As you may have heard, Ubuntu is leaping from desktop computers all the way to Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Although Ubuntu Server Edition 8.10 on Amazon EC2 remains in beta, the Amazon relationship could energize Canonical’s server strategy, WorksWithU believes. Here’s why.

Linux-based Netbooks — many of them with Ubuntu pre-installed — continue to sell fast. But could there be a potential legal snag with some of those Netbooks? Apparently, Psion claims to hold a trademark on the Netbook term. So what does that mean for Netbook-named products from Lenovo and others? Here’s some speculation from WorksWithU’s sister site, TheVARguy.com.

For a long time, ndiswrapper, which uses Windows wireless drivers to make wireless cards work on Linux, was a vitally important component of many Ubuntu systems.  In many cases, it was the only way for users to access wireless Internet. Unfortunately, the ndiswrapper project’s pulse has seemed to go from faint to non-existent over the last several months.

Lead Ubuntu developer Mark Shuttleworth posted an item on his blog yesterday about the future of notifications in Ubuntu.  This (or at least something similar) is what users can expect to see in Ubuntu 9.04 when it’s released in April:

Cornell College of Mount Vernon, Iowa is the latest institute of higher education to embrace Ubuntu Server Edition, WorksWithU has learned. It’s not a huge deployment, but Cornell’s targeted Ubuntu use reinforces a growing trend at colleges and universities worldwide, according to the WorksWithU 1000 — a survey that aims to track one thousand Ubuntu deployments.

Jeremy Allison of the Samba project made some interesting remarks in an interview last week about the nationalist flavors of Linux distributions.  To sum up: SUSE is popular with Germans and other Europeans; Red Hat and Fedora are for Americans; the Chinese have Red Flag Linux; and Ubuntu “seems to be more third world.”

ZaReason, one of the best-known companies developing Ubuntu desktops and notebooks, plans to introduce Ubuntu server products soon. I welcome the news, but the Ubuntu server market still faces tall challenges.

The Economist published an article recently about netbooks, the small and cheap laptops that may well prove central to bridging the gap between geeky Linux users and the masses.  While it doesn’t say anything very original, the recommendations it makes–and the audience of professionals that’s likely to read them–are noteworthy in their own right.

techradar.com has an interesting interview with Jeremy Allison, leader of the Samba project (in other words, one of the people who makes it possible for your Ubuntu machine to connect to its Windows neighbors). Of particular interest is Allison’s assertion that Ubuntu, thanks to its unaparalleled popularity and huge user base, has “the strongest chance to take Linux mainstream.”

While speaking recently with one of my bosses, I was told I will receive a new business laptop in 2009. Now, for the problem: It will be running Windows Vista or Windows XP. Hooray for new gear. Boo for Luddite attitudes.