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Canonical Halts Ubuntu CD Free-for-all
Barence writes to tell us that Canonical plans on limiting the number of "free Ubuntu CDs" that people can mooch from the company. The growing popularity of Ubuntu has seen a dramatic increase in the number of CDs being shipped via the free "ShipIt" scheme. The only people able to take advantage of this program now will be the usual community teams, contributors, and first-time Ubuntu users. "'While these CDs are often referred to as 'free CDs,' they are of course not free of cost to Canonical. We want to continue this programme, but Ubuntu’s growth means that some changes are necessary. Therefore we are adjusting how we handle CD requests to try to find the right balance between availability of CDs and the continued viability of the ShipIt program,' [Canonical's chief operating officer Jane Silber] adds. Extra CD copies of Ubuntu will still be available for purchase through the Canonical store, although they need to be bought in bulk. Five copies of the open-source operating system will cost £5 exc VAT and shipping."
I never got any of the free CDs because I never wanted to wait. I guess it was handy for people that couldn't burn ISOs like most windows users untill they installed an ISO burning program.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I once got flamed on Slick Deals for asking people to show restraint and common sense after someone posted a deal for a free CD from Project Gutenburg. People were ordering tons of disks as if they were getting some special deal. I don't blame Canonical at all for placing limits.
Ubuntu seems to have hit the big time, riding off the Win7 release.
There's half-a-dozen mainstream news sources that are mentioning Ubuntu in their coverage of Win7, some are even holding it above MS's OS
Eg.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/oct/26/kellner-linux-hits-user-nerve/
I would think they'd have some success starting a fund people can optionally donate a few bucks to, to help offset shipping and production costs on the free CDs they send out. Then simply tell people that if the fund runs dry, shipping of CDs gets halted until more donations are made.
I suspect the majority of people requesting the free CD are doing so because they're in a situation where downloading and burning the ISO image is too troublesome (limited bandwidth like some corporations have, or someone using satellite broadband where they have a transfer cap before getting charged per K downloaded, etc.). Asking them to kick a few dollars back into the fund after they install and start using the product doesn't seem like a big deal.
Obviously, it'd still be a good idea to track addresses and enforce a "one copy per mailing address, per release" rule....
You should try UnixWare, imo it's a lot better than Fedora. And it's backed by SCO, which is a lot larger and older than Red Hat. :p
Any fool can talk, but it takes a wise man to listen.
I would happily buy them from Amazon, if Amazon had up to date Ubuntu CD's. Its especially useful when you need a DVD and don't want to wait
You damn pirates think you get can everything for free, even things that are free to begin with!
+1. It really has been a good release; everything works out of the box on my laptop (the sound, webcam, microphone, and wi-fi). If they can keep the quality high for the upcoming LTS release, there will be nothing but good news for the project and its growing popularity.
I sent a suggestion that Canonical make their CDs/DVDs available through outlets like Netflicks for people that want physical media to install, but don't need it to keep (or to burn their own copy). Let those for-pay outlets take care of media distribution and return via their established infrastructures.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
It's also a tax shelter country that the founder was born and raised in.
I've always though the Ubuntu folks were particularly generous giving those CD's away. I mean it's not like they were demos or trialware or something.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
I'm new to F/OSS. Could someone please distinguish "free as in beer" and "free as in beer coaster" for me?
One of ubuntu's (and Linux in general) main obstacles is the lack of public awareness. You go to a computer store and everything on offer is pre-loaded with windoze...it's as if no other O/S exists. What Canonical really need to try to do (and I appreciate that this would not be without cost) is get the CD's in the stores so that punters buying a new computer will see it as a viable alternative to M$ products. Ideally, of course it would be nice if manufacturers could offer it pre-installed across their ranges as well. Also, as many people are hugely suspicious of anything 'free' and anything 'new', packaging it with a (sensibly priced) support service might be another way of 'selling' Linux to the masses.
Smivs on the intertubes!
No OS is one size fits all, so a little tweaking is inevitable. Debian is intended for everyone, so it's fairly easy to get set up the way you want it, and then forget about forever. Ubuntu is targeted towards the lowest common denominator, so if your needs are different from most you might have a little more hassle getting it the way you want it.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
....What a wonderful problem to have.
Regards;
Just in case my sarcasm detector is malfunctioning, and seeing as its the second comment I've seen along these lines, here you go.
It occured to me that it would be fun (and possibly significant) to ship ubuntu with a tool to make new ubuntu CDs. Of course you can do that with the built in CD burning tool but I mean making the process a bit more explicit with a prominent menu option (Make new Ubuntu CD) which asks for the install CD, extracts the ISO, burns a new CD ancd optionally prints the official CD label.
Its the kind of functionality you won't be seeing in Windows 7 any time soon.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
It should be quite hard to confuse Isle of Man and South Africa, so maybe I'm missing something...
Could someone explain how this is informative?