Ubuntu TV promises to simplify and streamline users’ entertainment experience, providing them with a one-stop shop for broadcast TV, cable, streaming applications, and online services. The goal is to do away with the staggering array of remotes and set-top boxes that clutter so many living rooms by integrating everything into the TV itself. Users only have one TV, and Ubuntu TV promises that they’ll only need one remote. Users will also have the option of using their smartphones or tablets as remotes.

Ubuntu TV also promises users the ability to share content between their computers and their TV, as well as between the TV and their mobile devices via the Ubuntu One cloud service. Ubunty TV will also run apps from third party developers, giving the platform tremendous growth and expansion potential.

Unfortunately, Ubuntu TV is still in the early stages of development. The version showcased at Canonical’s CES booth is apparently just a demo version. The technology looks promising, though. Look for more news in the coming months as developers and TV manufacturers get on board with Ubuntu TV. Meanwhile, check out the video below, and let us know what you think in the comments.

[Source: Canonical Blog]

Spencer shared the information via a public mailing list (hat tip to Ars Technica), where he said:

Note that this won’t in any way effect the ability of a user to choose and use the search provider of their choice. It’s literally 2 easily discoverable clicks to change this setting, a simple matter of switching to that search provider in the chrome by clicking on the icon and choosing the desired provider. Note also that Yahoo! does not share any personally identifiable or usage information.

I am pursuing this change because Canonical has negotiated a revenue sharing deal with Yahoo! and this revenue will help Canonical to provide developers and resources to continue the open development of Ubuntu and the Ubuntu Platform. This change will help provide these resources as well as continuing to respect our user’s default search across Firefox.

The move is an interesting one for both Canonical and Yahoo. Yahoo needs to do whatever it can to gain search market share, and Ubuntu is a popular version of Linux.

"Canonical is unusual among major commercial Linux distributors in the sense that it doesn’t sell an ‘enterprise’ or ‘pro’ version of its software," notes Ars Technica author Ryan Paul. "In an effort to make this approach sustainable, Canonical is experimenting with a number of different business models, including commercial support for end users, subscription-based Web services, and integration support for hardware makers. In the announcement about the search engine change, Spencer says that Canonical’s partnership with Yahoo will help to fund the ongoing development of the distribution."

Terms of the deal between Canoncial and Yahoo were not made available. Meanwhile, the search and advertising deal between Microsoft and Yahoo is still pending. The effects of that on Yahoo’s market share remain to be seen.
 

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Or possibly not. Windows resides on millions of PCs globally, with Office occupying plenty of those machines in corporate and other environments. Ten thousand PCs doesn’t register as a seismic event; Apple has a small percentage share of PC ownership, but that counts in the millions.

Not to mention, the biggest Apple software development house not located in Cupertino resides at Microsoft’s headquarters, as the company likes to remind the Mac faithful.

With ZDNet citing the sold out status of those Wal-Mart Linux boxes, it seems people don’t mind having the ability to browse the Internet and do all kinds of mundane computer tasks like blogging and word processing for just a couple of Benjamins.

Ubuntu has gained a lot of attention for its capabilities as a desktop Linux distribution for the masses. But it probably took a Wal-Mart to get it attention for the right reason: an affordable OS that can do what people need it to do.

Even though Wired cited research that sneered at the "unsophisticated" Wal-Mart shopper buying the Everex machine because it’s crammed inside a big case, Everex seems ready to keep those buyers using an OS not called Windows, by providing 24-hour tech support via a toll-free call.

That’s an important piece of the puzzle. If Everex can keep buyers happy and returns out of the initial batch to a minimum, they can push another 10,000 out to shoppers. Maybe more. We have to wonder what the magic number will be that prompts some kind of response from Microsoft.

Could Wal-Mart be the vehicle that drives the computing public away from Windows, $200 at a time?

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This relationship is similar to what we see between CentOS and Red Hat already.

CentOS takes RHEL and redistributes it for free. If enough customers of Red Hat were to opt for CentOS instead of RHEL, Red Hat’s revenues would suffer. Hence, Red Hat would cut expenses, including their R&D spending. This could lead to development quality and speed on new feature addition issues inside of RHEL. This, by implication would lead to the same issues within CentOS. As a result, fewer customers would use CentOS, thereby returning the balance between Red Hat and CentOS.

The same scenario applies to Red Hat & Oracle, at least in the near term. That’s why I have a real problem with the likes of Matt Assay crying bloody murder. DISCLAIMER: I don’t like Oracle’s business practices in general. I am incredibly happy that IBM knows how to contribute and participate within the Open Source community and that this is not a move you could really see IBM making. I’m just responding to the outcry from a business and customer standpoint.

From a customer standpoint:

1] If Oracle does a terrible job providing support for RHEL, customers will go (back to) Red Hat. There will be some customer pain while they migrate (back) to Red Hat support, but at least they aren’t locked in.

[2] If Oracle does a great job at it, customers win. (Unlikely if you ask me

[2b] If Oracle wins a lot of (new) customers (from Red Hat) and inhibits the growth of Red Hat, this would cause Red Hat to spend even less on R&D than they do. Now, Oracle has a choice:

• [2b-1] Continue to base their support business on RHEL, even though the lowered R&D spending by Red Hat is resulting in a lower quality product with fewer new features. (Unlikely because this is a do nothing option and customers would lose.)
• [2b-2] Add more Oracle development resources to the Linux development community to make up for the reduced Red Hat R&D. (Likely because we have to assume Oracle will need to add some employees to the community ASAP to help support the unbreakable linux network. Hence, no net negative impact to customers.)
• [2b-3] Oracle acquires Red Hat. (Possible, but not without other large IT vendors jumping in to support Novell SUSE or Ubuntu to ensure that there is more than 1 large IT vendor endorsed/backed Linux distro. No net negative impact to customers.)
• [2b-4] Decide to fork. (Most unlikely, and this would have a negative impact to customers. But on the other hand, maybe it would increase choice for customers.)

[2c] Red Hat’s financial troubles make it an acquisition target for the likes of IBM, HP, Sun, Dell or even SAP. (Possible, but other major IT vendors would act to ensure that choice of Linux distros remains, so no net negative impact to customers).

[3] The Oracle competition just makes Red Hat work even harder at their core Linux offerings, which is where they’ve shown their ability to compete and win. (Most likely

Lots of roads this can take. Lots of possibilities, the majority of which don’t have a large negative impact on customers. It’ll be interesting to see this play out.

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I am taking a semi-break from IBM life as I return to finish a PhD in Industrial Engineering. I’ve held roles in market intelligence, strategy and product management. I’m ex-product manager of IBM WAS Community Edition, and blog about enterprise open source topics.

Linux fans finally got a peek at the long-awaited Flash Player 9 for Linux. During the Flashforward2006 conference in Austin, attendees got to see Adobe Flash Player 9 running in Firefox on a laptop equipped with Ubuntu Linux.

As Mike Melanson noted on his Penguin.SWF blog, this first public demonstration showed the Nike Air website, which was designed for Flash 8. For some reason, the Linux screenshot on the Flashforward conference blog has been reversed though.

(UPDATE: If I’d bothered reading the caption, I’d have seen that the picture was taken from back stage. Gahh!)

In distribution news, yet another Ubuntu-related project came to our attention. Christian Ubuntu has made it into the DistroWatch database, and offers some features oriented to people of faith:

Posters at the Ubuntu Christian Edition Facts blog had some fun with the concept. They have posted a variety of OS “features” to be found in Ubuntu CE, like these examples:

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Last weekend a Thinkpad T43p (80GB disk, 2GB RAM, 1600×1200, etc) arrived on my doorstep and patiently waited for me to finish studying for my FAA written test (passed it this morning, thank you very much).

Now, it ‘s worth noting a few things.

• I’m not new to Linux on laptops. This is the 4th upon which I’ve attempted to run Linux. Over the last six years, I’ve probably spent 1.5 to 2 of them with Linux on a laptop as my primary computer.
• I’m not new to Thinkpads. The T43p that I now own (thanks to eBay) was preceded by the following, in reverse chronological order: T23, T21, 600E, and a 380D.
• In recent years I’ve become quite impatient with software. If it doesn’t actually make my life better, I ditch it much faster.
• I had high expectations of Ubuntu, thanks to all the hype.

Given all that, I’m shocked and amazed. It works. It just works.

Then came the real test. I decided to exercise the power management features. Suspend to disk (hibernate) and suspend to RAM (suspend) worked. In both cases, it worked as well as in Windows (better in some ways) and nearly as good as a Powerbook.

I cannot overstate how important this is: Ubuntu is the first real “desktop” Linux I’ve ever seen. There’s a lot of polish to it, most of the “right” things have been hidden from non-Linux geeks, and it just works.

I’ve read so many other stories like this but had to see it for myself.

If you’ve been waiting years and years for desktop Linux (or laptop Linux) to finally arrive, give Ubuntu a shot. Seriously.

It’s good to have a Linux laptop again. It’s even better not to have to fight it. It’s the freedom and power of a Debian-based Linux without all the hassle.

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Ubuntu’s supporting organization Canonical Ltd announced availability of the Opera web browser for the latest version of the popular Linux distribution. Users who prefer the Add/Remove Programs feature in Ubuntu over apt-get on the command line can pick up Opera in a few clicks.

“We’ve had a Linux browser for a long time,” said Hkon Wium Lie, CTO, Opera Software and long-time Ubuntu user. “But Opera 9 includes new optimizations specifically for the platform.”

As on other platforms, Opera offers built-in BitTorrent support, content blocking, tabbed browsing, and integrated mail and IRC clients, all in the browser.

Ubuntu has soared in popularity since its release. It has mostly stuck to its update cycle of a fresh release every six months, and each release has security update support for 18 months.

Its appeal has become so great, Ubuntu has led a number of people to convert from their operating system of choice. While many of those converts probably came from Windows, or other Linux distributions, a couple of power users of note have made the switch from the vaunted Mac OS.

“Dive Into Python” and “Greasemonkey Hacks” author Mark Pilgrim changed over from Mac to Ubuntu without difficulty, he noted on his site.

Following suggestions that he update a list of essential software maintained on his site, Pilgrim did so. His list includes programs intended to replace their Mac counterparts. Aside from missing iMovie and Quicksilver on the Mac side, Pilgrim has found suitable Ubuntu-friendly software for everything else.

Noteworthy Boing Boing blogger Cory Doctorow has been a Mac users for decades. When it came to a choice between a MacBook Pro and an equivalent notebook from Lenovo, China won out over Cupertino:

Doctorow plans to place Ubuntu on the ThinkPad as well as a spare PowerBook. Think different, indeed, especially from someone with a Mac tattoo on his arm.

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Ubuntu version 6.06 LTS (Long Term Support) will arrive with support for Sun’s UltraSPARC T1 processors that power the company’s Niagara-class servers. Canonical said it and the Ubuntu community were able to port the operating system to the processor quickly with the access available through the OpenSPARC project.

Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu’s founder, cited that community’s ongoing work with the operating system on SPARC processors as providing a good lead-in to official support for it on SPARC-based servers. Ubuntu 6.06 LTS should be available sometime in June 2006.

Canonical provided more details on the forthcoming release:

The announcement could be the beginning of a new challenge to Red Hat for a place in the enterprise market. Red Hat has focused its business on serving and supporting corporate customers only, as the company discarded its desktop distributions and support in favor of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Canonical cited Distrowatch in calling Ubuntu the world’s most popular distribution for desktop users. If a number of those users are system administrators by trade, they could be key in helping Ubuntu find its way into some business datacenters using Sun’s latest servers.

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By including search functionality in the Deskbar, users of the GNOME desktop’s latest release can search their computers or the Internet without having to switch to a browser or other application.

Said GNOME in its release notes: “New to GNOME is the Deskbar. Power users, keyboard enthusiasts and users of the old panel command line will find this replacement incredibly powerful and easy to use. Deskbar uses plugins (written in Python) to provide search functionality for programs, files, folders, bookmarks, contacts and much more. Deskbar can also use the live search functionality of Google Live, Yahoo and Beagle.”

Users can enter a term into a search box, then select from a panel of search options. Those options can trigger a desktop event, like a program launch, or be used to search online sources like Google, Yahoo, and Answers.com.

As newer versions of popular Linux distributions like Ubuntu, Debian, and others become available, GNOME 2.14 will be included as a desktop option.

The GNOME Foundation also noted in a statement how its desktop is in use in some of the biggest government deployments of Linux in the world, such as those in Extremadura, Spain, and Sao Paulo, Brazil.

With this release, the GNOME project has as of the current version a suite of administration tools available. It includes several tools to help administrators at enterprise-level businesses manage remote desktops, and improves access to PC lockdown tools.

The Pessulus lockdown editor puts a graphical interface on top of GNOME’s existing lockdown capabilities. Admins can prevent users from gaining command-line access to a machine, or keep them from shutting it down or rebooting.

Also, GNOME included the Sabayon profile editor. Admins can set up profiles and personalize them based on user roles in the business. Once created, the profiles can be deployed to machines destined for a user with a particular role.

Since the profiles are maintained centrally, admins can change them as needed in one place to affect all users of that profile.

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After seeing this story on a couple of sites, I thought this had to be a joke. Professor Gurdy Leete, with a domain called PeaceLoveAndHappiness.org? Maharishi University of Management? Trancedental consciousness as part of the curriculum?

Even more unbelievable, wiping OS X off Mac hardware in favor of the Ubuntu Linux distribution? That’s no criticism of Ubuntu, by the way, it’s the delete-OS-X-thing that’s most surprising.

Maybe the use of Linux involves a higher level of consciousness. It’s been a while since I’ve read “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind” anyway. So I treated the report like the sunrise of a new day.

Leete took that beautiful Mac OS X off the machines in the school’s digital media lab, replacing it with Ubuntu. Photoshop, Freehand, QuarkXpress, and Dreamweaver also met a horrific reformatting fate.

The horror. The horror.

In their place, Leete installed the Gimp, Inkscape, Scribus, and Quanta Plus. Oh, and Leete added FontForge for typespace design.

Leete touched on concerns from his students over using these alternatives instead of the industry standards in the article:

Leete observed how programs like Photoshop “generally had more polished interfaces and more advanced features than the free software we chose.” But the replacements more than than fulfilled the core capabilities his classes required.

The professor also noticed a significant financial impact from the decision:

The experiment had some bumps, many of which Ubuntu’s support forums handled adeptly. Leete noted how their scanner was not supported in Ubuntu, so he left Mac OS X on one machine and the scanner connected to it.

Overall the changes satisfied Leete, and his students. He may not have needed to send Mac OS X to the Trash, though, as one commenter on the NewsForge thread complained:

It’s still an interesting account of a switch to Linux, especially since Microsoft’s name wasn’t invoked with assorted profanities for a change. Higher consciousness indeed.

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