu.20 comments
ESR (wikipedia), that prototypical open-source geek, the author of The Cathedral and the Bazaar, to whom Linux and Open Source owes so much, has moved from Fedora/Red Hat to Ubuntu!
He announced his decision in an email to the Fedora Devel mailing list. Among other things, he notes about how the Linspire deal is actually good, and how it was easier to install Ubuntu Edgy from one cd, not five.
In less than three hours’ work I was able to recreate the key features of my day-to-day toolkit. The
after-installation mass upgrade to current packages, always a frightening prospect under Fedora, went off without a hitch. I’m not expecting Ubuntu to be perfect, but I am now certain it will be enough better to compensate me for the fact that I need to learn
a new set of administration tools.
Today is a big day for Ubuntu.
(via The World of a Penguin, where I first read the news. I knew the list of Ubuntu blogs could only lead to good.)
Ubuntu Blog 
Dell to Offer Ubuntu to Consumers May 1, 2007
Posted by Carthik in commentary, interviews, news, ubuntu.38 comments
So Dell did not get caught in the storm of it’s making – it swept the storm off its feet! This is the day the scales started tipping.
Dell will start offering consumers PCs with Ubuntu 7.04 (aka Feisty Fawn) on its PCs for interested customers. The Dell Ideas in Action Blog announced as much earlier today, stating very clearly that Ubuntu was their distribution of choice, and that they have worked out the specifics of the deal with Canonical, the entity that support Ubuntu’s development. Read Canonical’s brief announcement here. According to Canonical’s Jane Silber, the timing couldn’t be better:
There is a video interview with Mark Shuttleworth over at the Direct2Dell blog in which he talks about how the deal came about, and how this will make wide Linux adoption a much easier goal to achieve. He’s right when he says that this will increase Linux’s visibility across the board, and draw out closet Linux technologists who will now see some commercial benefit to advertising the Linux expertise they had, but never really talked about before.
I think this is a big step forward – hell, I look forward to answering, “what’s that Ubuntu-thing on your laptop?” with “Haven’t you heard, it comes pre-installed on some Dell PCs?”
Kudos to Dell for following up on their promise to listen to customers. My voted counted, for once. Depending on how many Ubuntu laptops get sold, Dell might just be the trailblazer in making and selling computers – once again. The interesting thing is, I wonder if Dell sees the future, can the others be far behind. Also, going by the example Mark states in the interview about how Linux adoption on servers led to hardware manufacturers ensuring that their stuff was up to snuff on servers, this can only mean better support for Ubuntu from the hardware component and peripheral manufacturers.
Congratulations Ubuntu – stand up and be recognized now!