>it simply means that by installing Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on their current (or future) ProLiant hardware that they won’t nullify any kind of hardware warranty.
Would it have before? Warranty claims being denied because a server runs Ubuntu would cause quite a shit storm. Unlike consumers, people purchasing servers are generally sophisticated (whitepapers nonwithstanding), and Ubuntu is a huge slice of the server market. About 45% of all EC2 images are Ubuntu based.
Doing so would possibly violate consumer laws in the US as well. To nullify a warranty, you have to be able to prove that whatever modification the user made could be directly tied back to the failure. Very unlikely HP would be able to prove that installing Ubuntu caused a hardware failure.
Then again, ExtremeTech isn't known for well-though-out journalism. The "turmoil" in HP has never been around their server division, in fact HP's previous claim was that they could drop the PC division to focus on servers. Proliant buyers would not be concerned about the future of HP's infrastructure department.
The title on http://thecloudmarket.com/stats#/totals refers
to available images. Sounds like it might be just counting
preconfigured vm images made available (on thecloudmarket.com?). Canonical's huge share would
speak for this interpretation as well.
You're right, but that's why I said images, not running instances. The former might not correlate exactly with the latter, but it's a pretty good indication that Ubuntu has a very large slice of the total market for servers.
That's not the reason. The reason is that they can bullshit you and get away with it.
I sometimes wonder why isn't there a huge fine specifically for corporations trying to avoid their responsibilities by bullshiting customers. It should be in hundreds of thousands per incident.
Because they do that and they feel free to do that and you can't punish them much for doing that. The worst case for them, they actually do their job.
In the US, if you know the law, there are penalties for a company disregarding consumer protection laws. I forget the name of the law, but I actually ended up filing a suit against Alltel before us Alltel customers were moved to AT&T following the buyout. Alltel settled as soon as my lawyer sent the papers. It's colloquially known as the "lemon law" (though that's a term generally reserved for used car sales). If they can't fix a defective, in-warranty product in a reasonable time, the contract you have with them is void and they have to refund the price.
In my case, Alltel kept sending me broken phones for my warranty claims, then the third time I sent the phone back they said the warranty was void because I had installed a registry browser on Windows Mobile (and that was apparently the cause of them sending me a phone that was missing a loudspeaker).
At any rate, I don't remember the name of the law or the exact words anymore, but look into it so you know what you can expect when this happens to you. The FTC doesn't take kindly to it, and in some cases will actually pay a lawyer to fight it for you.
I don't really understand Canonical's stated direction, unless it's changed recently. They've stated that they intend their desktops for casual users, and that if you're a power user, there are other distros for you... yet they're also trying to push their server market. It seems that they don't intend to provide a desktop for the admins of their servers to use...
At the end of the article ExtremeTech fails to list one of the key beneficiaries of certification:
Sysadmins without 'buying power' who are already running Linux on corporate infrastructure and who are taking flak from PHB management.
(Coming from someone who stood aghast at the purchase of $5k per unit of vulnerable-by-default Windows Server based SSH servers when two Pentium IIIs from 1998 running Ubuntu LTS would have worked better - to handle 100MB of data three times/day on a 10Mbit synchronous cxn.)
HP has (and has had) various operating systems certified on ProLiant servers over the years, including Oracle Solaris, Oracle Linux, Microsoft Windows, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES), VMware, Canonical Ubuntu, Citrix, NetWare/OES, and probably a few other software giblets.
HP have also had supported hardware emulators that have been running yet other operating systems atop one of these operating systems on ProLiant, as well.
Unfortunately, certifications for Ubuntu carry little value unless server vendors begin publishing usable official package repositories for device drivers, BIOS/firmware updates, and systems management/diagnostics software. Merely being able to run Ubuntu without a kernel panic is not enough.
Until this happens, RHEL will remain a better option for most people running their own hardware.
13 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 34.3 ms ] threadWould it have before? Warranty claims being denied because a server runs Ubuntu would cause quite a shit storm. Unlike consumers, people purchasing servers are generally sophisticated (whitepapers nonwithstanding), and Ubuntu is a huge slice of the server market. About 45% of all EC2 images are Ubuntu based.
This smells like a non story to me.
Edit: Updated the market share; It's actually 45% now: http://thecloudmarket.com/stats#/totals
Then again, ExtremeTech isn't known for well-though-out journalism. The "turmoil" in HP has never been around their server division, in fact HP's previous claim was that they could drop the PC division to focus on servers. Proliant buyers would not be concerned about the future of HP's infrastructure department.
As did other companies : http://linux.slashdot.org/story/07/09/12/0011209/retailer-re...
I sometimes wonder why isn't there a huge fine specifically for corporations trying to avoid their responsibilities by bullshiting customers. It should be in hundreds of thousands per incident. Because they do that and they feel free to do that and you can't punish them much for doing that. The worst case for them, they actually do their job.
In my case, Alltel kept sending me broken phones for my warranty claims, then the third time I sent the phone back they said the warranty was void because I had installed a registry browser on Windows Mobile (and that was apparently the cause of them sending me a phone that was missing a loudspeaker).
At any rate, I don't remember the name of the law or the exact words anymore, but look into it so you know what you can expect when this happens to you. The FTC doesn't take kindly to it, and in some cases will actually pay a lawyer to fight it for you.
Sysadmins without 'buying power' who are already running Linux on corporate infrastructure and who are taking flak from PHB management.
(Coming from someone who stood aghast at the purchase of $5k per unit of vulnerable-by-default Windows Server based SSH servers when two Pentium IIIs from 1998 running Ubuntu LTS would have worked better - to handle 100MB of data three times/day on a 10Mbit synchronous cxn.)
HP have also had supported hardware emulators that have been running yet other operating systems atop one of these operating systems on ProLiant, as well.
Until this happens, RHEL will remain a better option for most people running their own hardware.