Ubuntu Linux Claims 12,000 Cloud Deployments 165
darthcamaro writes "The cloud is more than just hype for Ubuntu. Canonical COO Matt Asay is now saying that they can count 12,000 deployments of the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud. He also thinks the cloud is where Ubuntu can make money — because in his view, the company for the last five years wasn't set up to generate revenue. From the article: 'The conversion of non-paying to paying users is often a difficult ratio to report for any open source effort, and Ubuntu is no exception. Asay noted that Canonical plans to get more aggressive at tracking its free-to-paid ratio on Ubuntu Linux and its related services and technologies. "For the first five years of the company's life, it wasn't set up to make money," Asay said. "The company was set up to make a fantastic Linux distribution and other tools around it and get it out there and get people using it. That was the focus." That's now changing at Canonical as the emphasis is now shifting to generating revenues.'"
Failure Ahead? (Score:4, Interesting)
My theory is that if the focus is generating revenues, not the customer (or the product), failure is to be expected in this case.
CC.
Why choose Ubuntu? Why not something else? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm using Ubuntu right now, but a coworker told me he prefers Fedora (quote: "Any OS that fits on a single CD can't be any good."). Meanwhile my company is using Red Hat for their development.
What makes one Linux better than another?
Re:Ubuntu One (Score:3, Interesting)
Canonical appears to be following the stereotypical free software business model: sell services to which the free software can connect.
I'd argue the most common free software model is to sell hardware with free software installed on it in conjunction with services. It is actually very interesting to me that Canonical does not have a hardware offering and does not seem to be partnering with any hardware makers to customize Ubuntu for that company's devices. I don't understand why that is, but maybe it is just under the radar or they have good business reasons.
RHEL (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why choose Ubuntu? Why not something else? (Score:2, Interesting)
When Fedora first came out, I felt like Red Hat went out of their way to make fedora the "hobbiest" version, and RHEL the "corporate" version. Have they got more or less divergent as time has gone on? It's kind of nice to run the same version of the software at home and in the server room, where Ubuntu is Ubuntu is Ubuntu. One less thing to deal with. Just wondering if I should give Fedora another try...
Re:RHEL (Score:3, Interesting)
We use RHEL/CentOS for a lot of servers, but while they're stable and reliable, they're also using old versions of a lot of packages which aren't compatible with the latest shiny things. So if you want to run SuperWhizzoWebService you may well have to either upgrade packages on your RHEL server to the latest versions (which is often a real pain) or just run a more 'bleeding edge' distribution.
I'm not a fan of Ubuntu on servers, but if it has to run shiny things and doesn't need to be up 24/7/365 then it may well be a good choice.
Re:So when does Canonical need to start making mon (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:So when does Canonical need to start making mon (Score:4, Interesting)
I think any future changes in the companies are still going to reflect the culture of emphasizing a good, widely deployed Desktop Linux rather than necessarily turning a profit.
There could also be the fact that in many people's (and PHB's) eyes, if you don't pay through the nose for it then it has to be crap.
Hopefully a more commercial Ubuntu will help make it more visible in the corporate space as well as promote the integration of tools in that area (they're already there of course, you just have to add them yourself).
Re:Related Timing? (Score:3, Interesting)
Just when I was moving to Debian.
Same here. The final straw for me is plymouth....on servers. You can't get away from the graphical boot apparently. All the core packages depend on it. And guess what doesn't work on my server? Plymouth. So I can't graphically boot, and I can't remove it.
packages.debian.org doesn't even list 'plymouth'.
Hello, Debian.
Uh (Score:1, Interesting)
How about putting money on ideas in brainstorm and bugs in launchpad? I got a scanner with _completely GPL drivers_ that doesn't Just Work with Ubuntu, so it's worthless to me. Paying $50 to have someone package the thing sanely sure beats buying a new scanner, why can't Canonical do that? Not being able to pay for Free Software angers me. I mean seriously, I have a job.
Re:Why choose Ubuntu? Why not something else? (Score:3, Interesting)
What makes one Linux better than another?
"Better" is not a concept you can apply to Linux distributions, anymore than you can apply it to (wait for it...) cars. Is a giant Ford truck better than a Prius? Well that really depends on how large the stuff you have to move in the near future is, doesn't it?
The better Linux distribution for you is the one that matches your business or personal priorities more closely. Since those are your priorities, no one else can answer that question for you.
What you said (Score:3, Interesting)
If Canonical wants to make some desktop money, they should sell desktops with their software pre-installed and guaranteed to work, as in no hoop jumping for wifi support, whatever video is there, sound really works, etc.. They can still offer the freebie download version to all comers, but desktop purchasers get priority in the forums and support, etc. Just make it reasonably price competitive and it could work, no offering a $300 machine for $800 in other words just because it says official Ubuntu on it, because it won't sell then. Maybe $350 in that case would be reasonable (examples only), and stick the long term release candidates *only* on there, none of those six month beta quality things.
Ya, Dell and some others offer preinstalled..but that isn't Canonical offering it. It needs to be *their* machines with their software that they know will work. They target that hardware first with the developer action, all the time.
Sort of like the Apple idea, but using FOSS, sell the whole stack, and you know it will work with no hassles. Another aspect would be "legal in the USA" DVD and other media playback, if you buy the hardware, part of the money goes to pay the fees required for that. Purists have a thousand other options, so I wouldn't worry about that part if 1% or less on the machine is "non free". People mostly want their media to work, and that's it.
If local mom and pop whitebox shops can do business and make profits building systems from parts at low volume purchasing levels, one would think Ubuntu could get better deals from the Asian wholesalers buying thousands of untis at a time and just make sure what they get "just works". How about one netbook, one laptop, one desktop, one server? Four basic machines, that should cover a ton of normal usages. Ya, it might not fill every niche, but for a lot of people it might work and they could make some hard cash.
Re:Dim and dimmer (Score:4, Interesting)
It's unfortunate that you had to go with the old "screw the techie" prediction, because the first part of your post was quite right and doesn't deserve to be grouped under the -1 Troll mod. Given Shuttleworth's own statements and actions, here's what I see the business plan being:
0) It's nearly impossible to compete with Microsoft on non-OS products, because of their monopoly status.
1) Take a product that has the potential to make an OS a commodity, nullifying Microsoft's major competitive advantage in ever other market.
2) Turn that product into an actual competitor by matching or exceeding Windows in quality and features
3) Get people using the product, and more importantly get vendors selling it
4) Produce products that compete in a different market, and take advantage of having a free, commodity OS
5) Profit on those other products now that MS can't use their Windows marketshare as the sole competitive advantage
Re:Why choose Ubuntu? Why not something else? (Score:3, Interesting)
What makes one Linux better than another?
It always helps to try out different versions of linux. There are always little things that are different, or little things that work in one and not in another.
For example, I run Ubuntu on my desktop and normally run Kubuntu on my laptop. Since Ubuntu is more Gnome-centered the KDE version would have little bugs here and there (updating to 9.04 killed wireless networking - had to switch to WICD with a wired connection, I had a bunch of "available updates" appearing in the updater, only to tell me I can't actually update them when I tried, etc.)
I recently (this week) decided to try Fedora 12 and see if their KDE version is any better. The first thing I notice is that it uses nouveau by default for the graphics driver and they have decided to make it a pain in the ass to install the official nVidia driver. Also, dragging my finger along the right side of the touch pad to scroll doesn't work (it's a Thinkpad so that's the only thing I use the touch pad for. The eraser head is much better for moving the pointer.) I also noticed there is less stuff in the repository.
I'm still using Fedora on my laptop because I like to keep up on the different options (hence Gnome on the desktop even though I prefer KDE). Every OS has its quirks and the different versions of linux are no different.
For a server you have a whole different set of concerns and have to worry about reliability and how well the distro is tested for the types of applications you're using it for.
So "better" depends partly on application and partly on personal preference in most cases.
Re:Why choose Ubuntu? Why not something else? (Score:2, Interesting)
Listen, it's not the most "hobby" OS: it's the OS used by people as a hobby (i.e. hobbyists).