Canonical Halts Ubuntu CD Free-for-all 324
Barence writes to tell us that Canonical plans on limiting the number of "free Ubuntu CDs" that people can mooch from the company. The growing popularity of Ubuntu has seen a dramatic increase in the number of CDs being shipped via the free "ShipIt" scheme. The only people able to take advantage of this program now will be the usual community teams, contributors, and first-time Ubuntu users. "'While these CDs are often referred to as 'free CDs,' they are of course not free of cost to Canonical. We want to continue this programme, but Ubuntu’s growth means that some changes are necessary. Therefore we are adjusting how we handle CD requests to try to find the right balance between availability of CDs and the continued viability of the ShipIt program,' [Canonical's chief operating officer Jane Silber] adds. Extra CD copies of Ubuntu will still be available for purchase through the Canonical store, although they need to be bought in bulk. Five copies of the open-source operating system will cost £5 exc VAT and shipping."
Probably people abusing the system (Score:5, Informative)
free disk? (Score:1, Informative)
9.10 is really nice (Score:3, Informative)
I have it running on my old D610, it's very nice. They have improved the software center, a lot. Much faster and easier to use. Imported all my settings and desktop from 9.04, no problems. Boot up seems about the same to me, but overall it seems faster. The default theme is very nice and the fonts are clear and legible.
Overall I like it a lot. Good timing for release of 9.10, too. If you're going to change everything, might as well try something else first. What do you have to lose?
It's reasonable for them to limit disk copies. It's not like someone couldn't make as many of their own copies as they wish.
Served it's purpose (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Ubuntu or Debian? (Score:3, Informative)
Try Gentoo -- if you have the patience for it. Gentoo offers the, by far, best community with detailed HOWTO's on almost anything. It takes a little reading and practice but once you get the hang of it it'll be worth it.
Re:Well just download the ISO. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Probably people abusing the system (Score:3, Informative)
Probably people that think it's some limited promotion to create buzz, then start charging once the demand coming it. They'd probably be very confused about the whole model. "It's free" "Now, yeah so I'm ordering a million" "No it'll stay free" "???" "It's free software" "But, but..." It's not just bean counters that throw a divide by zero error when they encounter free things.
Re:9.10 is really nice (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Remember kids...Canonical is a private company (Score:5, Informative)
It's also a tax shelter country that the founder was born and raised in.
I've always though the Ubuntu folks were particularly generous giving those CD's away. I mean it's not like they were demos or trialware or something.
Re:Well just download the ISO. (Score:4, Informative)
This is about Ubuntu, it's Linux for Humans which often includes morons.
The free CDs were also great for advocacy. With their sleeves, pictures and artwork they look a lot better to a new or potential user than a shiny just burned CD-R. I have been unable to find the ISO image that actually corresponds to the CD I was shipped in the past, but it could be that I'm not looking hard enough.
tax sheter country!! (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, man. Parents these days!! I mean, they had to go and give birth to a child in that country just so that when he grows up and creates a company, he will get tax benefits!
Re:Ubuntu seems to have hit the big time (Score:4, Informative)
He is referring to Sun Myung Moon who is a self described messiah and the leader of one of the largest cults in the world -- the Unification Church. They are famous for their mass weddings.
Anyways, Moon owns the Washington Times newspaper.
Re:Ubuntu seems to have hit the big time (Score:1, Informative)
The Washington Post is a legitimate newspaper. The Washington Times is a PR operation run by the Unification Church [wikipedia.org], a cult founded by Sun Myung Moon [wikipedia.org]. As a cult, the Moonies have relatively few members, but boatloads of cash, and they preach a wacky sort of fundamentalism that's useful for gaining political influence [wikipedia.org] in both the Democratic and Republican wings of the Party, although not as much as The Family [wikipedia.org], the other theocractic/fundraising organization that's influencing the US political system.
(While we're on the subject of weird cults and newspapers, the Christian Science Monitor is also a legitimate newspaper, even though it's named after the Christian Science cult, it's merely kept the name and the cult has no influence on its day-to-day operations.)
Gee.... (Score:5, Informative)
....What a wonderful problem to have.
Re:Why do we need CDs at all? (Score:2, Informative)
It may be possible to do this through the "do cool stuff during boot up" API (which is used for scandisk and some defrag tools), but it wouldn't be very easy.
Even if you don't have a CD burner and blank CD, you can boot from a USB drive as well. I usually download the 50 MB Debian "netinst" image onto a USB flash drive, boot it, and then run the net install.
Re:Why do we need CDs at all? (Score:2, Informative)
Wubi? http://wubi-installer.org/ [wubi-installer.org]
Re:Why do we need CDs at all? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:9.10 is really nice (Score:3, Informative)
That's a really good idea. I hope someone from Canonical is reading. A SHARE button somewhere that burns a Ubuntu disk.
Bonus points if it has the ability to burn the same desktop theme and layout. Some when someone says, "Hey, your desktop is really cool." You can click a button and hand it to them, minus your data hopefully.
You won't see that in Windows 7 any time soon, either.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Remember kids...Canonical is a private company (Score:5, Informative)
It should be quite hard to confuse Isle of Man and South Africa, so maybe I'm missing something...
Could someone explain how this is informative?
Re:Ubuntu CD's (Score:2, Informative)