Back in October 2011 we launched a joint initiative with Dell in China to sell machines pre-loaded with Ubuntu through their retail stores. The stores featured Ubuntu on a wide range of Dell computers, carried Ubuntu branded marketing collateral in-store, had trained staff positioning the benefits and advantages of Ubuntu to consumers and were supported by a retail team of Ubuntu merchandisers, set up to support those stores.

Ambitiously kicking off with a goal of 220 stores, the response has been phenomenal – and we’re delighted to confirm that we’ll be expanding the number of stores in China to 350 and beyond over the next few months. Also, look out for great new point-of-sale materials locally designed and produced by the Dell China team.

Behind the scenes we’re also working on a number of cool initiatives in China – improving ways of bringing Ubuntu to you.

Today, we announced that we are now extending this exciting programme into, and across India. To help support the growth and demand in India the program will start with a widescale roll out to 850 stores across India. As well as consumers and students, the stores will target and service the growing number of SMB and corporate customers using Ubuntu across India.

Over the next few months we will extend the retail programme further into new markets, with the goal of providing greater choice of devices pre-loaded with the latest versions of Ubuntu and vastly improved quality of advice from staff in resellers.

As always, we’re delighted to hear your feedback and suggestions.

We’re announcing today that you can obtain and launch Official Ubuntu Images from Canonical on Windows Azure. Windows Azure is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) from Microsoft that now includes the ability to manage individual virtual machines so that you can fully customize and control the infrastructure behind your cloud instances. Many developers and IT shops use both Ubuntu and Windows and as workloads migrate to the cloud, the case for making Ubuntu available on Windows Azure became even more compelling.  Canonical and Microsoft worked together to ensure that Ubuntu, the leading operating system for the Cloud is tested, certified and enterprise ready from the start.

During the current Spring Release of Windows Azure, you can launch Ubuntu images directly from the Windows Azure Gallery. The Windows Azure gallery currently contains Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS and support is available directly from Canonical. In the Fall Release of Windows Azure you will be able to buy support directly from the Windows Azure Gallery. If you want to deploy Ubuntu on multiple clouds as well as in your data center, our commercial support offering, Ubuntu Advantage provides mission critical support along with capabilities for automating and managing your Ubuntu environment. If you want to create new applications and scale them as you go the hourly support option could be just what you’re looking for. No matter which option you choose you can have the assurance that Canonical stands behind your Ubuntu solution in the cloud.

We’ve made sure that using Ubuntu on Windows Azure is a great experience right now but we’re eager to hear from you what other capabilities would make it even more exciting and useful. You can take Ubuntu for Windows Azure for a spin at http://www.windowsazure.com

We’ve been extremely busy at Computex, with over 1,000 people visiting the Ubuntu booth, and over 25 media interviews about Ubuntu for Android, Ubuntu Cloud and Ubuntu TV.

One of the highlights so far was ARM’s Ian Ferguson, director of server systems and our very own Mark Shuttleworth presenting a keynote session at the Computex industry forum about cloud computing. As part of this, they unveiled MiTAC’s new ARM server, based on Ubuntu. This is only the third ARM server made in the world and it’s a significant step forward in a new era of hyperscale computing. Based on ARM processors, these servers have higher densities and lower power to enable more efficient cloud deployments and lower cost.

The MiTAC server can be seen on the Ubuntu stand at M0106, Nangang Exhibition Hall, alongside the latest developments in Desktop and Cloud until the end of the show on June 9th.

Canonical will be exhibiting at Computex in Taipei, June 5th – 9th, Asia’s largest ICT trade show. We will be at the show alongside some our partners and biggest names in the industry. At the booth (at M0106 in the Nangang exhibition hall) we will be showcasing new products and services, including Ubuntu for Android, Ubuntu TV and Ubuntu Cloud.

Today, Ubuntu for Android will be demoed at a pre-show ARM media gathering and in addition, Mark Shuttleworth will be part of a keynote presentation on Tuesday at the TICC.

We look forward to seeing you at the booth. If you can’t be at Computex, we’ll be updating the blog with pictures and more as it unfolds.

Good news for Ubuntu gamers! We’re excited to be partnering with the Humble Indie Bundle for their newest collection of incredible games, which is available now. This means that following the purchase of the games from Humble Bundle, Ubuntu users will be able to install their games on Ubuntu more easily than ever, using the Ubuntu Software Centre.

The Ubuntu Software Centre provides the easiest and safest way to install software on Ubuntu – not just for the games in the Humble Indie Bundle but also for thousands of desktop applications.

Just like previous releases, the Humble Indie Bundle 5 lets customers name their own price, paying only what they think the software is worth. The proceeds are then split between the game developers, charities and the Humble Bundle organizers. For this bundle, the chosen charities are EFF and Child’s Play.

We’ve also committed to contribute $100 to this bundle for every Humble Indie Bundle 5 game page on the Ubuntu App Directory that receives 5,000 Facebook likes. So please help us spread the word and let’s get captivating puzzle-platformer LIMBO to 5,000 first.

Developers who would like to learn more about adding their games to the Ubuntu Software Centre can check out our developer site, follow UbuntuAppDev on Twitter and like our App Developer Facebook Page.

Pay what you want for a great bundle of games that couldn’t be easier to install.

The Ubuntu Developer Summit  last week was an incredible event. The energy, excitement and passion around Ubuntu was palpable in the sessions, hallways and the neighbouring streets and restaurants. (The riot police were there for the Occupy protest, not UDS!) Over 650 attendees came from all over the world, the local environs, and we even had a few Ubuntu fans who were simply staying in the same hotel who were thrilled to see the community behind their favourite technology product in action.

I’d like to thank once again the sponsors of the event: HP, Google, Intel, Linaro, Qt, Oracle and Rackspace. Their support is critical to health of Ubuntu and the Ubuntu community, and also demonstrates the importance of Ubuntu to their businesses.

An incredible amount of work gets done at each UDS. To see the breadth and depth of the topics addressed at this one, take a look at the schedule or the list of 272 blueprints registered for UDS. If you just want an overview of some of the outcomes of UDS, here is a video of the track leads summarising the highlights each track. And as usual we will publicly track the development progress throughout the cycle, allowing you to see how key features are progressing or to find areas in which you can contribute to the goals. You can see that Ubuntu 12.10 is starting to take shape already!

Several times throughout the event I was asked what stood out about this UDS. The most striking thing for me in this UDS is the involvement of companies who are building their business and products around Ubuntu. Ubuntu and UDS have long had strong industry support, with OEMs and corporate customers hosting, sponsoring and speaking at previous UDS’s. But in addition to the sponsors mentioned above, at the UDS we saw:

- the worldwide debut of a Calxeda cluster using their EnergyCore ARM-based server chip. Later in the week Calxeda also demonstrated a scaling website deployment on this hardware using Juju and OpenStack
- the first  Ubuntu Cloud Day, with an impressive line up of speakers from HP, Cloudscaling, Rackspace, VMWare, Scality, 10gen, EngineYard, Iron IO, Scalr, enStratus, RedMonk and Canonical. Presentations and discussions focused on the importance of the open cloud and lessons from real cloud deployments, and it was clear how central Ubuntu is to majority of real world cloud use.
- an insightful talk from Thomas Bushnell from Google about their Ubuntu use

This has also inspired a number of other companies to blog about their use – e.g., iAcquire recently blogged about their use of Ubuntu and associated cost-savings. If you have a similar post, leave a link in the comments.

I am also often asked about the history of UDS, how many we’ve had, where they were, etc. So for the history buffs, here’s a list of the events that have now become the Ubuntu Developer Summit (it took a couple years to settle into the current name and rhythm). I feel privileged to have been at all of them, and to have seen how they have matured into a best practice which projects from OpenStack to Linaro now adopt and help improve. I also have treasured memories from each – what do you remember most about each of them?

• Aug 2004 Oxford, England – aka Warthogs Conference. Working on 4.10 (Warty)
• Dec 2004 Mataro, Spain – aka The Mataro Sessions. Working on 5.04 (Hoary)
• Apr 2005 Sydney, Australia – aka Ubuntu Down Under. Planning for 5.10 (Breezy), co-located with an Ubuntu Love Day.
• Oct 2005 Montreal, Canada – aka Ubuntu Below Zero. Planning for 6.06 LTS (Dapper), co-located with an Ubuntu Love Day.
• June 2006 Paris, France – first event called Ubuntu Developer Summit. Planning for 6.10 (Edgy)
• Nov 2006 Mountain View, California. Planning for 7.04 (Feisty)
• May 2007 Sevilla, Spain. Planning for 7.10 (Gutsy)
• Nov 2007 Cambridge, Massachusetts. Planning for 8.04 LTS (Hardy)
• May 2008 Prague, Czech Republic. Planning for 8.10 (Intrepid)
• Oct 2008 Mountain View, California. Planning for 9.04 (Jaunty), co-located with a FOSSCamp
• May 2009 Barcelona, Spain. Planning for 9.10 (Karmic)
• Nov 2009 Dallas, Texas. Planning for 10.04 LTS (Lucid)
• May 2010 La Hulpe, Belgium. Planning for 10.10 (Maverick)
• Oct 2010 Orlando, Florida. Planning for 11.04 (Natty). Co-located with LinaroConnect.
• May 2011 Budapest, Hungary. Planning for 11.10 (Oneiric). Co-located with LinaroConnect.
• Nov 2011 Orlando, Florida. Planning for 12.04 LTS (Precise). Co-located with LinaroConnect.
• May 2012 Oakland, California. Planning for 12.10 (Quantal). Co-located with the Ubuntu Cloud Summit
• And coming up on 29 Oct – 2 Nov 2012 …  mark your calendar now and stay tuned for details about location, sponsorship and participation!

Today, we released the latest version of the Ubuntu Business Desktop Remix, based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

Most businesses deploying Ubuntu on corporate desktops perform a similar set of tasks – from removing consumer-focused applications and integrating with existing infrastructure, to installing commercial software for application virtualisation.

Designed for corporate and government organisations evaluating Ubuntu for their desktop infrastructure, the Business Desktop Remix is a simple base image that can be deployed into your corporate environment or used as a starting point for further customisation.

To save time in deployment, we’ve removed games, social networking programs, file sharing apps and technical tools. In their place, you’ll find software more appropriate for a corporate environment, including VMware View, the Adobe Flash Plugin and the OpenJDK 6 Java runtime environment. Ubuntu Business Desktop Remix provides full language support in both 32 and 64-bit builds, just like the standard Ubuntu. Users also benefit from the great new productivity features introduced in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, including built-in support for Microsoft Windows RDP 7.1 and the Microsoft Visio diagram importer in LibreOffice Draw.

Register now to download Ubuntu Business Desktop Remix – and start evaluating what Canonical can do for you today.

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS will be released to the world this Thursday and it’s going to be fantastic. We’ve known for quite a while that Ubuntu is not only beautiful, but also usable and robust for individuals and a great platform for app developers. Those traditions continue in 12.04, with the added bonus of long term support (LTS) promise. This release will be our fourth LTS release, a significant milestone by itself, but it will also be the first in which we offer special consideration of hardware refresh cycles on the desktop and fast-moving technology developments in the cloud.

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS  is the ideal platform for organisations looking for more cost-effective alternatives to traditional desktop computing. As enterprise moves to cloud-based apps and lighter, more mobile clients, the argument for moving beyond a Windows-only environment has never been stronger. Ubuntu delivers an intuitive, responsive and above all, productive desktop experience at a fraction of the cost of its competitors.

Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS combines the world’s best open source server and cloud technologies with five years of hardware, security and maintenance updates, and of course the option of enterprise-grade commercial support. This combination of proven technologies, time-saving deployment tools and long-term support makes it a cost-effective platform for any workload from print and web serving to big data applications and the cloud.

With support guaranteed for five years, certification on a wide range of hardware and the option of enterprise-grade commercial services, Ubuntu is a proven, cost-effective enterprise platform that can be relied on for the long term for their desktop, server, and cloud needs.

On Thursday we expect to see the reliability, collaboration, freedom and yes, precision, that Ubuntu embodies delivered again, on time, and in style. I can’t wait.

If you’re a keen follower of all things open source, you might already know about the UK Government’s consultation on open software standards. In short, the Government wants to reduce its IT costs and improve interoperability across all its departments and agencies; sensible aims, indeed. It is therefore considering making the adoption of open standards mandatory.

This represents a tremendous opportunity for open-source suppliers and any software vendor who builds to open standards because, in effect, it enables competition on a level playing field with some of the industry’s biggest players. There are large corporations with plenty to lose, however. So it’s no surprise that some parties are already lobbying against the proposal.

As a company with a long commitment to open-source and open standards, Canonical is actively engaging in the debate. We are preparing a formal response to the consultation and we will be at the round table discussion in London on 27th April.

 
This consultation is a public process in which anyone can get involved. If you’re interested in its outcome, whether from a business or philosophical standpoint, I urge you to go to consultation.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/openstandards and make your case before the consultation closes, on 3rd May 2012. We certainly will.

Kicking off this May, the Ubuntu Cloud Summit is a one day event for both technology and business people interested in what cloud computing can do for their organisations.

Hosted by Canonical and Redmonk we’ll be looking at how open-source is playing a critical role in the move to cloud computing. Delegates will also hear how enterprises have made the most of the move to the cloud using open source. There will be plenty of opportunity for discussion and debate ensuring you have all the information you need to deploy an open cloud.

The day will include a keynote from Mark Shuttleworth and others, plus a panel discussion chaired by Stephen O’Grady of Redmonk, before closing with cocktails and canapes.

The Ubuntu Cloud Summit takes place on Tuesday 8th May, at the The Oakland Marriott City Center in Oakland.

The event is sure to be popular, so don’t miss your chance to be there.

To find out more, go to  uds.ubuntu.com/cloud-summit/

Hope to see you there!

Yesterday we looked at the demographics of the respondents to the survey and some observations about the validity of the date. I recommend you read that post first. Today though we are going to dive a little more into how people first discovered Ubuntu and installed it.

How long have you used Ubuntu?
I wanted to establish if there were changing patterns depending on the length of time and/or the age of the respondent. That is, do relative newcomers to the platform or younger users use different tools to acquire the platform.

First of all the length of time that people have used the platform was remarkably consistent across the surveys. Given this level of consistency and for simplicity I will focus on the English language version.

Table: Length of time for which people have used Ubuntu

How did people first hear about Ubuntu?
So do people who have come to the platform more recently discover it in different ways to to the those who have been on the platform longer?  Well let’s see:

Table: How did new versus more more experienced Ubuntu users first hear of Ubuntu

So the shifts are not seismic but we are looking at shifts information sources over a fairly short time period (approx 5-7 years) so I think we are justified in picking out patterns. The traditional tech forums of irc, chat rooms etc are becoming less influential as a first contact for Ubuntu. Social media as you might expect is increasing  as its reach becomes more pervasive. We might also conclude with qualifications, that this indicates a slight shift in the type of user coming in to  one that is less likely to hang out in a tech forum. But these shifts are slight and will be interesting to track over time. If we run it for age of user – do we discover anything there?

Table: How did different age groups first hear of Ubuntu?

We certainly see the trends repeated with regard to the remaining great importance of the tech forums but that the diminish at the younger and older end of the spectrum. Social media is still small but much more important for the under 18s – again in line with broader terms. The significant importance of school and college for 18-24 years olds versus the under 18s shows that Ubuntu has so far been more successful at permeating tertiary education than it has at high schools especially in developed markets. India for instance has 16% of under 18 respondents discovering Ubuntu at school showing its greater penetration in high schools there.

How did you acquire the version of Ubuntu that you have?

The result here is consistent across the survey and across age groups so there is no value in breaking this out. It does however put a number on a question that we have wondered for some time – how many users do a fresh install of Ubuntu versus upgrades in place. And now we know that is roughly 2:1 that do a fresh install. The low number of pre-loads is certainly a concern – reflecting the continuing lack of availability in the market. We also probably under-counted this as we asked about the version users are currently running versus how they originally acquired a version. Still the good news from the sales team in Canonical is that 2012 should see a turnaround in this availability issue at least in many markets so again, a figure that is worth tracking over time.

How easy/difficult was the installation process? 

Something our platform engineering team and the web team have always put considerable focus on is the ability to install Ubuntu easily. After all, the work in making a great product is wasted is people cannot install it. The good news is that the people have in general expressed a strong degree of satisfaction with the install process.Again there was no significant difference in either the Portuguese or Spanish response so for those languages at least there appears to be no  translation hurdle.

More to come

On Monday if I can get it all in one blog post I am going to look at the reasons for choosing Ubuntu and we will look at regional and age differences in response to that question. Also interesting in other and upcoming Ubuntu products such as Ubuntu One and the more recent announcements like Ubuntu TV and Ubuntu for Android. And we will look at the all important satisfaction questions, just how happy are existing users with Ubuntu.

Gracias, obrigado and thanks for reading

Gerry

Ok, we got a lot of response to the user survey poll, so thank you to everybody that took part. I will publish access to all the results through the fantastic Survermonkey site on Monday, but to make it easier to digest, I’ll split the results out over three blog posts. Before I delve into the results we should discuss a little bit of the methodology in order to pre-empt some questions and also to help better understand the data.

Languages.
I decided to run the poll in three languages – Spanish, Portuguese and English. There were a number of reasons for these choices. Firstly to do it in English only would obviously bias the poll to Anglophone responses so the US and UK would stand proxy for the whole world and that would be clearly unsatisfactory. Secondly those language groups (S,P,E let’s call them) tend to be disproportionately monolinguistic for those that have them as a mother tongue so seemed the most relevant to having a poll in their language. Thirdly, Latin America is a very hot location for open source and I wanted to capture usage in those nations as best as possible. Finally, we had to draw the line somewhere. If you add French then why not German, or Chinese, Japanese, or Hindi etc. Anyone interested in translating the poll into their language and promoting it to their language group need only contact me and I am more than happy to accommodate – the story need not end here.

Methodology
I deliberately set out to contact existing users through existing channels for purposes of cost, speed and also because I think we can learn a lot from people who are at least minimally involved in the world of Ubuntu. So we reached out through Facebook, the forums, Planet, our Twitter feeds, UWN and OMGUbuntu. Thank you to all who helped make that happen. The result is that the response is broad but self-selecting. We are undoubtedly missing people who simply use Ubuntu as a ‘tool’ and have no engagement with the user of contributor community. But that’s cool. Even with a self-selected audience we have built up a pretty comprehensive picture.

Let’s see what we discovered
Firstly the number of responses. These numbers in each language groups give us terrific statistical confidence in the results, something we will see borne out by ‘normal’ distribution of responses to each question each survey – i.e. there are no huge or inexplicable variances in response which would lead me to question the validity.

Total responses to each survey:
English (15,653)
Spanish (1,825)
Portuguese (1,751)

How old are you?
If you are the mythical ‘average’ user you are between 25-35. That does not vary if you are Spanish or Portuguese speaking although you are less likely to be under 18 in those language blocks. In fact almost 70% of you are under 35 in each language group. And you are male. Overwhelmingly male. The average number of women responding is <4%. Here I do wonder how much the bias of the sampling methodology has affected the response rate  - i.e. is that for whatever reason the way we reached resulted in fewer women responding than is actually reflective of the user base. We can’t extrapolate from this data, but certainly such a hugely weighted response means we have to look at how we make the product, the community and probably both, more appealing to both genders.

Where do you live?

No great surprise that in the English language survey the US and UK were strongly represented. India appeared strongly too showing the growing user base in that country and we then once past the other anglophone nations of Canada and Australia we get quickly into the long tail of other nations responding. Northern Asia hardly appears at all which is not surprising but perhaps calls out for a survey in Chinese, Japanese and Korean to discover user preferences there.

The Portuguese Survey was 93% Brazilian and only 7% from Portugal. Spanish language is more interesting as I think we get a good picture of relative usage in various countries of that language block for the first time. And here it is.

Interesting to note (and again SURVEY BIAS ALERT) by population size for the top 5 it should read in order of population size (source http://www.spanishseo.org/resources/worldwide-spanish-speaking-population):

Mexico (23%)
Colombia (9.9%)
USA (9.80 %)
Argentina (8.99%)
Spain (8.95 %)

Allowing for relative IT infrastructure and broadband availability etc, the placement differences compared to population size are probably understandable with perhaps the exception of the US responding so low compared to its Spanish-speaking population. Use of Ubuntu is not so widespread that it should map 1 to1 with population spreads but again, like the gender bias these do perhaps offer insight into areas where, with some focus, we can help push Ubuntu into new ground.

More tomorrow

So that’s your taster for today. Tomorrow i will delve into the meat of the survey and look at the triggers for usage, satisfaction level, social media preferences of Ubuntu users across (as least part of) the world. And full results for everyone on Monday, I promise.

PS – a very special word of thanks to Tiago, David and Ayrton for the translation  and promotion help – gracias y obrigado!

Regards and thoughts welcome,

Gerry

Ubuntu Cloud Day is Canonical’s first Cloud event in Bangalore. With keynote speeches from various members of the Canonical team and a more focussed technical delivery, the event is aimed at engineers and developers with a professional interest in using Ubuntu Cloud as a developer tool, along with those with a keen interest in developing innovative applications for the Ubuntu user base.

The event is sponsored by Intel and the agenda includes presentations on working with Ubuntu Cloud, JuJu, Cloud infrastructure, as well as presentations from Intel and other partners. The sessions will also cover the intricacies of building your own Cloud infrastructure with Ubuntu, managing Cloud workloads on your own servers and sending identical workloads to the public Cloud when you need extra capacity.

The location for Ubuntu Cloud Day is the Grand Ballroom at the Chancery Pavilion Hotel, 135 Residency Road, Bangalore.

There is a fee to participate, of INR 999.00. Registrations are restricted, so secure your place at http://www.ubuntucloudday.in

Lunch and refreshments will be provided.

We’re pleased to announce that official Ubuntu Cloud Guest Images are now listed on the Amazon EC2 quick start. Users can now find and launch official Ubuntu Cloud Guest Images right from the Amazon EC2 management console. This significantly simplifies access to Ubuntu on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and provides users with more options for support and services to build and deploy cloud applications on a reliable guest operating system.

Official Ubuntu images from Canonical give users the assurance that they are getting certified, up-to-date images with the option for full commercial support, legal assurance and systems management capabilities (through Ubuntu Advantage). As more companies shift their computing infrastructure to the cloud, it is important that their servers be supported, managed and kept up to date with critical security patches in the same manner as on-premise systems. Official images provide assurance that you have the same feature and support lifecycle whether you are deploying Ubuntu in the cloud, in your data center or in hybrid style deployments.

Canonical provides a number of tailored options for commercial support for Ubuntu including Ubuntu Advantage. Ubuntu Advantage provides support to deploy, manage and monitor a production environment while offering significant operational and cost savings. Ubuntu Advantage also includes the Landscape systems management tool for managing cloud and on-premise based Ubuntu servers from a single console, lowering your management and administrative cost in the cloud.

You can find more information about support offerings for Amazon Web Services on the Canonical web site.

Important announcements about Ubuntu Cloud Guest are made on the low traffic Ubuntu Cloud announce mailing list as well as on Twitter @UbuntuCloud.

The Ubuntu booth at Mobile World Congress has been a resounding success. In the first two days of the show alone, over 4,000 delegates visited the stand to see the first live views of Ubuntu for Android.

The reception has been overwhelmingly positive among hardware manufacturers and operators, and indeed among hundreds of individuals and enterprises who can’t wait to get their hands on a new smartphone running Ubuntu for Android.

The race is on; who will become the first manufacturer to launch one of the most talked about products at the show – the real killer-app from Barcelona 2012.

Mobile World Congress begins tomorrow, and for the first time, Canonical has a presence at the show.

Further to our announcement earlier this week, for the first time in public, we will be showcasing the brand new concept ‘Ubuntu for Android’.

Ubuntu for Android is the world’s first full-featured desktop on a docked smartphone. You can use Android on the phone and Ubuntu as your desktop, both running simultaneously on the same device, with seamless sharing of contacts, messages and other common services. Users get all the flexibility and productivity of a full desktop with the convenience of a smartphone when on the move. This is the first opportunity for handset makers and network operators to address this growth opportunity in emerging markets.

We are located in Hall 7 at stand 7C87, so visit to see Ubuntu on Android and Ubuntu TV – launched to great acclaim at CES last month – as well as the latest developments on Desktop, Ubuntu Cloud, Ubuntu One and Ubuntu on hardware for sale at retail.

More than ever in 2012, a record numbers of consumers and businesses are using Ubuntu. To set up a meeting with us during the show or to find out more on enabling your hardware with Ubuntu or working with Canonical, please email sales@canonical.com.

Ubuntu Business Desktop Remix based on Ubuntu 11.10 is now available for corporate and government institutions evaluating Ubuntu as a desktop solution. The combination of Ubuntu’s ease of use, outstanding free software applications, certified commercial apps, and Canonical’s management solution makes for a compelling enterprise desktop scenario that saves time and money while keeping users productive. Just yesterday IT Pro published this independent assessment confirming just that.

In the past year, many businesses have adopted Ubuntu as a desktop. With the approach of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and its five years of support on server and desktop, even more are evaluating the potential benefits of an easily deployed and managed, virus-resistant platform that is widely trusted and available pre-installed from leading PC brands like Dell and Lenovo.

This remix simplifies the process of customising Ubuntu for corporate needs. Most businesses deploying Ubuntu on corporate desktops perform a similar set of tasks; removing consumer-focused applications like games, and installing corporate-focused software such as thin client apps. The Ubuntu Business Desktop Remix is a simple base image with the most common corporate changes pre-configured. It can be deployed into a corporate environment or used as a starting point for further customization.

The Ubuntu Business Desktop Remix contains all the software needed to integrate into your IT infrastructure while removing games, social networking and file sharing applications, development and sysadmin tools, and other software that organizations don’t commonly support. The first release includes VMware View, Adobe Flash Plugin, and OpenJDK 6 Java runtime environment.

If this makes sense for your business you can register to download Ubuntu Business Desktop Remix and start evaluating what Ubuntu and Canonical can do for your organisation.

Canonical and Ubuntu have made their CES debut this week, and already it’s been a
resounding success. Ubuntu TV and Ubuntu One have both been of particular interest to a constant flow of visitors from media to manufacturers, exhibitors and developers.

It is almost the end of day two and there have been over 5,000 visitors to the Ubuntu booth in South Hall 4 (stand 35379). In fact, people have been so impressed, that all the Ubuntu 11.10 CDs and printed Ubuntu TV collateral have run out. We have also given many interviews to the world’s media and have already seen some great coverage, which as many regulars to Ubuntu will appreciate, will help serve to introduce Ubuntu to many new potential users.

Ubuntu rocks!

As John Bernard suggested in a previous post, we have an exciting concept design that we will be showcasing at CES and on the web.  Ubuntu TV is a vision of how TV will work in the future. With no cables, no boxes and no hassles,  the goal is to uncomplicate television for the average viewer while delivering to him or her all the services and options that they are becoming used to.

Ubuntu TV showcased at CES

To give the world a full picture of what we will be demonstrating, we are launching today a dedicated area on the Ubuntu website featuring demos and a world of information on what we have planned in this space. You can see it all now at ubuntu.com/tv

Look out for a series of posts from my colleagues at CES looking at other products we are demonstrating at CES, and the buzz from the showroom floor.

Gerry

Canonical will have a presence at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, from the 10th – 13th January. The booth, in the Upper Level of South Hall 4, is at location 35379 within the Las Vegas Convention Center.

On display will be the latest in Desktop, Cloud and demonstrations on Ubuntu One, plus an exclusive Ubuntu concept design which will be announced during the show.

Find out more by coming to visit us at CES and see why Ubuntu is the primary computing environment on millions of desktops around the world and used by thousands of businesses. You can also discover how Canonical supports a rapidly increasing number of manufacturers pre-installing Ubuntu on their hardware.

To set up a meeting at the show and discuss Ubuntu, now the world’s third largest Desktop Operating System, email sales@canonical.com.