One good sale deserves another. That’s one way to think of the Ubuntu PC market, where ZaReason is the latest company to offer special Cyber Monday sales to Ubuntu desktop and notebook shoppers. Here are some details.

System76, the Ubuntu PC maker, continues to offer special holiday pricing on selected systems through Monday evening, November 30. Here’s a look at System76’s Ubuntu PC and notebook discounts, which are part of an ongoing Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales promotion.

For the Ubuntu cloud strategy to succeed, Canonical is going to need a big assist from Eucalyptus Systems — which makes the engine within the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC). But who exactly is Eucalyptus and is the company making progress with its own cloud efforts? Here’s an update.

Opportunity is knocking in the government market for Canonical’s Landscape, a systems management and monitoring tool for Ubuntu systems. Specifically, Autonomic Resources — an integrator that serves the U.S. federal government — is now approved to offer Landscape to government customers running Ubuntu, WorksWithU has learned. Here are some quick details.

Occasional criticism of Ubuntu as a less-than-perfect Linux distribution, and of Canonical as a selfish member of the free-software ecosystem, is nothing new.  But no matter how many flaws one can find with Ubuntu and its developers, they have succeeded in respects where every similar endeavor to date has failed; namely, they’ve achieved a public image that blows every other Linux distribution out of the water.

In this WorksWithU podcast, editorial director Joe Panettieri speaks with Ken Drachnik, Landscape manager at Canonical. Landscape is Canonical’s remote management and monitoring tool for Ubuntu systems. The Podcast conversation covers the following key items…

 

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Sometimes I need to look before I leap. A few minutes ago I posted a blog pointing out the pros/cons of Google Chrome OS to Canonical and Ubuntu. But I overlooked the biggest fact of all. Google has contracted with Canonical to help develop Chrome OS.

Google, as expected, has taken its Chrome OS effort and offered it up as an open source project called Chromium OS. As you may recall Chrome OS will target netbooks and other thin mobile devices — core markets that  Canonical is pursuing with Ubuntu. Should Canonical be worried?

A few weeks ago, Canonical announced that the ShipIt program, which provides Ubuntu CDs for free, would be scaled back in order to cut costs.  Fair enough, but is the new strategy–which centers around making free CDs available only to people already active in the Ubuntu community–in line with the principles that underpin the Ubuntu project?  Here are some thoughts.

As Canonical prepares to launch Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) in April 2010, there are signs  Dell will show considerable love to the Long Term Support (LTS) release. Here are some preliminary details about Dell’s look at Ubuntu 10.04.