Ubuntu Desktop In the Cloud

jimjimovich writes "One new feature in Ubuntu 10.04 that caught my attention is the Desktop in the Cloud project. Ubuntu already has great EC2 support, and it's getting even better. Now you can launch Ubuntu Desktop instances on EC2 and connect to them with an NX client."

Comments

Re:Cost prohibitive?

[e2d2]

Checking the EC2 pricing scheme:

Small Linux install: $.085 per hour
Up to the First 10TB of data transfer: 0.15 per GB

And it goes down as you add more instances in. So the cost may be relatively small.

But I wonder, if you are remoting to this machine, won't you be charged for twice the bandwidth if you are using it as your desktop to surf the web? Incoming data has to go to that instance first and then route to you. AFAIK you'll be charged for total bandwidth usage.

 

I love that word, but have a suggestion.

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

It'll be in the Cloud! It'll be grand! "What does that mean?" Oh, it doesn't matter. It's in the Cloud! Duuuuude! The CLOUD, man!

It seems to me that the Cloud is the end result of network engineers being too successful in dumbing down "all that network" stuff into an amorphous cloud in their Visio diagrams, in order to allay the concerns of micromanaging PHBs.

My suggestion is that we start calling it the Clod. Then at least we could get some entertainment value of out if. "Ubuntu Desktop in the Clod" and "Moving all your mission-critical resources to the Clod!", or "How can the Clod help YOUR business to succeed?"

Re:Let's Open-Source the cloud

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Alternately: "Yo dog, I heard you like Ubuntu so I put an Ubuntu on your Ubuntu so you can compute while you compute..."

Re:i never saw the point of cloud desktops

[ppanon]

Nope. What it is is the natural end-point after 10 years of outsourcing. When you get rid of the growth path for technical resources, eventually you get a profound lack of availability of senior technical resources. At that point you have no choice but to push everything IT-related out to external vendors because you can't hire internal resources to do it (or even just to manage the process) and must rely on external vendors who can maximize use of those types of resources across multiple clients. However you also no longer have the skills available to know if the vendor is taking you to the cleaners, or cutting corners on management/security to raise profits and significantly putting your data at risk. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a Madoff-level disaster with a "cloud" provider sometime in the next 10 years.