Ubuntu now has 'cloud computing inside'
Ubuntu 9.10 will be code-named Karmic Koala, Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth announced on a posting on the ubuntu-devel-announce list Friday. As usual, efforts surrounding the Linux distribution are divided between two target deployments, desktop and server. The desktop goals are primarily around "first impressions," with Shuttleworth indicating that "boot will be beautiful." He also promises that the appearance of Ubuntu will change significantly:
The desktop will have a designer's fingerprints all over it - we're now beginning the serious push to a new look. Brown has served us well but the Koala is considering other options.
I am sure others here at CNET will give the desktop portions of the announcement the serious treatment it deserves, but the server functionality that Shuttleworth announced is much more interesting to the cloud-computing community.
It sounds like the majority of the work on the server side in Karmic Koala will be around cloud computing. Here is the entire text of that portion of the announcement:
A good Koala knows how to see the wood for the trees, even when her head is in the clouds. Ubuntu aims to keep free software at the forefront of cloud computing by embracing the API's of Amazon EC2, and making it easy for anybody to setup their own cloud using entirely open tools. We're currently in beta with official Ubuntu base AMI's for use on Amazon EC2. During the Karmic cycle we want to make it easy to deploy applications into the cloud, with ready-to-run appliances or by quickly assembling a custom image. Ubuntu-vmbuilder makes it easy to create a custom AMI today, but a portfolio of standard image profiles will allow easier collaboration between people doing similar things on EC2. Wouldn't it be apt for Ubuntu to make the Amazon jungle as easy to navigate as, say, APT?
What if you want to build an EC2-style cloud of your own? Of all the trees in the wood, a Koala's favorite leaf is Eucalyptus. The Eucalyptus project, from UCSB, enables you to create an EC2-style cloud in your own data center, on your own hardware. It's no coincidence that Eucalyptus has just been uploaded to universe and will be part of Jaunty - during the Karmic cycle we expect to make those clouds dance, with dynamically growing and shrinking resource allocations depending on your needs. A savvy Koala knows that the best way to conserve energy is to go to sleep, and these days even servers can suspend and resume, so imagine if we could make it possible to build a cloud computing facility that drops its energy use virtually to zero by napping in the midday heat, and waking up when there's work to be done. No need to drink at the energy fountain when there's nothing going on. If we get all of this right, our Koala will help take the edge off the bear market.
If that sounds rather open and nebulous, then we've hit the sweet spot for cloud computing futurology. Let me invite you to join the server team at UDS in Barcelona, when they'll be defining the exact set of features to ship in October.
In case you missed that, let me break it down:
Ubuntu server will target promoting cloud computing through entirely open-source software.
For those wishing to manage clouds, Ubuntu will apparently contain tools that leverage the Amazon APIs. (I would hope the GoGrid APIs are also under consideration, considering its apparent consideration by a variety of Amazon's competitors.)
Canonical will create standard Amazon Machine Images from Karmic Koala, essentially creating "ready-to-run" appliances that will serve as "standard builds" to the Amazon community.
Don't want to commit to Amazon? Would you rather build a cloud on your own infrastructure to get a feel for things while the public clouds "cure"? Starting with Karmic's predecessor, Jaunty
JaguarJackalope (soon to go to code freeze), UC Santa Barbara's open-source cloud project, Eucalyptus, will be included in every install package.
I'm certain that Simon Wardley, now Canonical's services manager for software, has had tremendous influence on this direction. His long-term drive for open-sourced standards in the cloud-computing space makes the selection of tools here quite logical. It is quite possible that the exact platforms included in Koala will change over the next several months, but the open software philosophy that Shuttleworth, Wardley, and the Ubuntu community espouse will guide their choices.
How important is this for the future of cloud computing? Only time will tell. There are already other open-source projects with "baked in" images on Amazon (RedHat not being the least of them), and Eucalyptus is a research project that its founder readily admits is not intended for production use without much further work.
That being said, the Ubuntu crew is in my view the Apple of Linux, and will likely change the game not through the infrastructure itself, but the user experience they introduce to building and managing clouds.
That, I can't wait to see.
James Urquhart is a seasoned field technologist with almost 20 years of experience in distributed systems development and deployment, focusing on service-oriented architectures, cloud computing, and virtualization. James is currently market manager for the Data Center 3.0 strategy at Cisco Systems, though the opinions expressed here are strictly his own. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. 
Wow that was hard.
Apart from that good article.
James
That is why it controls the server market and is growing in graphics, clusters, and the desktop.
Mr. Dee, I think it has been well established here, that you are a complete and utter moron. Do you enjoy coming off like the total fool that you are? Do you?
He may be talking about Koala but not in this bit:
"starting with Karmic's predecessor, Jaunty Jaguar (soon to go to code freeze),"
That is the part i am on about, wrong name given.
@ MR. Dee linux is not a fad at all do you even know what it is, ever used it? It's used by huge companies like google to power their search engine for example.
I insall unbuntu cos of the way linux nerds talk about it and believe i feel it looks like sun os and mac os without the mac dock. windows is more unique more different ftom others and M$ knows how to make things easy for developers and consumers. well at the end linux is good osx is good but a system is about usability and compactibility.
Linux based systems :
- The entertainement screen when you take the plane
- In theTevo
- A good part of the servers.
- At the LHC and for most nuclear physics experiments.
- Cell phones/Smart phones
- GPS
- ...
In summary : a lot of companies use Linux everywhere, they are just not marketing it because it's mostly for internal use.
http://www.aaxnet.com/design/linux2.html
http://hitachi-id.com/linux-biz/
Try thousands.
That being said, the default look for Ubuntu REALLY sucks & I'm sure it gives some people a negative first impression, even though it can be changed & regardless of the software quality. I'm glad they are finally going to address this in 9.10.
Might try it out. I like good looking UIs. They are important to me.
They have survived on hype alone. It is several years behind other distros. Canonical has done little technology-wise, so I am skeptical they can change that.
Getting away from the turd brown is helpful, but it will take more than that.
Personally I would still switch to Debian later because it's not that different form ubuntu and is much more stable. But that does not change my enthusiasm about Ubuntu. They are doing what should be done for Linux : create a 'critical mass'.
If you want to talk about poor releases, let's talk about Fedora and the ' rpm hell '...
Oh Fedora. I used that. It's fantastic when you get one of those RPM conflicts and you have to track down some seemingly unrelated program, uninstall it, update or install the program you're actually trying to install, and then reinstall the seemingly unrelated program because the program you're trying to install won't install until you've done this magic dance.
Then again I haven't used version 10 so maybe it's gotten fixed. That's my only complaint though. Everything else seemed to work fine.
I have been using Ubuntu on my home computer for the last 2 1/2 years, each release is stable enough for me, especially knowing I don't have to scan for spyware and malware every 8 hours, or defragment my hard drive. I just hope they let us switch to the brown theme if they change the default to something else. Some of us have actually grown fond of the color, it gives ubuntu its uniqueness and identity, not unlike the elegance of good aged leather.
- by Norseman February 23, 2009 12:09 PM PST
- What's next? "Loser Linux"?
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