Ubuntu Linux heads to the clouds

The first Ubuntu circle of friends logo.

Last week, Ubuntu Linux’s parent company Canonical CEO Jane Silber announced at the OpenStack cloud software conference that HP has chosen Ubuntu as the lead host and guest operating system for its Public Cloud. That’s impressive. It’s Canonical’s biggest enterprise win to date, but that’s only a hint of what Canonical is up to with the cloud.

Canonical started its move to OpenStack from Eucalyptus in February. While Canonical has promised its not going to leave its Eucalyptus users without support, the company is clearly pinning all its cloud plans going forward around OpenStack.

To be exact, according the company, “Ubuntu Cloud Infrastructure now includes OpenStack as the core infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) element of Ubuntu Cloud. Canonical’s investment in lightweight container technology LXC alongside the well-known KVM and Xen virtualization technologies, has resulted in a tightly integrated cloud infrastructure solution that works across all hardware platforms. That means any business can deploy Ubuntu Cloud Infrastructure on their preferred server platform today.”

HP and Canonical are now working together in HP’s private cloud beta to make certain that it will work well. Since Ubuntu is the reference OS for OpenStack and this is a major play by HP a lot depends on Canonical getting this right.

This isn’t just about some business cloud play though. I talked with Mark Baker, Canonical’s server product manager, and he kept telling me about how Ubuntu plans on making it easy for companies to deploy to Ubuntu-based clouds with Juju.

Juju you ask? Juju, formerly Ensemble, lets you easily start-up and manage application services on the cloud. According to Canonical, “Juju is a next generation service deployment and orchestration framework. It has been likened to APT for the cloud. With juju, different authors are able to create service charms independently, and make those services coordinate their communication through a simple protocol. Users can then take the product of different authors and very comfortably deploy those services in an environment. The result is multiple machines and components transparently collaborating towards providing the requested service.”

So say you want to launch a blogging site on the Web. With Juju you invoke the charms for say WordPress, MySQL and a Web server and, ta-da, you have a blogging site. Need more DBMS power or more Web servers just add as required with Juju. Don’t need them anymore, take them down. No fuss. No muss.

Juju was a technology preview in Ubuntu 11.04, but it’s real in Ubuntu 11.10. The cloud behind it though isn’t just for servers. No, in Ubuntu’s new world view, the desktop is part of the cloud.

Gerry Carr, Canonical’s marketing manager, told me that the Ubuntu 11.10 desktop is a step from a PC being simply a piece of hardware on your desk. Eventually, it will equally be a gateway to the power of the cloud. “We’re moving away form concept of local PC to one where the local PC and cloud will be equally important.”

Canonical is already working on this. For example, Ubuntu One, Canonical’s combination cloud storage and music streaming service, is now available not just for Ubuntu users on Ubuntu but on Android, iOS and, get ready for it, Windows as well.

So, what’s a nice Linux desktop feature doing on Windows? According to Carr, it’s because Canonical “doesn’t want to restrict you to the Ubuntu desktop. We’re moving away from the concept of the local PC to the cloud. On the cloud, content is king and we must liberate content across multiple devices.”

In short, sure Canonical wants you to run an Ubuntu desktop, but they also know you can’t always do that, and what’s more important is that you have access to your data, your music, whatever, no matter what you’re running locally. And, the best way to do that, according to Canonical, will be from Ubuntu-powered clouds. 

KDE takes on Android, Apple's iOS on smartphones and tablets

Summary: KDE, one of the leading Linux desktops, is taking dead aim at Android and Apple’s iOS on smartphones and tablets

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If another group was trying to take on Android and Apple’s iOS on smartphones and tablets, I’d dismiss them. RIM, BlackBerry’s parent company, is having a heck of a time getting anyone to buy into PlayBook and while HP TouchPad users loved it,HP killed the TouchPad after only a few weeks. So, why should anyone think that KDE, makers of one of the two most popular Linux desktops, should stand a chance with Plasma Active? Well, because KDE has a long history of delivering the goods with minimal resources.

So what is it? Plasma Active is not, like Android, iOS, or webOS, an operating system. It’s a KDE 4.x style interface and application programming interface (API) designed for touch devices. The Plasma Active Team states that “Plasma Active is innovative technology for an intelligent user experience (UX). It is intended for all types of tablets, smartphones and touch computing devices such as set-top boxes, smart TVs, home automation, in-vehicle infotainment. The goals for this KDE open source project are:

• A fast embedded UX platform with minimal memory requirements
• Customizable and modular to support different form factors
• An interface that adapts as users change Activities.

In their GrandMaster Plan, the developers go into more detail about how they’ll do this: “Plasma Active runs on the proven Linux desktop stack, including the Linux kernel, Qt and KDE’s Plasma Framework. The user interface is designed using Plasma Quick, a declarative markup language allowing for organic user interface design based on Qt Quick. Plasma Active uses existing free desktop technology and brings it to a spectrum of devices through a device-specific user interface. Classical Plasma Widgets can be used on Plasma Active as well as newly created ones. The key driver for the development of Plasma Active is the user experience. Collaboration is made easy through high-level development tools and a well defined process. ”

“The first release of Plasma Active fully focuses on tablet computers. Plasma Active Tablet’s user experience is designed around the web, social networks and multimedia content.” Today, Plasma Active runs on MeeGo and the openSUSE-based Balsam Professional (German language site). There are also OS images for Intel-based tablets, and package builds for ARM and x86 platforms. The group is working flashable images for ARM platforms. The interface will also run on Oracle’s VirtualBox virtual machine. If you want to try it you can find downloads and instructions at the Plasma Active Installation page.

According to Sebastian Kügler, one of Plasma Active’s leading developers Plasma Active is “certainly meant as a replacement for iOS and Android, a completely open, community-driven project with strong backing by a group of (SMB-sized) businesses. We hope this appeals to many hardware vendors, and have in fact already started talking with some. The feedback so far was very good, and the concepts seem to appeal with potential partners. There is definitely demand for an open system without lock-in in the market for devices.”

Kügler also told me that they “have started investigating Tizen, [Intel and the Linux Foundations' proposed replacement for MeeGo] but at this point, there is too little information out, and too many unknowns. We do see Tizen as a potential and likely target platform, but before Intel and Samsung release an SDK, our hands are tied. It’s not stopping us, since in the meantime, we can still run our stuff on MeeGo and Balsam, and we are investigating, together with the Mer team [Another mobile Linux operating system] how to get Plasma Active onto Mer.

That’s all well and good but does KDE have any industry support for this? Kügler replied, “My employer, open-slx backs this project, and we are actively working towards creating a wider ecosystem of companies around Plasma Active, to make good commercial support available, next to the community resources. This includes OEMs, ODMs and companies that can deliver support around Plasma Active, for example integration with new hardware platforms, support for custom-build OS images, 3rd party software, end-user support, etc.”

To that, I might add that unlike other such mobile projects, KDE starts with a large number of open-source applications that already run with it. That’s an advantage that neither RIM nor HP had. Personally, it’s hard for me to see a competitor to Android or iOS getting traction, but I’ve learned over the years not to bet against the KDE team.

KDE takes on Android, Apple's iOS on smartphones and tablets