These Links Matter to You. Wednesday May 2 2007

• even old-school business analyst Forrester says organizations are using open source for "mission critical applications." A less breathless, more helpful informative summary here, courtesy the very articulate Matt Asay.
• ya habla Español Dell. puro en directo. Dell's new Spanish blog, Dell en Directo. You already know about the English juan.
  
• Arizona State uses Drupal, and documents their set-up
• Dell's improved Linux forums (I haven't figured out how they're improved yet. Taking their word for it. It's possible they're manipulating me in a state of post-Ubuntu-announcement bliss.
• some belated notes on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
  

Labels: community, dell, dellendirecto, forrester, forums, linux, matt asay, research, ubuntu

  ¶ 9:12 PM Links to this post

  Dell's new Ubuntu deal, and vendor support. Do we still need vendor support? Some interesting thoughts over on Slashdot's coverage of the Dell/ Ubuntu announcement.
For one user, the announcement is actually a deciding factor in a purchasing decision:

Personally, I have resisted the siren call of Dell for a long time. This changes my mind. I need a new machine and this could be just the ticket -- it was either that or refurb an old HP with a new HD and a copy of Feisty Fawn. I like the idea of it pre-loaded.

And yeah, that's the kind of response Dell and Ubuntu want to hear. But I think it's time we really question the value and definition of support in the way it's been thought of in the past. Support is extremely overvalued, and lack of support is too often used as a reason to squash a great tool or piece of software. Let's examine our commercial support relationships and think of what we really get out of them. Are our bugs fixed faster? Features added more quickly? Do we find out about upcoming products from our vendros before the blogosphere does? When we have a configuration question, whose documentation is more helpful? Community sites and mailing lists, or the official documentation?

I'm very excited that Dell and Ubuntu have a relationship with each other now, and there's no way it can hurt the quality of Linux on Dell hardware. But let's not wait for announcements like this before we feel comfortable pursuing technologies that otherwise trump their commercially supported peers.

related:

Dell interview with Mark Shuttleworth about the announcement, how Linux gets adopted differently in different parts of the world.

Labels: business, business model, canonical, community, dell, disruptive, information technology, linux, support, ubuntu

  ¶ 10:47 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Dell to preload Ubuntu Linux on some hardware

Labels: business, business model, canonical, community, dell, disruptive, information technology, linux, support, ubuntu

  ¶ 5:54 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Full Circle, the new Ubuntu magazine! Though it took me a little while to identify what exactly was going on on the Full Circle website, I gotta once again give the Ubuntu community credit for knowing how to make it easy to learn about, enjoy, evangelize, and contribute to the Ubuntu Linux distribution and its related projects and goals.

Full Circle is a new free magazine from the Ubuntu community. Full Circle is made up of both a PDF, with a traditional magazine layout that you can download (and print), and web-based content that includes forums and articles in development.

PDF available for download in multiple languages here.

Labels: community, free, full circle, global, journalism, linux, magazine, open source, ubuntu

  ¶ 9:42 PM Links to this post

  Tweetin' Open Source CIO's 451 group industry analyst Raven Zachary tweets from a conference:

"CIO personality clearly drives levels of tech adoption - watching three CIOs up on stage have varying levels of comfort with open source."

I've been a regular reader of his group's blog, but twitter is a great way to get moment-by-moment feelings and happenings from people, especially people who constantly travel through different spaces, time zones, cultures, and environments.

And oh yeah, this might me a good time to invite you to add These Things on Twitter.

Labels: cio, community, IT, social software, twitter

  ¶ 9:22 PM Links to this post

  Graphics bling and proprietary drivers in Ubuntu

There's currently some discussion in the Ubuntu community about how much proprietary stuff to include in Ubuntu by default (different from letting you grab stuff from the vendor on your own after the install). This is almost always about graphics drivers.

Community member Ante Karamatić had some interesting thoughts on the issue, and then made some points about the state of open source Linux gui bling, too:

Proprietary drivers in Ubuntu by default? Don't. Just don't do that. I don't want them. If someone wants them (or must use them); great, make it as an installer option. 'Yes, I want fancy graphics, even if nobody could help me solve tons of bugs and even if that would break suspend and hibernate and even if that would maybe mean braking GPL' would be an OK option in installer :)

OTOH, both compiz and beryl have serious issues and they should stop working on creating newer, even more useless plug-ins and start fixing some usability bugs; 'java + beryl sometimes doesn't work', 'beryl crashes all the time', 'don't destroy my workspaces', 'F9 is fetch all in evolution; now it doesn't work', 'what's with the flickering in xmoto while running beryl and apt-get update', etc, etc...

Labels: beryl, community, compiz, drivers, linux, open source, ubuntu

  ¶ 1:59 AM 0 Comments Links to this post