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In fact for the desktop I think Ubuntu would be the better choice. they are more desktop oriented and that is the market the project is aiming for. Sure they have other side things for server and devices but Desktop is their primary audience. I'm not an Ubuntu fanboy or anything but I do like the distro and think that it is one of the better distros for desktop users out there. I haven't found a reason to switch yet and I used to love distro hopping. I really don't understand where that statement is coming from. Considering the size of the community you would think that it would be a good thing but sometimes these short little quips seem like envious rants to me. Oh well.

Ubuntu doesn't really target the market they're looking for, they're targetting small to mid-sized businesses and they started the pilot project with RHEL.

HP has certifications and expertise in place with both Red Hat and Novell; both vendors are experienced with enterprise support requirements, and have sufficient resources to support their commercial products with any SLA the customer requires, as well as the technical capabilities to address hardware issues. Commercial software packages, those few that do run on linux, generally only support RH and SLED. Not sure about RH, but SLED comes out of the box ready to work within an ActiveDirectory based network. Both RH and SLED have management tools for deploying and maintaining multiple installations.

Certainly neither RH or Novell offer anything in their distros software/application-wise that Ubuntu can't offer either, but business requirements differ greatly from personal requirements, and the community is generally far more tolerant than paid commercial customers are when things go wrong.

That's not to say that there's anything with Ubuntu or that it is inherently flawed, but if you compare Dell's approach with Ubuntu consumer PC's ("post in the forums or mailing list and hope for an answer if you have any problems, but don't call us"), that just won't cut it for business customers.

Not sure of what HP's plans are for support, or the level to which they'll integrate their vendor support with Red Hat's (or Novell's if they go that route as well), but customers can be assured that they have an enterprise-level organization backing them up either way.

It's simply targeting a different product for a different market.

Dell is offering optional phone tech support for Ubuntu, there is no reason you need to post in the forums if you prefer to call someone. Its not much added cost to the computer to have that available either.

elsewhere's point still stands.

The Canonical support one can buy with a Dell PC is aimed at individual consumers, not at businesses.

There is a reason why Dell currently doesn't have Linux PCs in its business section and why the respective request is ranking quite highly on IdeaStorm.

Right now, Novell and Redhat have a larger network of support partners which can handle support for the customers HP is aiming at

Personal opinion:

While Novell and Red Hat already have a lock on the corporate Linux desktop and server, I think that Canonical will eventually have to go into that sphere as well.

In fact, I think that Desktop Linux, and FOSS in general, will find its primary audience in business/government desktop computing. The current legal protractions in desktop computing involve office document formats (ODF vs. OOXML), and everyone has their sentiments invested in either side.

But do you hear as much emotional hoopla involving DesktopLinux/FOSS and *multimedia formats*? I don't.

I have not heard that much about the promotion of formats such as SVG, SMIL, and Ogg (Theora or Vorbis) within the last year or so, compared to the volume of the office document format war.

Instead, Linux (home) users are still begging Adobe to release a full version of both Flash 9 and Shockwave. The Xiph.Org project is still working under the shadow of Thomson and Fraunhofer: http://www.news.com/2100-1023-249710.html Nevermind that we don't have an open source competitor to Adobe's or Microsoft's multimedia offerings.

So does DesktopLinux/FOSS have a chance in the home desktop computing field? Not any time soon.

Does it have a chance in the corporate desktop computing field, which doesn't demand that much multimedia? Hell yes.

So I think Canonical's pursuing a fruitless endeavor in the home desktop computer, and should instead focus on the more lucrative corporate desktop, offering a competitive alternative to Novell, Red Hat, and maybe Mandriva. Another startup in the future will probably appeal to high-end home desktop PC vendors like Alienware, Velocity Micro, and Falcon Northwest.

By that time, there will be greater, and hopefully better, efforts for multimedia on the FOSS-based home desktop. Canonical just doesn't seem to truly have their priorities in that area.

Unfortunately, neither does any recognizable Desktop Linux distro vendor at the time of writing.

Edited 2007-09-20 22:29

"But do you hear as much emotional hoopla involving DesktopLinux/FOSS and *multimedia formats*? I don't.

I have not heard that much about the promotion of formats such as SVG, SMIL, and Ogg (Theora or Vorbis) within the last year or so, compared to the volume of the office document format war.

Instead, Linux (home) users are still begging Adobe to release a full version of both Flash 9 and Shockwave. The Xiph.Org project is still working under the shadow of Thomson and Fraunhofer: http://www.news.com/2100-1023-249710.html Nevermind that we don't have an open source competitor to Adobe's or Microsoft's multimedia offerings. "

I disagree with your two points. The first albeit you could be right, but its not just the format, its the DRM and they cannot be separated unfortunately for content. we have see the *Microsoft* solution which vendors are both wary off and hoping to rise on the back off, but Microsoft with the exception of games is not a content provider. You see in China's own HD, and the steps taken with blu-ray using Mpeg2 technolgy just so they have an alternative to Microsoft Lock-in. and without bringing up the PlayForSure solution offered by Microsoft. We are also seeing the start of the anti-trust cases. We have seen the overreaching DRM that has a side effect of moving codecs, from perhaps the better solution of the CPU doing the lifting to hardware solutions. I suspect very strongly that Apple will not encumber *their* OS offering. I suspect the final outcome of these large companies is DRM encumbered closed format not tied to any platform, and I don't just mean OS I mean hardware with little OS.

I bring up your second point and perhaps make a different one. I cannot see Adobe continuing as its doing. Its only a matter of time before it either Open-sources and I use the right term *everything*...and its made moves that way with loosening its licensing restrictions on its formats, or is forms closer ties/absorbed by Apple or Google, for obvious reasons. Microsoft have made no smalls about it being the a market it wants, and because have low level control of just about everything, as we have seen from history of Netscape, Realplayer, OpenGL, Wordperfect ignoring Microsofts own crooked dealing; one misstep and the faithful leave you, Only Microsoft is is in a position to retain Microsoft Dominance. Although personally I will not shed a tear when one Monopoly swallows another Monopoly.

you wrote: OK. Why is that? I'm all for SLED 10, but he makes it sound like ubuntu would be a bad choice?!

A couple reasons come to mind:

1. No need to add another distro into the support mix.
2. HP may be aware that not everyone loves Ubuntu, and they intend to provide alternatives.

Granted that you do have a point, But the real question was why did he make it sound Like Ubuntu would be a bad choice. Really for the desktop Ubuntu is a great distro. I think it would be a fine option for them to look.

Now being that I use Ubuntu I would have no issues if they picked Sled,RHEL or any other distro under the sun as I already have a retailer to buy from.

Why would you offer the same OS as your competitor?

Think man, think. Unless Canonical wanted to become the Microsoft of Linux/FOSS on the Desktop (and look how well that worked out for Microsoft), it wouldn't make sense for Dell and HP to offer the same OS and still go through the same hardware-compatibility changes as desktop computers which host WinXP or WinVista.

"Think man, think. Unless Canonical wanted to become the Microsoft of Linux/FOSS on the Desktop (and look how well that worked out for Microsoft)"

I think it worked out pretty good for MS. Maybe not for us, but certainly for MS.

OK, yes it worked out for MS. I stand corrected.

But did it work out for the customer? Of course, it didn't.

The second best situation is "one-distro-per-manufacturer". The ultimate best situation is if the distro vendor also makes its own computers (like Apple's "whole widget", but with a more generic OS).

But to have one distro catering to a number of hardware vendors invites the same customer service problems as Microsoft invited.

Because Ubuntu is very nice for home users, but lacks a lot of the software certifications provided by Novell and Redhat as well as the provisioning and management tools that make it a no-brainer in larger networks.

I am sure that Ubuntu will get there in time, but until I see something as thorough as the Yast management modules integrated into Ubuntu, Ubuntu will have a hard time winning enterprise deployments.

Which is ok. It takes a while to build an enterprise level distribution, but I am sure it will get there. The next LTS release from Ubuntu is the one to watch in order to see whether Ubuntu can be really taken seriously.

I'm still trying to decide how Ubuntu is better than all the other 500 distributions out there.

I think far too much of Ubuntu's thunder is generated by propagating hype.

Ubuntu deserves the hype because they went after the Desktop market, with little to no competition and have successfully attracted Windows users, rather join a fight for the few users that already use one of the 500 distributions. The forums are wonderful too.

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Yes. The Ubuntu forums are phenomenal. Watching user help user there makes me feel very *good* about where we are headed.

Gone are the days that an old hand can tell a new user to RTFM. He get's canned in a minute, and some nice caring person actually answers the new user's question.

The reign of us pretentious old farts is on the way out. And that's a good thing. ;-)

Cyclops, this is not intimidation. *Far* from it. I agree with your positive opinion of the Ubuntu Forums! *Very* sincerely!

How do you figure, do you have any stats on that?

Do a search through this site, or many others, and find out how many ubuntu references start with "I tried xxx and yyy, but switched to ubuntu" or "I used zzz for a long time, but switched to ubuntu".

Ubuntu is great for newbs and simplifies things for people interested in linux, but I'd question whether it's bringing Windows users into the fold any more than linux in general is. I suspect it's capturing a lot of interest from people frustrated with other linux distributions for one reason or another.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, but let's keep things in perspective. Ubuntu is directly targeting the other 500 linux distros. Windows users that have never touched linux are an incremental bonus.

Ubuntu isn't better then the 500 other distro's out there it is different then most of those distro's. Before Ubuntu I used Fedora and when I made the move my day to day life became a lot easier now I know Fedora is doing a lot and has gotten a lot better from Core 5 when I was last on it but still Ubuntu has been pushing a number of distro's be better on the desktop and that is a good thing.

Because Conical does not have a world wide support network to the same level which Novell has - and no, Red Hat is just as bad as Conical in that regard - they can't even be bothered setting up an office in New Zealand.

Use SLED SP1 and then you'll see why it is a better than Ubuntu; one is a long term, well supported operating system whose parent company is injecting vast sums of money investing into improving Linux on the desktop the other is a distribution with very little distribution support for the long term, no local offices around the world and minimal support structures in place.

HP needs a long term partner, someone who has a global presence with a good reputation with customers both business/corporate and home users. Someone who is also able to work with Microsoft and other companies to bring across support without needing to descend into a cycle of anti-proprietary rantings - as with the case of Red Hat and their refusal to provide out of the box proprietary CODEC support.

They actually did read the article, and indeed they did stick a fork in Linux.
Then, they tasted it, and liked what they tasted, hence we have this article.

"Stick a fork in it" translates to: "It's ready."

Like it or not, we don't care.

Er, do you get this whole OSS thing? If HP has to go out and start throwing money at acquisitions in order to make minimal-margin desktop systems succeed with linux, is there really an advantage over just slapping a $30 copy of Windows instead?

If HP has to buy a linux distro to make linux work the way they want it to, then linux, to a certain extent, has failed. Or HP has. Either way, that's not the way it's supposed to work.

I run Fedora, CentOS, and Ubuntu. I recommend Ubuntu to new users. For myself, I'm not certain which I prefer. I feel more at home with Fedora, since I have a long history with it. But the huge degree of package availability, and convenience features, of Ubuntu... are extremely tempting. So I use Fedora 7 on my desktop and Ubuntu Feisty on the laptop. ;-)

My customers get CentOS on their servers.

"Ubuntu = vendor lock in the same exact problem people complained about before hand with MS. Now the group is saying Ubuntu with no other options, to me that is ludicrous."

I remember when there was a great deal of fear that Red Hat would become a monopolistic Vendor of GNU. I would argue that here which isn't the best barometor of what is happening Fedora is becoming the mover and shaker of the Desktop.

I've tried to find a quote about red hat saying it wasn't interested in the Desktop, but am actually finding more evidence to the reverse.

I think Red Hat *gave* that market away. As you can see with the explosion of popularity with Ubuntu there was a pent up demand for a credible alternative OS to windows. Red Hat just didn't step up.

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I've tried to find a quote about red hat saying it wasn't interested in the Desktop, but am actually finding more evidence to the reverse.
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Matthew Szulik did make a comment, a number of years ago, about how Linux was not ready for the home user. It was widely misinterpreted as meaning that he didn't think that Linux was for the desktop.

RedHat did ignore the desktop for a long time. But they are back. Currently, they are seeking to gain some mindshare regarding the business desktop. They have a good shot at it.

But Ubuntu is making some pretty serious inroads on the "casual desktop". That includes pretty much everyone who is not willing to pay, per seat, for support. Most of my clients fall into that category.

Me? At age 44, my seat could use some support. ;-)

Cyclops...whatever it is you're smoking, give it a rest mate.

probably more accurate to say that RH franchised out the desktop to Fedora, whilst concentratin on their business line (EL,ES,WS etc)

Well, OK. If you want to quibble about accuracy, this classic link puts the situation about as accurately as it *can* be put:

http://lwn.net/Articles/83360/

Red Hat didn't really give it away, because there was no market to give away at the time that Red Hat backed away from the desktop. Red Hat slipped, though, in anticipating the point when interest would grow for linux desktops, but it was SLED, not Ubuntu, that led to their renewed interest.

Calling Ubuntu interest "explosive" is dramatic, but one has to wonder how popular it would be if people had to pay for it. THAT is the metric that ISV's will look at before determining whether or not supporting linux as a platform makes business sense. Companies have to question whether people clamoring for a free-as-in-beer desktop and related apps are going to be willing to pay for a not-free commercial application. Red Hat, back then, decided they weren't, and so backed away.

Ubuntu can land on 100,000,000 desktops around the world, but as long as it is free and there are no metrics to measure it, it will not matter to the industry. Sad as that is. Red Hat selling 1,000,000 desktop licenses, on the other hand, would garner headlines and likely lead to vendors acknowledging the linux desktop. 1,000,000 people spending money for a linux distro carries more marketing weight than 100,000,000 people using a freely downloadable distro. It's simply the way the world works. At least at this point in time; hopefully that may change.

"ubuntu isnt the best."
Hell yeah. Linux isn't the best either. Solaris is better than it, but if you look at ubuntu and how simple and rich it can install packages for you, you would understand why it can replace windows and why other distros need to do like them.
If I want to download and install nvidia drivers and the latest kernel patches then it won't matter like in other distros where you have to go nerd and recompile the device driver. Ubuntu will install the kernel updates and won't affect the drivers installed. And their packaging system richness where you can basically install all software you dream off; amule, azureus, java latest, msttruetype fonts, flash, codecs and others and others .. I tested fedora 8 beta and I found that it improved a lot from previous versions, but it is not as rich as ubuntu Add/Remove in its capability in handling conflicts of packages.
I personally like RHEL or CentOS but they are not easy if you want to install the appz you like especially when they ask for endless amount of dependancy packages. Until then ubuntu is the king of desktop