Slashdot Mirror

Find out more here:

http://www.canonical.com/projects/ubuntu/unr

Selected quotes:

"Ubuntu Netbook Remix is optimised to run on a new category of affordable Internet-centric devices called netbooks. It includes a new consumer-friendly interface that allows users to quickly and easily get on-line and use their favourite applications. This interface is optimised for a retail sales environment."

Wonder what that last bit means? It flashes 'buy me now!!!! 50% discount!!!' on the screen?

"A remix is a 'respun' version of Ubuntu built for a specific purpose. Although Canonical has encouraged community projects to use this terminology for some time, this is the first time that Canonical has used it. We are using it to differentiate from an 'Edition' which we consider a complete version with daily builds suitable for the average user with no additional work beyond installing the CD."

"All of the initial Ubuntu Netbook remixes combine optimisations from the Moblin project for Intel® Atomâ processors and it is specially designed for netbooks. Intel and Canonical are working to create a new computing experience across a rapidly expanding category of portable devices."

Wintel is dead, long live Buntel?

Training

Pfft. There are (Ubuntu) books at the local Borders are 50%-75% the price of Canonical's, and I could have it in less than an hour. If Borders is beating you on price YOU'RE DOIN' IT WRONG.

1. Fully and legally support bytecode interpreter and hinting for fonts. Bonus points for including decent fonts as well.

Isn't this what Freetype is all about?

2. Support all major audio and video codecs. I shouldn't have to break any laws to get support for my digital media. Bonus points for not having to buy another codec pack when I upgrade my OS.

Canonical (the money behind Ubuntu) does this:
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/19/166230
http://ostatic.com/blog/canonical-opens-codec-sales-and-potential-can-of-worms#rss
http://blog.canonical.com/?p=37
I believe that Fedora has done this in the past for Mp3s. I think that Linspire/Xandros has done this in the past.

3. Support multi-monitor automatically when I connect a monitor (like Mac or Windows).

The backend support is there. You can do xrandr --auto whenever you add or remove a monitor. I fail to understand why none has made a GUI frontend to the xrandr command line. (This is a pet peeve of mine.)

4. Work well on laptops. I should not see error messages about my hard drive failing to soft-reset every time I wake my laptop up from sleep.

Please permit me to reply with something just as useful as your original complaint:

Works for me.

1. There are some beautiful open source fonts that work well with the auto-hinter. For some reason (limited Unicode range?) they are not included in most distributions and unfortunately I've recently lost my list so I can't give you any links, but they do exist.

2. I have not tried this, but at least it exist:
http://shop.canonical.com/product_info.php?products_id=244&osCsid=36c4d2d8e1d32e74b51c6cc841dddc70

3 & 4. Works for me.

\No idea how they are making a revenue other than with t-shirts and bags, but apparently they do make a profit. It's not just one person or fund. Or the fund is large enough for sufficient interest.

Training and support?

\No idea how they are making a revenue other than with t-shirts and bags, but apparently they do make a profit. It's not just one person or fund. Or the fund is large enough for sufficient interest.

Training and support?

In Windows, I use VLC to watch dvds. It works straight out of the box, with all necessary codecs bundled with the app. I used the package manager to install VLC, but it refused to launch the dvd, basically acting like there was no mpeg-2 decoder.

Ubuntu ships, by default, with only free software. They cannot include patented stuff such as an MPEG2 decoder, until the patents expire someday.

However, Ubuntu makes it very easy to pull media codecs from repositories. So, if you live someplace where software patents are not legal, you can just grab the codecs and you are done.

If you live someplace where you need to pay patent license fees, Ubuntu also makes it easy to buy legal codecs.

Read more here: http://ubuntuguide.org/ See section 2.4, "Proprietary Applications"

And here's the Canonical store to buy legal codecs: http://shop.canonical.com/product_info.php?products_id=242

You may want to look at Landscape from Canonical (the driving force behind Ubuntu). For a direct comparison to Microsoft products it is a mix of features from Group Policy, SCOM, and SUS. It is decidedly not free with prices as high as $150 per client, but they offer volume discounts.

http://www.canonical.com/projects/landscape
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/news/landscape

http://www.canonical.com/projects/landscape

Ubuntu is not interested in those things

Ubuntu's goal is to provide a good free operating system for the desktop and server. Whereas their sponsor company, Canonical, is about providing value add support and services like the Landscape management tool which does all that stuff.

https://landscape.canonical.com/

I am not a systems admin, simply an end user but I have heard about Ubuntu's (pay-per-user) system management, group policy tool, Landscape. Now like I said, I don't know much about it but it is $150 per seat (I understand) but sounds to me to manage all the above stuff!

There is a free trial, so as you can test it and check it works for you. You get the advantage of using the (in my view) most widely community supported Linux distro which means great (recent) software. This is what I would start with (but I have never done it before and would be learning hard and fast).

Have you tried this: http://www.canonical.com/projects/landscape There is a 60-day trial. In our group's testing, it had most of what was needed to keep a set of Ubuntu boxes running, though there was a need for some custom scripting to get machines into and out of the management environment for the total lifecycle. You also will likely need a Tripwire or other file permission monitoring cron job, to make sure that USB/CD boots of the machines do not allow file ownerships to be reset. Ideally, you'd like a configuration script you could run weekly, to whack a machine back into the desired configuration -- and flag machines that keep being moved out of the org's desired config by "creative" user actions. 'Hope that helps. RAH

I do agree that very many develop Linux for "themselves", but I don't think geeks are more interested in struggling with network or sound or wifi or video tearing or printer drivers or webcams than other people. Nor are they particularly tolerant of buggy or inflexible software, even though they may have their own ideas of UI design.

The difference is subtle but it definitely exists. Here's one example that comes to mind. In GNOME or KDE, it's really easy to remove the main menu from the panel - just right click the thing and select "Remove". In Windows or Mac OS, however, it is nigh-on impossible to remove the Start/Apple menu from the taskbar/menubar. You can temporarily hide it, but it can't be removed entirely unless you start writing code. Geeks much prefer the flexibility of Linux, whereas most regular users are better off not having this flexibility, since a missing main menu is not a situation they can easily recover from.

Obviously there'll always be distributions for geeks by geeks, but I have no problem imagining distributions for joe average by companies that want to sell services to the residential or business market. The gap, the changes they'd have to make aren't that big compared to everything they could reuse.

There is a market here, and the required changes are indeed individually very small. (For example, the behavior I mentioned above would be easy to correct.) However, the changes are also numerous, and there are all sorts of rare cases where one can easily fail to notice a needed change. In order to do a good job, you need a large team -- not as large as the Windows or Mac OS teams, but still a good sized team. And, since few geeks are interested in volunteering for such a task, you're back to the situation where you need a revenue source in order to support that team.

It is instructive to look at the netbook market, which of course is the kind of Linux deployment that we're talking about -- selling Linux to Joe average. Netbooks may not be as profitable as laptops, but they bring in more than enough revenue to support a dedicated development team. The EeePC, for example, has a very inflexible desktop by any geek's standards: you can't even move or alter the icons, and forget about configuring the main menu, since there isn't any. In other words, it's just what grandma needs. But even this approach has its limits. One big problem is that it's hard to keep a modified platform in sync with the main trunk. Every time the upstream developers publish a security update, you have to integrate that update with the changes that you have made. This process requires continuous engineering effort far beyond the short product life of a particular piece of hardware. For a major distribution like Debian, there are ample volunteers to handle the task of integrating security patches, even for older versions of Debian. In the case of the EeePC, especially the older models, more often than not this work is not done.

To be fair, things are not entirely bleak. Ubuntu Netbook Remix is an example of a non-geek desktop interface which is integrated into a major distribution. (I'm not sure how much of its development was funded by Canonical vs. contributed by volunteers.) I can see such projects offering hope for Linux on the desktop, but it will never be a natural fit. You'll always need some effort in order to cajole Linux developers into contributing to mass market products. Even worse, such efforts have to be continuous and ongoing in order to best take advantage of traditional Linux strengths such as security.

will there ever be a way to watch blue-ray movies legally on a Linux computer?

Yup, there already is a version of PowerDVD for Linux that can play Blu-Ray disks. Available in the Canonical Store (Ubuntu Linux, 32 Bit only).

Debian 5 is apparently (haven't tried this yet) one step ahead of Ubuntu in a related area however: It natively supports Blu-ray data disks (like, for backups, and so on). On Ubuntu, you have to use either some command-line tools or get Nero 3 for Linux.

You see, there's some stuff if you're looking! ;)

BTW, I'm posting this from Debian 5. Yay! As a developer, I welcome the fully functional version of the Anjuta IDE, and some other fun stuff! :)

What part of open source didn't you understand?

The HP developers who made this interface ARE "open source clowns", just like the clowns at the NSA who wrote SELinux, or the 600+ foolish developers in the IBM Linux Technology Centers, or the idiots over at NASA and SGI who contribute clustering software, or the morons in Fujitsu, Hitachi, Intel, NEC, Novell, NTT, etc, etc who also contribute.

You can get th HP UI source code here if you're really interested.

Well I haven't got a hp mini but the Desktop theme looks quite good on an Aspire One maybe a little too dark.
The Colours seem to restrict the viewing angle.

http://hpmini.archive.canonical.com/dists/hardy-hpmini/universe/binary-lpia/

holds the goodies it's largely the themes you want and background although possibly the hp toolbar and browser bar do something too.

If I get bored tonight (doubtful), I may give it a go.

http://shop.canonical.com/product_info.php?currency=USD&products_id=243

$49.95

...I once again have to put up a new year as another one _not_ to recommend Linux on the desktop.

There is only one question that matters: Does it run well the software I use, or sufficiently familiar software that productivity is increased enough to justify the change?

Presentations like this show that Linux desktop advocates completely misunderstand business and consumer requirements. It may shock you, but Microsoft will on the contrary spend a lot of time finding out what their enterprise consumers want, and Vista was the exception to their general rule of integrating for consumers the toys they clamour for.

Linux's "scratch an itch" GNU foundations almost by definition make it unsuitable for mass desktop deployment. You don't choose a philosophy that deems goal X irrelevant and then expect the ultimate implementation of that philosophy to be the achievement of X. (On the contrary, many admins and programmers are also the geeks who develop Linux, so Linux is successful here.)

P.S. Why the disproportionate number of women and black men on all the Ubuntu merchandising pages? This sort of stupid appeal to political correctness died off in the early '90s (unless you're the BBC), and everyone who isn't in chronic denial knows that most Linux users are non-black men. It all adds to the horribly culty image of Linux as some cooperative dream rather than a tool to get a job done. I'm no WASP, but I am Spanish, and if I saw 50% Mexicans on the Ubuntu site to try to make me feel "welcome" (or, worse, to make liberals feel like they're giving me a helping hand) I'd be entirely put off. As it is, I look at the site and think, "How would I feel as a woman/black man?" and I'm put off downloading Ubuntu.

Advice for not looking like your page needs an "ebony and ivory" backing track:
1. Don't put a single token black man on every page;

2. Don't try to balance the ratio of women and men if it's blatant that your market isn't anywhere near 50/50;

3. Moreover, if you want to represent two typical users, don't choose one woman and one black man - it's obvious what you're doing;

4. If you're going to build this facade of "oh everyone from every background uses our product", at least don't fuck up entirely with images such as this one where the truth comes out in the guy trying to cop a desperate kiss of the woman. This man is the only one to actually represent the typical Linux fanboy, and he demonstrates what is - in the same politically correct world that requires (1) and (2) - sexual harassment.

Oh, and just to anticipate it:

5. Don't reply to this post with, "Oh, I didn't notice the people's gender/race. I'm sorry that you're so put off by people's gender/race! You must be sexist/racist." It requires 5 minutes in any sort of marketing position to know that anyone involved in such a photoshoot will notice the colour and gender of participants - if not to make the very sort of patronising faux pas that makes Ubuntu look like it's stuck in the '80s.

OSS lacks QA - show me a OSS project that government is likely to use that has any quality assurances. the big font stating "use at own risk" is a massive turn off for government and rightly so.

on your home version yes. a customer as big as the uk government? they have bulk licensing terms that ensure security fixes (provided they stay on the upgrade tread mill of course).

funny, because if you wern't trolling you might be aware of these guys:
http://www.redhat.com/products/
http://www.canonical.com/services/support
http://www.novell.com/support/microsites/microsite.do ...

such security fixes could dry up overnight on a OSS project. that's the whole point i'm trying to get through to people, start thinking like you've got 100 million dollar projects relying on this stuff. who are you going to trust this to, some guy called bob on sourceforge, or a multi billion dollar company with resources to get you out of the shit?

Well i know for a fact that a lot of the software government departments use is home* rolled, so if the OSS support for a project did dry up, and for whatver reason there was no major vendor supporting it, they could support it themselves.

*by home rolled i ofc mean they get the lowest bidder to build it.

start thinking like you've got 100 million dollar projects relying on this stuff. who are you going to trust this to, some guy called bob on sourceforge,

hummor me troll, why is a closed patch from some guy at microsoft better than an open patch by some guy at redhat/canonical/novell/sun/etc

I always remap my Windows key to something useful.

For example, my latest toy (an Acer Aspire One), I configured the key to show the Ubuntu Netbook Remix desktop/menu

Another advantage of Linux in this case is that one can use the simplified interface designed for netbooks.

If Mr. Shuttleworth thought there was money in it for him one would exist.

Actually, it exists... with a total of 5 items for sale ;)

Yes it is difficult but lots of people are doing it:

Acer uses a custom Fedora: http://www.linpus.com/
Dell and others use a custom Ubuntu http://www.canonical.com/netbooks
Mandriva has a mini version (I don't know who is using it) called mini (i can't link since it is on their OEM subsite)

and there are others.

On windows environment you use active directory and sus.

How do you centrally manage software installs and permissions on thousands of machines with oss? Handful of servers is easy to handle but how are logins and home directories handled in environment this scale?

If you're using Ubuntu, use landscape.

RedHat has a tool too--I'm not sure what it's called, I haven't RH or Centos in years.

There are lots of directory solutions too. AD is essentially LDAP with a few MS extensions. Most linux boxen now-a-days can hook into AD. On the flip-side, you can use plain 'ol LDAP if you have no Windows machines.

You can run apt-mirror on debian-like distros. You mirror all the updates locally on a machine and have all the others download from it.

There's even been talk recently of a bittorrent-like download system where you can download from neighbors on the network that have already downloaded the patch you need.

I'm a network engineer, like a lot of Slashdotters here. I focus on Ubuntu & LTSP in educational type environments.

I would *gladly* pay Canonical for upper-tier support, if it were affordable to me, the small-business. As of right now, Canonical support services offers server support (which includes LTSP servers) for $750/year, PER SERVER - and this is just 9-5, weekday only, 10 "cases/issues" maximum, support. This is pretty difficult for me, as one of my clients is a 7-site elementary school district, which have all migrated to Ubuntu and LTSP. That would be US $5,250 a year. It seems that you can't span the 10 support cases over different servers, which is one of the reasons why this support model is so unattractive to me.

It's amazing how much LTSP has developed over the past few years, but there are still tons of things that can be improved, with a little TLC and bugfixing. As it is now, I am very active in helping report and troubleshoot bugs - but again, I want support from Canonical because IANAP, and they employ people who work directly on LTSP in Ubuntu. I've heard straight from them that they just don't have enough time to work on it - and it's a shame, given the number of people with LTSP up and running. If the support model was a bit more flexible for us smaller tech businesses (usually the ones who push Linux in the first place), I think Canonical could be incredibly successful.

For those who don't think about version control systems every day, when he says "bzr" he is talking about Bazaar, the VCS Mark Shuttleworth supported for Canonical because he didn't like the other VCS.

"The documentation is far from perfect."

Unfortunately, Canonical is supporting the usual Open Source tradition of communicating poorly, forcing everyone to use weeks of their time to learn something new, instead of having one person spend weeks writing good documentation. In a lot of ways, Canonical is just the same old pig, wearing a bit of lipstick.

The CyberLink Linux software DVD player(32 bit systems only) from Canonical costs ~$50

I can buy a 20X DVD writer drive with Lightscribe that includes Nero 8 Essentials(Windows only) for ~$35

Canonical will act surprised that their sales fall short of "expectations". Seriously though, a software only DVD player should not cost more than $10

My only question is, how much will it cost?

Streaming media and web stuff: USD$40. DVD playback: USD$50.00.

My only question is, how much will it cost?

Streaming media and web stuff: USD$40. DVD playback: USD$50.00.

I think you got the wrong impression from the summary. They aren't selling a boxed version of Ubuntu that comes with the codecs pre-embeded in the OS - they're just offering those said codecs for download on their site.

I would guess it's a further customized version of Ubuntu netbook remix, which does use Gnome underneath everything.

I went to Canonical and "bought" (put in cart) a year of Ubuntu Desktop Support... $293!!!! [...] That's about as bad as Vista Ultimate!

Server Support was $881!! THAT IS MORE THAN W2K3!

What you're buying is support -- i.e. a voice on the telephone and expertise to get your system running, repaired, upgraded, etc. You're not buying software, and you're certainly not buying licenses.

Canonical support, much like similar arrangements from Red Hat et al, is not on a per seat or per processor basis.

Yes, paying $293 per year for support of a single desktop may seem as exorbitant as the cost of Vista. But what if you roll out 20 machines? If you go the Vista route that's thousands just for the OS, and additional thousands or tens of thousands for the software you actually need.

But with 20 machines, your Canonical support costs are now less than $15 per machine-year. And the support contract comes with an SLA. How much does MS support cost? How much is a seat license for MS Exchange-related products?

How do these costs compare when you move from 20 systems to 100? Or 1,000?

Do you still think you can compare support costs to license costs?

oh well, crap, here's the link: http://www.canonical.com/netbooks scroll down to the bottom half. Subsequent forum discussion: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=822097&highlight=netbook+remix. Although, I guess if you were just talking about the Ubuntu devs, I have no arguement. I never even made that "pays enough" statement, I just wanted to give an example (wrong link though, my bad).

And I'm not a free software zealot or anything, I'm just a regular jerk-off that listens to mp3s and watches DVDs, and plays some old games on WINE, and use the proprietary hal module in the madwifi driver. But I think that what's more important than simply the freedom to choose, is the knowledge that a choice is being made. And Ubuntu does this fairly well with their 'restricted' terminology. It could still be better, though.

Both CAN co-exist. The issue lies in the installer IMHO, which doesn't give the user that much needed choice to further customize the install. This applies to most popular distros, if not all. I'm not trying to troll here, so allow me to explain.

Say you have two desktops setup and one user wants a purist-type environment and the other is game for anything (ie. close-sourced binary drivers, apps, codecs, etc.). All you need is ONE installer CD that gives a user the choice of which kind of system they would like to install. Each choice will install the OS as usual, but even go as far as tailoring the repositories to ensure that the wishes of the users are met.

Although the following is a bit off-topic, it's related to the 'popular' GNU/Linux distros in general. Another pertinent question to be asked during the installation would be if the user is new to GNU/Linux. If so, it would be great to have a nice demo (using Theora perhaps?) to show new users how to use their newly installed OS and explain how the open source community has worked hard to bring a viable alternative to their desktop. It's certainly possible that the lack of such a demo has driven away new users because a LiveCD shows them a familiar looking desktop, but then leaves them with a 'now what?' look on their face. Perhaps the likes of Canonical can take the lead on this and provide a high quality demo on the basics of using Ubuntu, in addition to their other offerings (Kubuntu, etc)? I think that would at least extend the initial 'test-drive' period for new users. Just my $0.02 of course...

Comments, suggestions and rants welcome... Karma's a bitch! LOL!

I'd be interested to see if the box has anything on it about the sort of tech support you can get. I kind of doubt ValuSoft is handling tech support for Ubuntu. That seems beyond their scope.

They (ValuSoft) are handling support and they are "trained and backed by the Canonical support guys" according to Canonical's Director of Corporate Services in Canonical's blog. It's only 60 days worth of installation and "getting started" support, but what should we expect for just $20?

From the blog: "The boxed set comes with an Ubuntu 8.04 CD, a Quick Start Guide and 60 days of support from the ValuSoft team, trained and backed by the Canonical support guys. The support covers installation and getting started using Ubuntu and is priced at $19.99."

What I think would be smart is if they added a really good printed manual and/or Ubuntu book with it. I read through the description and couldn't find anything about extra material, but again, I think what they are doing is ok, but for a non-expert, a really nice install guide / intro to Ubuntu would make it look more tempting than say, just downloading an .iso file and burning your own disks.

They (developer Canonical and distributor ValuSoft) are thinking like you.

According to a blog by Canonical's Director of Corporate Services, the "Best Buy version" includes "an Ubuntu 8.04 CD, a Quick Start Guide and 60 days of support from the ValuSoft team, trained and backed by the Canonical support guys. The support covers installation and getting started using Ubuntu and is priced at $19.99."

The details are discussed on Canonical's blog:
http://blog.canonical.com/?p=18

We've been working with ValuSoft who are a distribution company that specialise in the US retail channel. The boxed set comes with an Ubuntu 8.04 CD, a Quick Start Guide and 60 days of support from the ValuSoft team, trained and backed by the Canonical support guys. The support covers installation and getting started using Ubuntu and is priced at $19.99.

Amazon.com is selling it as well:
http://www.amazon.com/ValuSoft-71685-Ubuntu-Linux/dp/B0018KAN9E/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1215634100&sr=8-16

Maybe this is a level, but from all indications this is standard Ubuntu with standard support (i.e. go look it up on the forums).

60 days of support through ValuSoft and a QuickStart guide. This should answer a lot of questions: http://blog.canonical.com/?p=18

the reason why it was out of radar for 2 months because it only became available this week according to canonical's press release: http://blog.canonical.com/?p=18

The most important question for me before going to Best Buy to purchase is really how much of the proceeds go to the Ubuntu project. If it's 0 or a paltry sum (as I suspect) I'll go out of my way to tell people NOT to buy it from Best Buy. Preloaded on a computer, sure, but for anything else, get an Official Copy. Or, wait for a free CD from shipit and spend the money on an awesome T-shirt.

Someone like... Canonical? http://www.canonical.com/services/support

And where does the money come from to pay for the degree while they're students?

Same place it comes from for ALL students. I.e. only a teeny-tiny proportion from proprietary software. To imply otherwise is simply disingenuous. To imply it matters to this argument is also disingenuous.

when was the last time a company paid for a support and consulting contract in lieu of a service contract with a proprietary vendor?

The last time a company choose a free software platform. There is no distinction between 'support and consulting contract' and 'service contract.' They are the same thing, just a matter of degree.

When was the last time an end user called Adobe or Microsoft?

Gee, I dunno, how about 10 minutes ago?
http://www.adobe.com/support/programs/photoshop/

This only applies where there isn't a tool they can buy that's adequate.

So what? Most tools are not optimal for the particular task at hand. You can fix that with free tools. You can't with closed ones. What's worth more, time or money? It all depends on the specifics of each case.

Hiring consultants is useful because the prospective hire has expert-level knowledge of the system you're using and has the power to effect changes.

You seem to have some pie in the sky notion that a support contract for free software is the same thing as hiring Accenture. Just about all of your argument is based on that premise. It is false.

http://www.canonical.com/services/support
http://www.redhat.com/rhel/renew/faqs/
http://www.mysql.com/about/legal/supportpolicies/policies-02.html#q02
etc -- all the same style as support contracts for 'proprietary' products.

Paying for support for free software costs more, since the proprietary software has already made money on license sales.

Lol! Which is it - "initial purchase price is an almost-insignificant piece of the TCO" or license sales are significant enough to subsidize support sales?
The real point you missed here is that Free software does not have the same level of bring-up costs to begin with. The cost of the linux kernel has long ago been amortized. So while proprietary vendors have higher investment costs that must be recouped, Free software does not.

A competitive market might drive the labor rate down for support services, but the result of that is detrimental to the FOSS developer,

Sure, that's a risk of the free market. Do you believe in the free market or not? Or do you believe that it is just a zero-sum game to be manipulated for economic benefit of one group over another?

Ultimately your arguments fail the real-world test. There are tens of thousands of software engineers, maybe even hundreds of thousands, who make a living by working on and with free software.

PS. I'm still waiting for a citation to one of those many studies that says Free software depends on free labor.

I wonder if this will push Canonical to release a version of Landscape, their equivalent service for Ubuntu, as free software. Currently Landscape is hosted by Canonical and costs $150 per node.

Maybe landscape can help you with that?

1. Upstart, which, except for the kernel, is about as low-level as you can go.
2. Storm, since Ubuntu loves Python.
3. Bazaar, a revision control system used in Launchpad.

Just this one, you guys really ought to RTFA. Every single poster here, with the solitary exception of JustinOpinion, has completely missed the point.

The author is not complaining about Cannonical making money in general. He's also not complaining about them making money off of support.

What he's complaining about is them writing and selling a network managment tool (Landscape) that requires access to a server for which they are not providing the source code. The server of course will not talk to you if you haven't paid up. Basicly, the Landscape clients may be free, but the program itself is not.

This is arguably against the spirit of the GPL (and the spirit of "umbuntu"). Its essentially the same business model as any MMO.

However, it is *not* a complaint about the meer concept of making money of of Free Software. Its a complaint about their methods of doing so in this one instance.

Canonical acts as sponsor of Ubuntu, and must necessarily get revenue somehow. This sells merchandising, training, technical support and so on. You can see it in https://shop.canonical.com/product_info.php?products_id=134&osCsid=2ee3fca302a01aeae8344f649d4c57b6 or http://fabianperez.blogspot.com/2008/04/canonical-anuncia-curso-de-ubuntu.html in Spanish For ubuntu remains free, canonical should get money. Or as pay the salaries of programmers for example?

Software as a service style support. There's their pricing. They also have a merchandise store. This is just like RedHat's model, what's so surprising? Also, Shuttleworth chucked a ton of change at them initially if my memory serves correctly.

Tell that to Canonical. https://shop.canonical.com/product_info.php?products_id=181