At first glance, Canonical will spend most of this week promoting Ubuntu at OSCON, the open source convention. But take a closer look and you’ll discover Canonical and Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud Edition surfacing at HostingCon in Austin, Texas. Here’s why.

For a long time, Ubuntu was the only big-name Linux distribution with a specially tailored netbook version.  That changed recently with the announcement of Fedora Mini, which stands poised to compete with Ubuntu Netbook Remix on Linux-based netbooks and similar devices.  Here are some thoughts on what this development means for Ubuntu and Canonical’s netbook strategy, and Linux netbooks in general.

After placing its bets for years on Xen, Red Hat moved recently towards official support for KVM, the virtualization hypervisor built into the Linux kernel.  Here’s a look at what this change might mean for Ubuntu, which has promoted KVM from the beginning.

There’s no question that Ubuntu dominates the desktop-Linux world.  With commanding market share and a huge user community, it’s by far the most well supported and documented open-source platform in the desktop world.  On servers, however, the situation is different–and Canonical needs to address it if it wants to become a real player in the server market.

A landmark event occurred today when the Open Source Channel Alliance launched. Although far from perfect, the alliance shows that Linux and open source applications are gaining momentum with mid-market resellers and solutions providers. The problem: Red Hat is a driving force in the alliance, and Canonical isn’t involved.

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.

A representative of Red Hat told a reporter recently that the company, which abandoned desktop Linux years ago in order to devote its energies to the server market, “will indeed be pushing the Linux desktop again.”  Such a move would presumably present a challenge to Ubuntu, which has dominated the desktop scene for a long time.  Or would it?

This previous Christmas, I asked for and was given a brand new Eee PC (701). When I opened it, the comments around the room came quickly, “That’s a computer?” and “It’s so small” and “What a neat toy.” Well, that Toy has been on quite a Linux journey in recent months. And I’m now running eeeXbuntu on the Eee PC. Here’s how I arrived at that operating system, along with some clues about where I may go next.

The Ubuntu wave seems to be growing by the day. Cnet has a great blog entry describing how Ubuntu and Red Hat Linux are pulling away from the pack. Here’s the scoop from Cnet.