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.

As Ubuntu 9.10 debuts today, I’d like to spend less time talking and more time listening — to you. What is your initial reaction to Karmic Koala? Desktop and mobile feedback is always welcome. But I’m particularly interested in server, cloud and Landscape feedback from IT administrators. Please feel free to post a comment or email me directly (Joe [at] NineLivesMediaInc.com). WorksWithU intends to develop a series of user case studies exploring Ubuntu 9.10’s business performance across mobile, desktop, server and cloud systems. I look forward to your thoughts.

Who’s running Ubuntu — and why? You can find the answers in our WorksWithU 1000 survey and associated research report — which will ultimately track 1000 businesses, schools, government agencies and non-profit organizations running Ubuntu servers, desktops and mobile devices. Here’s some background.

Red Hat’s CEO, Jim Whitehurst, spoke out strongly recently against the possibility of Linux ever taking over the desktop computers of the world.  His comments may reflect Red Hat’s increasing distance from reality, but I don’t think they’re grounded in facts.  Here’s why.

Governments continue to march toward open source. The Dutch government last year committed to use open standards, the French government has deployed Kubuntu desktops to over 1,000 members of parliament and staff, and a few days ago the United Kingdom government announced an Open Source action plan. The plan, entitled ‘Open Source, Open Standards and Re-Use‘, calls to ensure that open source solutions be fully and fairly considered for public sector IT projects and emphasises the requirement for sharing and re-use of code to reduce costs and drive common solutions.

Pssst: Hey Greg Davis (pictured). You’ve just been named Dell’s global channel chief — in charge of the PC giant’s worldwide partner strategy. What are you going to do next? Here’s one suggestion: Offer some Ubuntu PCs to solutions providers. Here’s why.

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.”

More than a decade after IBM’s OS/2 lost the corporate desktop wars to Windows, Big Blue is back. And this time, IBM is armed with Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux and a $49 per-user price point. A new, virtualized Ubuntu-driven solution initially targets IBM’s financial services and government customers. Here are the details.

It’s time to brag and make yourself known. Whether you’re running one Ubuntu desktop or managing hundreds of Ubuntu systems, we want to know about it. Please fill this quick online survey, called the Works With U 1,000.

When Canonical canceled its Ubuntu Live conference — which had been scheduled to coincide with OSCON in Portland, Oregon — I was deeply disappointed. But in retrospect, here’s why canceling Ubuntu Live — and focusing more resources on August’s LinuxWorld Expo — was a very smart move by Canonical.