Underexposed

Heading in a different direction from its main rivals, Ubuntu Linux will use KVM as its primary virtualization software.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Server both use the Xen virtualization software, a "hypervisor" layer that lets multiple operating systems run on the same computer. In contrast, the KVM software runs on top of a version of Linux, the "host" operating system that provides a foundation for other "guest" operating systems to run in a virtual mode.

"We've chosen to settle on KVM as our main virtualization focus," Soren Hansen, the Ubuntu Server Team's 26-year-old virtualization specialist, said in the Ubuntu Weekly News.

The move gives new prominence to KVM, which was initially popular with Linus Torvalds and other programmers of the Linux kernel. However, in the months since start-up Qumranet began the KVM project, the Xen programmers have made more progress in dovetailing their code more closely with the Linux kernel. KVM and Xen both are open-source packages.

KVM will be built into Ubuntu's next version, called Hardy Heron and due in April. "For the Hardy Heron release, we've really picked up the virtualization ball. Virtualization is making its way into data centers and onto developer workstations everywhere. Even 'regular' users are using it to run Ubuntu on Mac OS X all the time," Hansen said. "Virtualization has been on our agenda for a long time, but it became a top priority at UDS (Ubuntu Developer Summit) in November. We could see that demand for it was growing."

Canonical, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, will provide long-term support for Hardy Heron that lasts five years for servers and three years for PCs. Ubuntu is updated about every six months, but Hardy Heron is only the second version to get long-term support.

Xen is already built into Red Hat and Novell's Linux products, and Microsoft is on the brink of releasing its own virtualization product, called Hyper-V. However, the market leader for virtualization is EMC subsidiary VMware, which sells not only the virtualization foundation but also higher-level tools to monitor server performance and to move applications from one server to another to adjust work load.

Hansen said programmers also evaluated several other options, including Xen, Parallels' OpenVZ, KQEMU, and VirtualBox. "We found that KVM was the best fit for us right now."

Unsurprisingly, Xen fans see things differently. In particular, Simon Crosby, chief technology officer of Citrix Systems' virtualization and management division, said KVM's approach is better suited to desktop machines than to servers.

"Ubuntu is not widely deployed in enterprise data centers, where the need for a comprehensive virtual infrastructure layer independent of any guest operating system...is a requirement articulated by every customer," Crosby said in a statement. Ubuntu is widely used on desktops, so for Ubuntu programmers, "it seems natural that a hosted virtualization model makes sense to them."

Although Ubuntu didn't use the same virtualization foundation that dominant Linux seller Red Hat chose, it will use the libvirt package Red Hat created to provide a neutral management interface to Xen, KVM, or other compatible virtualization systems.

To provide an easier interface to libvirt, Ubuntu will employ software called virt-manager, Hansen said. "It allows you to set up new virtual machine, see which ones are running, and how much CPU they're consuming," he said.

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Canonical plans on Thursday to release "Gutsy Gibbon," the Ubuntu Linux version 7.10 that the company hopes will lay the foundation for a serious push into the server and other markets six months from now.

That's when Gutsy Gibbon's sequel, "Hardy Heron," is scheduled to arrive. Gutsy Gibbon will have the usual Ubuntu support life span--18 months--but Hardy Heron will be the company's second version to feature long-term support, which lasts three years for the desktop product and five years for the server.

Some of the Gutsy Gibbon work involved introducing new features Canonical hopes to stabilize for Hardy Heron, said Canonical's chief executive and founder, Mark Shuttleworth. Take, for example, the "tickless" kernel, which is designed to reduce power consumption and improve server virtualization performance by letting the processor enter a somnolent state more often.

"I'm quite glad we're not trying to make the decision between tickless and long-term support. This is a fairly radical piece of surgery on the kernel," Shuttleworth said.

Among other Gutsy Gibbon developments are snazzy 3D graphics for the desktop version, desktop search called Tracker and the first incarnation of a Ubuntu Mobile version for portable gadgets.

Building a server team
At the same time, Canonical also is expanding support and development staff for the server push, which as with Linux leaders Red Hat and Novell is where the vast majority of money is made in the Linux business.

"The team has grown quite a bit. That's in preparation for our LTS (long-term support) release, which will be based on the April 2007 release," Shuttleworth said. To lead the server team, currently at about eight employees and counting, Canonical hired Rich Clark, whose financial services background gave him experience with high performance, reliability and virtualization.

The team also has begun working directly with server makers to ensure the software works on their x86-based machines--not just the ones available when Hardy Heron launches, but the new servers that will also arrive during the software's five-year lifespan.

"There will be a fair amount of hardware enablement after the release. That's not something that's been done in the past," Shuttleworth said. Although the work will stop short of full-on certification, Shuttleworth said, "We're confident we can do all the engineering required to make it just work."

Canonical has focused on desktop computing as a way to get programmers and enthusiasts interested in Ubuntu, hoping that ultimately will lead to use in the server market. Shuttleworth, who grew rich off his sales of Thawte Consulting to VeriSign for $575 million in 2000, is willing to be patient in the transition from Ubuntu popularity to Canonical profitability.

"The transformation we're trying to bring about will take years," he said. "What we're trying to achieve is very substantial shift in the operating system landscape. It's a huge, entrenched industry, where one shouldn't expect it to turn on its head."

Canonical has made some inroads, including a certification deal with online e-mail software maker Zimbra and a partnership to power Linux laptops from Dell.

Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans, co-founders of Zend, provide a useful view of Ubuntu's spread: their commercially supported open-source PHP software, which lets programmers at sites such as Facebook and Fiat create dynamic Web pages, is most often used on Linux. Debian is still used more often than Ubuntu, but the latter is used by programmers and is spreading, Suraski said.

Canonical is growing. It now has about 120 employees, of whom 70 are programmers.

New features
The new 3D desktop interface is the "most visible" new feature in Gutsy Gibbon. "It's also the most risky," Shuttleworth said, and deciding whether to include it triggered "a lot of debate at highest levels of the board."

Compiz software enables flashy 3D effects, such as this 'wobbly windows' plug-in.

(Credit: Compiz.org)

But Canonical wanted to get it settled before releasing Hardy Heron with its long-term support requirements. "We think this really is a hotbed of innovation," Shuttleworth said. "Ultimately we took the decision to take the risk and enable this functionality by default."

One problem with the interface stems from its use of the OpenGL 3D graphics standard. That breaks other applications, such as computer-aided design software, that also use OpenGL. Those computer users will have to disable the interface, Shuttleworth said.

Advanced Micro Devices' decision to help Novell and others create an open-source driver for its ATI line of video cards helped push Ubuntu programmers to adopt the to 3D interface, Shuttleworth said. Currently, 3D acceleration typically requires proprietary video driver software, which is hard to support on Linux and distasteful to many.

Among other Gutsy Gibbon desktop features are plug-and-play function to more easily install proprietary or missing software to play audio and video files; easy support for multiple monitors; the ability to read and write from hard drive partitions using Microsoft Windows' NTFS file system using the Fuse software.

Ubuntu is based on Debian, a distribution of the Linux kernel and higher-level packages that's been around for years. Canonical releases new versions every six months, but versions with long-term support arrive only every two years under current plans.

Shuttleworth established it with a major difference over what leaders Red Hat and Novell have done: the free product and the supported product are the same. The rivals sell support subscriptions only to their for-fee version, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Suse Linux Enterprise Server.

Shuttleworth wants Ubuntu to grow as fast as possible, but he won't follow in Red Hat's footsteps by shifting to a fee-only supported version after gaining market share with a free product.

"I don't think we would survive a transition like that," Shuttleworth said. "The industry already effectively has got proprietary free-software providers. We wouldn't add anything."

Programmers have released the first beta version of Ubuntu Linux with new flash technology--in two senses of the term.

Compiz software enables flashy 3D effects, such as this 'wobbly windows' plug-in.

(Credit: Compiz.org)

First, Ubuntu is finally following leading Linux versions from Red Hat and Novell that include snazzy 3D graphics in the user interface. Specifically, the version 7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon" beta uses Compiz Fusion, software that uses OpenGL graphics technology to make windows transparent, map desktops to the faces of a cube, let windows wobble as if made of JELL-O or zoom them for quick magnification. Various 3D effects can be downloaded and plugged in. Some folks find this eye candy to be a CPU-sucking annoyance, but Mac OS X and Windows Vista have it, and a lot of enthusiasts find it an engaging domain.

Personally, I've only toyed with the 3D effects and haven't been won over, but I think it could provide an important foundation for more revolutionary interface changes.

Second, the beta version includes a preview version of Gnash, an open-source incarnation of Adobe Systems' Flash software for animations and video streaming. It's still in development and "not yet fully supported by Ubuntu," but it brings some Flash support to those who want to move fully to 64-bit software.

For those using the GNOME user interface, printers are automatically configured when plugged in, project organizers said.

On the server side, the Gutsy Gibbon beta includes the AppArmor released by Novell to provide more security by isolating software applications and restricting their privileges more tightly.

Gutsy Gibbon is due to be completed October 18.

We'll see if Walt Mossberg can be convinced this time around. If not, Gutsy Gibbon's successor, Hardy Heron, is due in April 2008. It'll be the second Ubuntu release to get long-term support, which lasts five years for server versions and three years for desktop versions.

The first version of Ubuntu scheduled for next year will be called Hardy Heron and will be the second of Canonical's Linux products to feature long-term support.

(Credit: Ubuntu)

Ubuntu Developer Jono Bacon posted news of the new version on a mailing list and his blog on Wednesday.

He invited interested people to submit feature requests for the release at its Launchpad site. Canonical will hold an Ubuntu Developer Summit in October 2007 in Cambridge, Mass., to hash out details and implementation plans, he added.

Ubuntu's next update, Gutsy Gibbon, is due in October and will sport the version number 7.10, a reference to the year and month of its release. Following the six-month release cycle, Hardy Heron, or 8.04, is scheduled for release in April 2008.

Hardy Heron will be the second release to feature long-term support, in which Canonical sells support and provides bug fixes for three years for desktop versions and five years for server versions. The first release to feature long-term support was Dapper Drake, released in June 2006. Ordinary versions have support for 18 months.

Numerous companies and projects have emerged in recent years to challenge leaders Red Hat and Novell's Suse, but Debian-based Ubuntu is one of the few to gain any prominence. Ubuntu founder and Canonical Chief Executive Mark Shuttleworth set up the project so that freely downloadable versions of Ubuntu are identical to the supported versions. In contrast, Red Hat and Novell only support versions that people pay for through subscription plans.