HP To Certify Ubuntu 12.04 LTS For Its Proliant Servers

An anonymous reader writes with this dose of nice news (untranslated from the PR-ese) on the Linux-in-business front: "Mark Shuttleworth has announced at the OpenStack conference that Canonical has received a ringing endorsement from HP in the form of certification for Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on the ProLiant server systems. Responding to customer demand, HP has decided to officially support the popular flavor of Linux giving sysadmins another flexible software option to leverage their current and future hardware."

Comments

Awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

They already support Debian so this won't be much of a stretch. Hooray! Now, if they would only officially support desktop linux on their laptops and desktops, including help make sure drivers work or driver docs are available...

Re:Awesome!

[h4rr4r]

Cute, but it is a common linux distro to use in Enterprises. Pretty much that or RHEL if you want or need support. Lots of commercial software will only be certified for OS that have commercial support available for purchase like Ubuntu does. That way if the customer encounters a problem that is actually with the OS they can kick the customer to OS support.

Re:Awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu Server is basically Debian with a support contract. Which is precisely what a lot of people want.

Ah but it's got the name "Ubuntu" in it so it doesn't make your neckbeard tingle?

WTH, voiding HW warranty by installing software?!

[Zsub]

Why is this even necessary?! Apparently, you can void your hardware warranty by installing software (from TFA):

it simply means that by installing Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on their current (or future) ProLiant hardware that they won’t nullify any kind of hardware warranty

But how does this even work? Also: as TFA notes, it's unclear who is endorsing who here, with HP being extremely profitable and all, but wouldn't it be cheaper for HP to just not be a little whiney kid about what kind of software you can or can't run?

Re:WTH, voiding HW warranty by installing software

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the increasing popularity of Ubuntu on servers, I am sure HP thinks (and rightfully so) it's a good strategic move to test and certify the latest version on their machines.

Re:No other Unix?

[characterZer0]

HP already certifies other distributions and operating systems. They are adding Ubuntu 12.04 LTS to the list.

Re:No other Unix?

[unixisc]

Ok, thanks. I somehow read the headline as Ubuntu being the preferred OS for the Proliant, which seemed strange.

Re:does anyone still care about "certification"?

[characterZer0]

Since lawyers and accountants got involved in everything.

Well they've got to have something

[Chrisq]

Well they've got to have something to run on the Itanium

Re:WTH, voiding HW warranty by installing software

[LordLimecat]

Wasnt a previous beta /RC (or possibly release?) of Ubuntu a year or so ago capable of bricking onboard NICs of any machine with a specific intel chipset?

I dont recall the details, but the point is, the wrong software most certainly cause hardware issues.

Re:WTH, voiding HW warranty by installing software

[Sporkinum]

This happened to my wife's machine. If you enabled suspend, it would shut down the NIC completely. It would not even function in Windows 7. It was as if the NIC did not exist. We warrantied the machine back to HP because of it. It turns out all you had to do was pull the power cord and wait a minute or 2. If there was still power to the system, the NIC vanished.