back to article Canonical and VMware team on mini-Ubuntu

Canonical has busted out yet another version of Ubuntu – this time taking aim at the much hyped and loved virtualization market. In the coming weeks, ISVs and OEMs will gain access to Ubuntu JeOS – pronounced Juice. The acronym stands for Just Enough Operating System, since the Ubuntu folks have ripped out a variety of general …

COMMENTS

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  1. Alan Donaly

    Dell craptop?

    Maybe they have to special order the incendiary devices AKA

    batteries.They keep having to send them back what do they

    use in the mean time.

  2. Timothy Slade

    Why?

    Didn't you just download an iso image, burn it on a disk, and install it on one of your current machines. It is pretty trivial to resize an existing partition to make some space for Linux, and set up dual booting... like point and click trivial under K/Ubuntu.

  3. Zeb

    Typo

    "since it's mostly meant as an ISV thang."

    Typo or as thas a new englash word I haven't heard of :P

  4. Steven Pepperell

    Sound like...

    a excuse to order more hardware on the El Reg petty cash if you ask me......good job

  5. Alex Schlup

    Because ...

    if you said "download an iso image and burn it on a disk" to the average desktop/laptop user they'd stare at you blankly and report you to the men in the white coats.

    The whole point is that if Linux is ever to make it on the desk top it has to come pre-installed from the major hardware vendors.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    RE: Why?

    Maybe he wanted it loaded with Dell crapware and desktop backgrounds...

  7. Jason Hall

    thang

    "thang"

    oh dear

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    not bad

    I've installed Unudtu on a number of dell laptops (from CP300 to D400) without many problems. Unudtu seems to be really good at picking up a good general driver if a device specific one doesn't exist.

    I have had a few problems with the built in partition resizing but nothing that major.

  9. Nano nano

    Why :-

    In order to test the Dell Ubuntu delivery & support. Obviously lacking !

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Because ...

    ... if you're not going to use WIndows why buy it?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Where did you find it

    Where did your order the scarlett Pimpernell off the Dell Linux Laptop Range?

  12. Alex Hawdon

    Because...

    Maybe he'd really like to see what a laptop Linux is like when all the peripherals, buttons, lights and magic works - out of the box. Without sacrificing a goat, or trawling forums looking for references to your obscure (only issued in Essex, for two weeks) model numbered laptop.

    Just imagine....

    (I can't)

    btw - I use Ubuntu on my laptop and think it's great. But it would be better if Toshiba had kept Linux in mind and ensured my SD card slot and sound card worked properly.

  13. myxiplx

    yup, dell laptops are delayed right now

    We're a windows customer and have been told to expect a long delay on our latest order. Apparently there are shortages of the glass used to make the screens and Dell are struggling to get enough to meet demand.

  14. Stephen Vaughan

    Windows Customer?

    Nope, its not just windows "customers", I've been waiting for six weeks for my vista enhanced laptop (yep Ubuntu will be on there too!)

  15. John

    Re: Why?

    Good point, well presented. Or you could run it in a VMware virtual machine, as was the apparent intention during its development.

  16. Rob Munro

    guess u didnt buy it in the uk

    there still aren't any Ubuntu dells available on dell.co.uk as far as i can see - might be forever till they actually offer them.

  17. Rosco

    A sad day for El Reg readers

    This story has been up for hours and no old timers have questioned 215MB as 'just enough for an OS'? No war stories of installing Unix on a casio watch and binary patching the calculator drivers to get the whole OS down to 3K - including the command line word processor?

    No scoffing about how today's lazy programmers are spoilt by cheap RAM and fast processors?

    No tearful remembrances of Cobol/LISP/punched cards?

    This is a sad day.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    ISV= independent software vendor

    in other words a sales channel for hardware vendors. the ISV builds the software, which needs hardware to run on. They get kickback commissions from the hardware companies that they recommend to their customers.

    Drew

    El Reg

  19. Ashlee Vance (Written by Reg staff)

    Dear Boss

    Drew,

    I think they were going after me for saying "thang" rather than ISV. This is a brutal bunch.

    For the curious, I ordered the laptop because I need a new laptop. Thinkpad is four years old with buttons reaching their problem stage and my 667MHz chip providing only so much fun.

    Have two Macs and two Windows boxes, so thought, why not give the whole Ubuntu on Dell thing a try to see if it's really a decent experience for people. If the laptop ever arrives, I'll report back.

    AV

    www.theduckrabbit.com

  20. Greg Nelson

    thang

    "thang" to the best of my knowledge is a southern U.S. thing. I first came across it in a novel by the scifi, mathematician Rudy Rucker. IIRC "thang" featured heavily in his novel "Wet Ware". I suspect thang was/is a legitimate pronunciation in wide use. I like it. I like that thang.

  21. Vijay Prasad

    Emergence of Scrawny VMs

    Sounds like JEOS may be a response to Fastscale's Redhat oriented product.

  22. Zeb

    Wild

    "to make JeOS wildly available"

    How wild?

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ubuntu Inspiron 6400 experience

    I was about to buy a new laptop which would have been wiped and loaded with Ubuntu when Dell announced their pre-installed option was available in the UK so I went for that.

    To be fair they did warn me of a 2 week lead time before I placed the order which was then revised to four working days when I got the confirmation and it was delivered on time.

    The best thing is that it does all work out of the box: wireless, modem, sound, card reader and even the media buttons on the front. My only complaint was that the screen resolution wasn't set to widescreen by default.

    Also, no Dell cra@pware or backgrounds - just vanilla Ubuntu - the only Dell branding was a localhost alias in the host file of dell.linuxdev.us.dell.com.

    It's now much easier to find the Ubuntu models on the UK Dell site - use the search box to search for "linux" or "ubuntu" and it's right there with a picture of Tux. It's also there on the dropdown menus for desktops and notebooks under "Open-source PCs".

  24. Carl Pearson

    Buy Windows, Save Money

    Sorry to hear the *nix laptop is taking so long ... Dell usually ships very quickly.

    Simple solution: Get a 'doze box with max memory, sell the COA on Ebay, load *nix yourself.

    Just make sure you get XP, you probably won't be able to sell Vista to anyone with more than a quarter of a brain.

  25. Michael Shigorin

    Just Enough?!

    Folks, if anyone is really into efficient virtualization, then just say no to Ubuntu and VMware: ALT Linux 4.0 Server includes both OpenVZ-enabled kernel and management tools, and the basic image which is really "just enough" is 22M archived, 64M deployed.

    Then one has apt-get to install any packages that are needed on that particular virtual appliance, or if there are many of them to deploy, there's "spt" tool to prepare custom "template cache" tarball with all the required packages already included.

    See for yourself:

    http://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/distributions/ALTLinux/4.0/Server/current/iso/

    ftp://ftp.linux.kiev.ua/pub/Linux/ALT/4.0/Server/current/iso/

    http://download.openvz.org/template/precreated/contrib/

    --

    Michael Shigorin

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