Canonical Talks Netbook Remix Details

geekinchief points to a just-posted interview at Laptop Magazine "with Canonical's market manager, Gerry Carr, where he talks about Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Some interesting details: Canonical does not plan to make the Netbook remix available for download or sale. It will only come pre-installed on new systems. It will boot in 5-10 seconds."

Comments

uh

[Anonymous Coward]

who talks what about the whatnow?

5-10 seconds?!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not even enough time for me to get my pants off!

Re:Wait a minute...

[ClayJar]

What, are you saying you want a *preposition* in the headline. "Canonical Talks *ABOUT* Netbook Remix Details"?

We don't need no steenkeen prepositions!

And don't get me started about "Canonical Discusses Netbook Remix Details" or all those other ways to say it. Trying to parse headlines is half the fun of /.! :)

Not available?

[pablomme]

Canonical does not plan to make the Netbook remix available for download or sale Not true. The won't make them available as ISOs ready for installation (since apparently they don't recommend it), but the packages can be downloaded from Launchpad.

Re:Not available?

[lupis42]

Which, to my mind, is kind of annoying. I would dearly like to see ISOs for the MSI Wind that I plan on buying, or the eeePC that my wife might wind up getting.

Re:Not available?

[catdriver]

If you want Ubuntu, and you want this device, you can simply go and buy it. In other words, they'd rather you buy the Ubuntu-branded version than buy the Windows version, then download and install Ubuntu.

I wonder if this will successfully force the sales numbers to reflect Ubuntu's popularity?

Re:Not available?

[Fry-kun]

Makes perfect sense to me.
They're required by GPL to provide the sources to anyone who purchases one of those notebooks. They're not required to post the ISOs, though.

Re:Not available?

[LotsOfPhil]

I wonder how long it will take for a CentUbuntu to pop up and make ISOs for those who don't want to install from .debs.

Re:Not available?

[kernowyon]

Whilst an iso would be useful, it isn't too hard to install a normal Ubuntu/whatever distro onto a laptop - or even an EeePC (my Eee runs Kubuntu).
Once installed, it is relatively easy to customise to your own tastes/needs. For example, I removed all the Bluetooth gubbins, as much printer related stuff as possible and a whole host of odds and ends (various fonts for languages I don't use saved me 70+ mb)

I haven't looked at the Notebook Remix specs, but I imagine the various tweaks are all going to be easy enough to replicate on your own machine.

Bearing in mind that the pre-installed Windows OEM versions are virtually free to manufacturers (costs are low plus recouping any cash via all the pre-installed bloatware trial versions etc), I suspect that Linux pre-installed machines will be no cheaper than Windows ones - and maybe even more expensive. Hopefully any machines which come onto the market will be decent spec - not the usual "hey, Linux is free, therefore lets give the purchaser the bottom end processor/amount of ram/graphics/hard drive....." . That really pisses me off.
I don't use Windows and would buy a Linux laptop if they were easily available at the same (or slightly less) cost as the Windows equivalent machines (I already have two EeePCs) - I hate paying the Windows Tax on laptops which I format the second I get them out of the packaging!

Re:Not available?

[manekineko2]

How do you replicate a 5-10 second start time? I have an eeePC and was thinking about switching from its default Xandros, but the 5-10 second Xandros boot time that is replicated by Ubuntu Netbook Remix is a key feature.

Re:Not available?

[lupis42]

That is the one part of the MSI Wind that bothers me, actually: the Windows model is the one with more RAM and Bluetooth, and since integrated Bluetooth is important to me, I'm going to buy that one. OTOH, I will probably leave WinXP on there, for Diablo II related purposes, so it isn't that bad. If my hand's were a bit smaller, and it were more available and less expensive, I would be getting a EEE 901 Linux. We'll just have to see what the launch price is.

Re:Not available?

[lupis42]

I wonder if I can install that version of Ubuntu on my old, full size laptop... 5-10 second boot would be awesome on my T42.

Re:Not available?

[Burpmaster]

FYI, Diablo II runs flawlessly in wine.

Re:Not available?

[kernowyon]

How do you replicate a 5-10 second start time?
You have me there! Running Kubuntu, my start up is a lot slower than the other EeePC running the stock Xandros based distro - it isn't bad, but nothing like the stock system. I probably *could* cut a second or two off the time - I haven't done much other than disabling a few things in the System Services tab. On the other hand, the system seems more useable than when it ran the Asus Xandros.
But you have encouraged me to see what start up speed I can reach with basic tweaks.

Re:Not available?

[Daengbo]

Here's the link to the PPA: https://launchpad.net/~netbook-remix-team/+archive

Just add it to your sources and install the packages.

Re:Not available?

[ubuntu_demon]

Instructions for installing the packages can be found here : https://launchpad.net/netbook-remix Quoting from the article :

It is likely that we will, over time, make an ISO available, but it is less a market about displacement. If you want Ubuntu, and you want this device, you can simply go and buy it. Looking at : https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UDS-Intrepid/Report/Platform#head-754034f06b81508d29d241478e49760403b42558 IMHO it's likely that eventually (intrepid?, intrepid+1?) you will be able to download a tool to make a netbook usb image.

Re:Not available?

[zoward]

FYI, Diablo II runs flawlessly in wine. Thanks for mentioning this. Most of Blizzard's games are written with OpenGL support (probably to provide a Mac version), so the Diablo I & II/LOD, Starcraft, World of Warcraft all run well under WINE.

Re:Not available?

[mhall119]

Which, to my mind, is kind of annoying. I would dearly like to see ISOs for the MSI Wind that I plan on buying, or the eeePC that my wife might wind up getting. So you'll burn the ISO onto a CD and then pop it into the....oh yeah. That's why they're not useful.

Re:Not available?

[lupis42]

Put ISO on USB Drive Use Daemon Tools to mount ISO Run LiveCD ??? Ubuntu

So easy to get rich...

[da5idnetlimit.com]

Just say :

1/ "Hello M. Manufacturer"
2/ +"5-10$/notebook for a fully fledged, hand tailored os"
3/ +"garanteed OS/drivers support for that particular system hardware for 5 years" (about same as Ubuntu LTS)
4/ +"instead of 90$ for microsoft and no garantees from them at all"
5/+"Of course, it's available now and already running on X millions of systems, it even already have self help forums by the thousands "
6/+"And we will cut you in on all support contracts you bring in (http://www.ubuntu.com/support/paid :in 9x5 coverage, desktop 250$/y, server 750$/y)

and you're the happy salesman that is looking at 10 000 000 laptops/year minimum with a part of your salary on them, or, as they say :
7/Profit

And then you go see the next manufacturer 8)

not a big fan

[debatem1]

Ubuntu built its base on the ability to easily, cleanly displace the dominant OS. Now that they've got some traction they reverse directions in a market that provides next to no freedom for users? Color me unimpressed- if they really want software to be free, the first step is giving people the ability to choose between the codebases that already exist.

Re:not a big fan

[pdusen]

What the hell are you talking about? RTFA

Re:not a big fan

[debatem1]

I'm talking about the fact that an end user cannot easily install this on their own devices. Software freedom for the end user is about the ability to choose between competing software products, not just the ability to modify the codebase. In this case, Ubuntu has taken a route that is no more 'free' than Xandros or, for that matter, TiVo, and it seems hypocritical to me.

Re:not a big fan

[tehBoris]

Ubuntu has taken a route that is no more 'free' than Xandros or, for that matter, TiVo

And RedHat?

I think that this is more akin to what RedHat does than to TiVo's infamous model.

Canonical is giving you both the source and the compiled binaries, for free, but they are not going to give you the bundle; that they reserve for the OEMs, with whom they'll strike deals to distribute (in theory) customized versions of the 'Remix' on their certified hardware and make some cash.

You'll still be able to turn a vanilla installation of Ubuntu into the 'Netbook Remix'; whether there will be TiVo-ization remains to be seen. No evil in my eyes yet.

By the way, what is the deal with Xandros? The only thing I know is that it's some asian commercial Linux distro installed in some portables like the EeePC

Re:not a big fan

[crotherm]

This OS is optimized for specific hardware. It would probably not work very well on just any PC. Or at least that is what I got from TFA.

Re:not a big fan

[debatem1]

The only optimizations mentioned in TFA are to take advantage of the Atom's power saving capabilities- which essentially consists of a few minor kernel tweaks. There's no reason why that couldn't be split into a linux-atom metapackage, assuming that isn't already what they're doing.

eeeXubuntu

[zeromorph]

eeeXubuntu works fine for me for several months now.

You don't need a company, a community is more than enough.

No ISO because UMPC hardware is different

[davide marney]

The new class of UMPCs have specialized hardware that is much closer to the user space than the more general-purpose machines we use today. The XO-1, for example, has dedicated keys on the keyboard for context switching, mesh networking hardware that interacts with application to let the user to co-editing, and other innovations.

A lot of the infrastructure needed to drive this level of hardware interaction simply doesn't exist on general-purpose machines. There's no generic ISO for the XO-1, there's only the ISO that runs on the XO-1 hardware.

You can, of course, take the non-hardware-dependent software and run it on other boxes, and you can emulate the hardware, and run the OS like that. But a purpose-built machine will use purpose-built software.

This, actually, is the great strength of Linux, that it can be reassembled in so many different ways. We shouldn't then be surprised when it gets reconfigured so extensively that it can no longer work on our generic boxes.