Originally, Dell announced that it was going to ship Ubuntu systems only in the U.S.. Then Dell announced the addition of Germany, France and the U.K to the list of countries getting Ubuntu Dells. Now you can add Canada and all of Central and South America to the list.

Dell is clearly not doing this as a charity or public service; there is a real demand for these systems, contrary to what the occasional naysayer would have you believe (n.b., consider the source) .

I expect that in the not-too-distant future, Dell will add Australia and most of Europe to the list of nations being offered Ubuntu systems. I wouldn’t be surprised if the timing is planned for shortly after the Hardy Heron (Ubuntu 8.04) release in April, or its update (aka ’service pack’ in Microspeak) 8.04.1 in June.

Today’s top server hardware vendors have expanded the line of Linux compatible server systems. HP and Dell, for example, have Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux available as OEM build installations, the same hardware that a Windows server can be built on. As recommended configurations from the vendors are quite similar, this can make any server purchases a little easier to swallow. Because configurations are similar for Windows and Enterprise Linux builds, these servers can be repurposed to change their roles to Windows or Linux without additional equipment.

Take for example the HP ProLiant DL 380 G5 and the Dell PowerEdge 2950 III, which can be configured for a general purpose Windows or Linux server and can have most connectivity options available: fiber networking interfaces, storage area network (SAN) fiber channel adapters and any additional copper networking. The local drive configurations currently use serial attached SCSI (SAS) drives with local array controller. 

Dell and HP generally divide models by Intel and AMD processor offerings, so the selection process is aided by that distinction. If you strive for a common server for the Enterprise Linux builds and the Windows server space, a uniform processor brand platform is a must. 

Choose wisely

If you embark on the single server across software groups, be sure to get all members on board and mutually agree on a server specification. If the needs are different, it may be more likely to work in terms of base server and customize up as required. This can save the incremental cost of a small number of under-utilized servers in a mixed environment. 

At CIO.com today, Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth gives a nice year-ending top ten list on a topic he’s surely familiar with on the most intimate of levels: Ubuntu.

More specifically, Shuttleworth talks about the Top Ten Reasons Why Ubuntu Is Best for Enterprise Use. In the list Shuttleworth runs down the usual laundry list of pro-Linux items, including flexibility, cost, support chops and its strong security track record; and addressed a few new ones as well like application selection. “There are more than 20,000 packages immediately available to Ubuntu users. These include the largest selection of open-source tools and a growing list of proprietary applications,” he said.

Normally, a CEO waxing positively about his own product is nothing new, but this year has been a roller coaster ride for Ubuntu and I can’t help but think this column is a harbinger of things to come for the OS.

First, there were two substantial releases for Ubuntu this year. In April Feisty Fawn (7.04) launched, and Canonical was again beating the server drum full-force to get users to notice that this free little distro had matured over the past two years. Deploying it on the server was now an option said Jane Silber, Canonical’s director of operations. “On the server side, we have increased support for virtualization, and Ubuntu now supports a number of virtualization technologies. We have been working with VMware on some performance testing with Ubuntu as a guest operating system and as the host OS. We have seen very good performance numbers there. We also have Xen in the universe repository, and we’ve added [Kernel-based Virtual Machine] support,” she said.

I had already written about this a few times over the past year and I was looking for something beyond what Canonical was already saying about what was being put into Ubuntu’s code.

We go that response in May, and it was a small landslide victory for Canonical. In a joint statement released May 3, Dell Inc.. and Canonical announced that Dell would offer laptops and desktop computers pre-installed with Ubuntu Linux 7.04. Dell CEO Michael Dell acquired a Precision M90 mobile workstation and loaded it with Ubuntu 7.04 and a host of open source applications just to cap the whole announcement off. At the time, Raven Zachary, a senior analyst with New York-based 451 Group, said the news also meant users could expect an Ubuntu server offering from Dell in the near future. “I think you will find Dell, over time, also offering Ubuntu across its server product line as Ubuntu grows in popularity in the data center,” he said.

Nice segue, Raven, because what happened next was right up that alley. During a qucik call with Canonical’s marketing director Gerry Carr in August, he and I started talking about hardware vendors and which among them might be ideal candidates for pre-installed Ubuntu. “[Pre-installed Ubuntu on the server] is something we would like to do, and we’ve made no secret about it,” Carr said. “Customers have asked for this, and if people want to see Ubuntu pre-installed on Dell servers, then they should go to [Dell] IdeaStorm and continue to ask for it.” The Dell/Ubuntu program was expanded to encompass Europe in August, and observers at the time said it was yet another indicator of Ubuntu’s building momentum.

Carr said that while the deal will “hopefully be with Dell,” Canonical is also considering server vendors other than Dell, and at a later date the company will reveal the results of those talks. “This doesn’t mean a deal is imminent, but those who want and require Ubuntu on the server will have something available reasonably soon,” he said.

Which leads us to the present. Last week, at Linux-Watch.com, Rick Becker, Dell Product Group’s vice president of applications, said Dell is currently in the process of certifying Ubuntu for all its server lines. “But we are still several months away from announcing a certification. I’d say it’ll be announced in Q1 next year,” he said.

The Ubuntu firehose is now open, but there are still a few obstacles to address before the prerequisite “touchdown” articles are written (how’s that for a mixed metaphor?) How big is the demand, you ask? Dell IdeaStorm received more than 130,000 requests for pre-installed desktop Ubuntu in early 2007, but that number is a pin drop compared to the number of Red Hat and Novell instances in the enterprise today. And that number pales in comparison to the number of Microsoft Windows deployments worldwide. There’s also the recently raised concerns about Ubuntu’s documentation to address as well.

Regardless, the momentum is building around Ubuntu on both the desktop and the server. Whether or not it reaches critical mass is something we’ll have to dig into now, won’t we?

It’s a day of blog subject line questions, apparently.

The subject line question is asked today because there’s apparently some concern over Gutsy Gibbon’s documentation. Gibbon is the latest release of Ubuntu, version 7.10, which came out last month to the usual fanfare associated with new Ubuntu releases.

That said, Carla Schroder, writing for Enterprise Networking Planet, has a bone to pick with Canonical and the Ubuntu development team over documentation:

Whatever anyone may think of Ubuntu, you can’t deny they’re busy little critters, stuffing all manner of new things into every release. Which is a splendid thing, and what would make it even better is if they documented all of these wonderful new things. And also the old things. I think it’s the worst of the major Linux distributions for documentation. I spent a considerable amount of time trying to find out what makes Ubuntu’s server kernel different from a desktop kernel, what exactly is the OEM installation, where is the online package search page, what’s new in this release, and what’s included in this release. www.ubuntu.com is poorly-organized and seems more marketing-oriented than informative.

In our overview of Linux support, then and now, from this earlier summer, we identified similar documentation concerns with Linux in general. To see that one of the signature distros (and by that I mean one of the most wildly popular ones outside of Red Hat and Novell) is suffering from poor documentation is troubling to say the least.

In 2003, systems administrator Pati Moss said some online Linux/OSS instructions are very “high level and difficult to decipher.” IT manager Rick Segeberg agreed: “Newbies to Linux (especially non-programmers) find it difficult to follow the very technical documentation and how-tos that are available,” he said. “Most of the technical documentation is done by technical people for technical people.”

So documentation can be too technical and difficult to decipher. Got it. In our overview this was still a “thorn in the side” of IT managers, but at least Red Hat and Novell had stepped up to offer paid, professional support. But with Ubuntu, however, things are apparently too sparse! Not a good sign when Mark Shuttleworth and company at Canonical are trying to get Ubuntu pre-installed on commodity hardware from vendors like Dell.

Schroder again (under the wonderful subject line, “Dammit, Jim, I need documentation!”):

The Ubuntu release notes are quite sparse, and they lump the server and desktop editions together. There are bug reports and workarounds, but where is the list of major and new features? AppArmor is a radically new inclusion, but the only mention of it is that it breaks printing. What is it, and what do you do with it? What are the kernel versions, and versions of major applications like Apache and … well, what exactly comes with this release? What hardware architectures are supported, and what are some of the specific issues for them? And so forth—just cruise the Debian and Fedora release notes to see how it should be done. In fact you can check out older Ubuntu release notes—the farther back you go, the more complete they are, though they’re still short of what they should be.

The problem here, it seems, is that the notes assume a lot on the part of the reader. Do I know what AppArmor is? Sure I do, but I write about OS’s like Novell SUSE Linux and I know that AppArmor has been included in that distro for quite some time.

A huge part of the Linux ecosystem is documentation. Ubuntu Server — at least for one columnist — comes up short: “It’s also typical to include batches of READMEs and CHANGES and other helpful documentation on installation CDs. Don’t bother looking on the Ubuntu Server CD for these, because there aren’t any. However, it does include the “Ubuntu Installation Guide”, which is actually the Debian Installation Guide with some minor modifications, such as changing “Debian” to “Ubuntu”, and adding useful links to online Ubuntu resources,” Schroder said.

Apparently the Ubuntu documentation is Debian stuff dressed up with Ubuntu branding. Sounds kind of like what CentOS does with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (in reverse, of course), but in this case it’s a bad thing. Enterprise users want enterprise level documentation with their Linux OS. If Canonical is truly serious about getting Ubuntu pre-installed on commodity hardware, they’d best be tweaking their docs … do you agree?

Are Linux server sales increasing faster than Windows? Previous research from IDC said no, but Dell’s Michael Dell said otherwise at the Gartner Symposium/IT Expo last week.

Silicon.com:

Dell said his company has seen Linux uptake for servers increase faster than Windows server products, despite Microsoft’s claims.

He said: “On the server side Linux continues to grow nicely, a bit faster than Windows. We’re seeing a move to Linux in critical applications, and Linux migration has not slowed down.”

However, for those customers who might be concerned about whether Microsoft’s claims of patent violation could result in legal action, Dell added that there were “certainly mechanisms if customers are concerned about patents”.

With the arrival of Ubuntu 7.10 only a few days away, consider the Linux on the server stories to reach a feverish pitch — again. Will Dell start pre-installing Ubuntu on its servers after the Ubuntu Server tweaking that’s gone on for the past six months? Will they continue to watch what happens with the Ubuntu desktops and laptops it started selling earlier this year?

Hopefully, we’ll get the answers to these questions and more during a Q&A with Canonical’s Mark Shuttleworth tomorrow at 12 EST. The rest, as always, is up to Dell. Comments like these are encouraging, however.

Well known tech columnist Walt Mossberg reviews the latest Ubuntu build on some Dell hardware and comes away with mixed emotions. Like watching your ex wife go over a cliff in your brand new Mercedes, Mossberg sees Ubuntu as “easier to use” but still lacking the polish necessary to make it big with Joe User.

My verdict: Even in the relatively slick Ubuntu variation, Linux is still too rough around the edges for the vast majority of computer users. While Ubuntu looks a lot like Windows or Mac OS X, it is full of little complications and hassles that will quickly frustrate most people who just want to use their computers, not maintain or tweak them.

And tweak he does. In the column, Mossberg goes through a routine that’s now familiar to a vast number of people — tech-savvy or no. For example, there is no control panel for adjusting the way the touch pad works. It was too sensitive and unmodifiable. Every time the computer awoke from sleep, the volume control software crashed and had to be reloaded, he said.

“When I tried to play common audio and video files, such as MP3 songs, I was told I had to first download special files called codecs that are built into Windows and Mac computers. I was warned that some of these codecs might be “bad” or “ugly,” Mossberg wrote in his column. A Kodak camera and every hipster’s staple, the iPod, also failed to synch with the system. Video flickered and froze, seemingly at random. DVDs just don’t play. Etc etc.

Now, on the server none of this matters, obviously. But for the consumer it’s everything. If iPods don’t play then, well, it’s going to be the holiday apocalypse. Especially if dad didn’t find a Wii for under the tree. Linux’s time will come though, right? At least, that’s what every “year in review” article I’ve written for the past four years has said anyway.

There’s a different angle that reaches the same conclusion over at Brian Proffit’s LinuxToday blog. Entitled, “Ubuntu fails to impress,” the post is more about hardware drivers than it is the failings of Ubuntu.

Blogbeebe took a look at just how many Ubuntu PCs Dell is expected to *really* sell this year and after further review the amount is “not many.”

I’m inclined to agree with that analysis, even in light of SearchEnterpriseLinux.com’s coverage of Dell’s expansion of the pre-installed Linux program into European markets. I’ll try to explain why.

When I headed out to San Fran earlier this month for LinuxWorld, I got the chance to have what was pretty much a one-on-one with Dell execs during a dinner meeting before the show began. A handful of journalists, including SearchDataCenter’s own Matt Stansberry, got to sit toe to to with Dell execs and discuss carte blanche anything and everything they wanted (this included a rather lengthy debate on Grizzly Bear hunting in the wilds of Alaska. Thanks, Matt).

While much of the conversation focused on Dell’s energy saving hardware initiatives (The Next Generation Data Center was being held concurrently with LinuxWorld this year), I took the opportunity to try and get Dell execs to define what “success” means for their pre-installed Ubuntu Linux on Dell hardware program, which was unveiled earlier this year in May.

Why try and define it, especially as the program was being expanded to select European nations?

Well, first off, as I wrote about in my article covering the expansion, the European market *hearts* Linux a bit more than we Yanks in the States, so the move was seen by some as a no-brainer for Dell. Second, and more importantly, Dell refused to give any numbers whatsoever on the program. Instead, when pressed at that dinner, Dell’s director of enterprise marketing Judy Chavis told me that the move to Europe in and of itself was enough proof that the program was working. Perhaps it is, but 20,000 units shipped isn’t even close to the more than 120,000 or so users who demanded that Dell change its ways on the IdeaStorm site.

Multiple sources always help, so here’s Channel Insider’s Scott Ferguson on that same Dell dinner:

So far, it’s hard for Dell to measure the full success of its Linux launch. Judy Chavis, director of enterprise marketing for Dell, said it would take some time for outside analysts and the company to determine the exact number of customers buying and using the company’s Ubuntu PCs. However, judging by the response the company received when the idea was first floated on Dell’s IdeaStorm blog in Feb., the notion of the Linux desktop is catching on with the public.

“A lot has to do with people being comfortable with a Linux desktop,” Chavis said. “What we are seeing are customers who are on their second PC and are looking to give it a try and see what happens. One of the big benefits for us is that the applications are much better on the desktop side then they were several years ago.”

It’s hard to measure because Judy wasn’t telling us :-).

Now, is 120,000 a large number of people? It is by itself, sure, but comparatively speaking it’s kind of pathetic stacked up next to the number of people running Windows XP right now. Its growing, I know. However, it’s also, strangely, much larger than the 20,000 people who have bought an Ubuntu desktop or laptop thus far — as I said earlier, where are the other 100,000?!

Here’s some timely PC news to put that number into context: Taiwan’s leading computer seller Acer will soon take over PC maker Gateway in a $710m deal. According to an article from the BBC, the takeover will create the world’s third largest producer of personal computers, with shipments of more than 20 million PCs and sales of $15 billion. That’s the third largest, and they’re selling 20 MILLION PC’s!

I’ve also seen a fair share of excuses over at sites LinxuToday.com, which is disheartening. It’s disheartening because there’s no conspiracy here, at least on Dell’s part. Theyt aren’t “hiding” the Ubuntu boxes on their web site, and this is certainly not a “project that was designed to fail.” Why? Because the simplest explanation is often the right one. Not supplying Linux woudl have been cheaper than supplying it and then hiding it. People need to get serious here and really look at the reasons why the number sold is only 20,000.

Is it still early, and therefore too early to pass judgment? Maybe. But for all the fervor heaped onto this IdeaStorm coup, there appears to be very little follow up from the Linux community; which had been so passionate in the months preceding Dell’s May announcement.

Maybe they’re all waiting for Hannahkwanzachristmakkah. Maybe 20k is all there is. If so, it doesn’t bode well for Ubuntu’s future on Dell.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/yDiffLd3ta8" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]Holy cripes, we’re video blogging now. With the help of my trusty camerawoman and Site Editor Jan Stafford, I recorded this video blog about Dell’s recent decision to offer pre-installed Linux desktops and laptops in the U.K. France and Germany.

The VAR guy’s Spidey Sense is tingling because of some Ubuntu rumor today…

4. Sun Microsystems Cares about Desktop Linux: Sure, Ubuntu has a server version but most folks keep a closer eye on its desktop counterpart. Sun’s decision to sponsor the event hints that CEO Jonathan Schwartz continues to preach open source throughout the company — including the desktop. And, not by coincidence, Sun recently announced plans to add more Linux capabilities to the Solaris operating system.

3. SuSE Linux Isn’t Novell’s Only Priority: In fact, Crispin Cowan, director of software engineering at Novell/SuSE, will speak at the conference about AppArmor, a security program that has been ported to Ubuntu.

2. Red Hat Is Missing In Action: Generally speaking, The VAR Guy remains bullish on Red Hat. But the company apparently doesn’t have any guest speakers confirmed for the Ubuntu LIVE conference. That’s foolish. Surely, IT managers want to know how Red Hat servers can potentially integrate with Ubuntu desktops — and vice versa.

1. HP May Make A Major Ubuntu Move: You’ve heard that Dell preinstalls Ubuntu on selected consumer PCs and laptops. Rumors are swirling that Hewlett-Packard will soon follow suit. Bdale Garbee, Hewlett-Packard’s Linux CTO, is scheduled to keynote the Ubuntu LIVE conference on Monday, July 23. This is pure speculation by The VAR Guy, but it’s the perfect stage to announce an Ubuntu initiative at HP.

We’ve reported on a few of these at SearchEnterpriseLinux.com already, but it’s interesting to see some more grist from the rumor mill hitting the floor. You can see what I mean here (Sun to make OpenSolaris more ‘Linux-like’), here (Dell announces Ubuntu desktops and laptops), and later next month we’ll be covering more Red Hat and Novell news at LinuxWorld San Francisco. AppArmor and SELinux both have sessions at the conference. Should be interesting to see what attendees of each session have to say about the other.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/g6UWUTCeRaI" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]Apparently this link is being provided by Dell at their Direct2Dell website … … …