Red Hat and Novell beware. Ubuntu Dapper Drake is coming for you
- From: "Lawyerkill" <Lawyerkill@xxxxxxx>
- Date: 31 May 2006 11:04:01 -0700
Red Hat and Novell beware. Ubuntu Dapper Drake is coming for you.
(www.internetnews.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Mark Shuttleworth is about to make history again.
Four years ago, he became the second human in history to journey into
space as a "tourist." Now, closer to home, he's expected to make a mark
with the release of Ubuntu Dapper Drake, which may well challenge
enterprise Linux frontrunners Red Hat and Novell and change the
enterprise Linux landscape.
Shuttleworth's Canonical Inc. is the main sponsor of the Ubuntu Linux
distribution, which is Debian GNU/Linux-derived. Ubuntu had only been
making rapid distribution releases, typically six to nine months in
length.
The last Ubuntu release, code-named Breezy Badger, was released in
October. Before that it was Hoary Hedgehog in April.
Dapper Drake is different from its predecessors in a number of ways.
Perhaps most importantly there will be a version that Canonical will
support for 18 months.
Dapper Drake will also be the first mainstream Linux distribution in
history to support Sun's UltraSPARC 'Niagara' based chips .
"This is quite a dramatic development for us," Shuttleworth told
internetnews.com .
Shuttleworth explained that Ubuntu first got excited about supporting
the SPARC architecture four months ago.
They expected it to take four to five months to validate SPARC and then
an additional four to five months to get the Niagara-specific
components in place. But Shuttleworth credited Sun's OpenSPARC
initiative with speeding the process.
Perhaps even more surprising is the fact that Ubuntu's version of the
2.6.15 kernel will support the Niagara chips even before the regular
plain vanilla kernel.org version supports them. Support in the main
kernel isn't expected till version 2.6.17.
Dapper Drake will ship with the 2.6.15 Linux kernel .
The most current stable version of the Linux kernel is 2.6.16.x series.
"Most of the community work was focused on 2.6.15 because we knew that
was the kernel we would go out with," Shuttleworth explained. "We were
really the only large-scale distribution globally that was very excited
about this and committed to making this work.
"So while 2.6.17 is the mainline kernel that will have it,"
Shuttleworth continued, "all of this work focused on 2.6.15."
For its part, Sun is encouraged by Ubuntu's support for Niagara and
does not see it as competition for its own Solaris operating system.
Fadi Azhari, director of outbound marketing for Sun, explained that,
for the company, it's about offering choice, increasing market
footprint and increasing Sun's penetration.
"It doesn't undermine Solaris," Azhari told internetnews.com . "It's
about new business."
Beyond Sun, Ubuntu may well serve as a natural migration path for
Debian GNU/Linux users who are looking for a fully supported enterprise
certified distribution.
Shuttleworth noted that, for example, Ubuntu is certified for IBM's DB2
database among a growing number of ISV certifications.
"Debian users who have been looking for that ISV certification now have
a fairly easy and straightforward way to take advantage of it,"
Shuttleworth said.
To date, in North America if not on a global basis, Red Hat and Novell
have dominated the enterprise Linux marketplace, a fact that is not
lost on Shuttleworth.
"I maintain that both Red Hat and Novell are excellent companies and
have brought a lot of benefits to the overall Linux space,"
Shuttleworth said. "I would say what Ubuntu is really doing is going
after a slightly orthogonal effort.
"I don't necessarily see it as head-to-head competition with Red Hat,"
Shuttleworth added. "And our strategy for taking it to market is really
to exploit a different kind of user and a different kind of deployment
scenario."
Shuttleworth explained that the Ubuntu economic model is 'less
proprietary' than his competition. In his view, the people that deploy
Ubuntu are deploying Linux in large volumes and have quite a lot of
internal expertise themselves. Those users only want to pay for
commercial support in the specific places where they need it.
"We address slightly different needs; we'll cross paths in some places
but, by and large, we're just a feature of the Linux landscape that's
growing very rapidly," Shuttleworth said.
For Shuttleworth, the Ubuntu effort is partially fueled by his
experience orbiting the earth as a space tourist, an experience that
had a significant impact on his life.
"It's such an extraordinary experience to be part of something like
that, that it can't help but influence you in all sorts of subtle ways
later," Shuttleworth said.
"I certainly felt when I got back that I wanted whatever I did next to
have a global feel and to do something that would recognize that we
live in a very small, very connected world."
"It's a short distance from New York to Morocco in a Soyuz."
Internet.com Corp.
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