Indianapolis (IN) - During a phone conference today, Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth made the comment that he’s seeing Ubuntu move into spaces which are not just horizontal migrations away from UNIX or other Linux distributions. He’s actually seeing Ubuntu as a cost-effective and viable out-of-the-box alternative OS on new machines, even as a Windows replacement. When asked about Ubuntu’s future he said, "Ubuntu is on the map. I believe [we’re] here to stay".

Installations Shuttleworth said Spain, for example, has invested heavily not only in the development and support of Ubuntu through "an active open source community", but also through their State government which "now has over 200,000 [installs of] Ubuntu." Similarly, he said, "all of the schools in Russia have switched to Ubuntu". There are also several other emerging markets and countries which are migrating to Ubuntu for business, government, school and personal use. A recent report from IDT cited that 25% of mid- to large-businesses in the U.S. have an active Ubuntu presence as either part of their server or desktop lineup.

Ubuntu offers would-be Windows users an alternative pricing architecture that may be the reason for its high attractiveness as an alternate solution. A company can install several thousand instances of a Ubuntu as the default OS. It can come with pre-canned office software, like OpenOffice, as well as other custom-installed and deployed applications not typically included with a default installation. That company can then buy service on a particular class of machine, such as someone doing data input, a business user, an office user, a developer, etc. When particular users encounter problems the service contract can operate on that class of machine, rather than on that individual’s particular machine. According to Shuttleworth, because of this two-fold advantage of free installation and minimal pay-for-service contracts, companies can save millions of dollars annually on their IT budget.

Why switch? Shuttleworth said, "UNIX is much more expensive than Windows or proprietary Linux, so the initial move was from UNIX to Linux. The proprietary Linuxes (Red Hat and SUSE) don’t offer the same economic advantage over Windows, because you still have to pay for every seat, and the the cost per-seat is comparable, so we’ve seen less willingness for people to move from Windows servers to Linux. But Ubuntu has the advantage that you can deploy large numbers of seats and only pay for support in the classes of machines which require them. That means that the Ubuntu offers an economic incentive over Windows, which is not the case with Red Hat or SUSE."

Ubuntu has recently been offered by Dell US, and more recently Dell Europe, as an alternative default install to Windows. It’s also offered by several smaller OEMs in emerging markets, according to Shuttleworth. Ubuntu currently does not track any user activity, including downloads or installs. They also do not collect registration information or any uniquely identifying user information, except for those people who voluntarily agree to provided feedback as part of the open-source community effort. As such there are no solid numbers on installations or types of installations, though Shuttleworth believes there are 6 million active Ubuntu users worlwide.

Support / New Features Ubuntu is currently offered as a 7.04 "Feisty Fawn" version. The next release, 7.10, will be this Thursday. It includes a host of new security features, built-in Windows NTFS read/write abilities, direct support for Firefox plug-in management, as well as the Compiz 3D graphical environment, a configurable X (which is the Linux default GUI engine, allowing for easier setup of multiple monitors, different resolutions, etc.), and a desktop search engine for accessing files and installed programs like Vista, Google or other desktop search tools.

Shuttleworth told us Ubuntu uses an almost identical printer driver model to that of Mac OS X. He said, "we’re almost to the point where we can say ’If your printer works on a Mac, it will work in Ubuntu.’ We’re not quite there yet, but very close." Ubuntu 7.10 will also include hard drive encryption, AppArmor security framework (which isolates essential system resources against attack or intrusion), easier user profile management, better power management for mobile apps and improved thin client support. Shuttleworth told us the user interface is Ubuntu’s greatest concern. He said they weren’t greatly worried over getting an additional 2% performance out of some special compile for the latest multi-core software design methodologies. What they were committed to though, was bringing the user the most robust Linux experience.

Ubuntu comes in a default desktop, server, education and alternate GUI installations, such as Kubuntu and Xubuntu. There’s even a Christian version which comes pre-loaded with Bible software, scripture and tools. However, Ubuntu is not limited to those default installations. Shortly after its official release there will likely pop up several dozen variations of Ubuntu which include custom software by default, both for end users and server needs.

TG Daily collective opinion to date If TG Daily’s audience is any indication, Ubuntu is falling into a wider range of acceptance all of the time. With each successive version users have posted to our forums that they are encountering fewer and fewer errors and hardware conflicts. Perhaps the biggest drawback for Ubuntu acceptance today is the lack of high-end graphics card support. Shuttleworth indicated that with AMD’s recent committment to the open-source community, ATI drivers should be much more stable. Nvidia’s drivers also work out of the box, though in my experience for high-end performance you’ll need to perform a custom compilation.

While 7.10 will include a mobile build, it is still largely experimental. Next April, when 8.04 "Hardy Heron" comes out, it will include a full mobile build that will be part of their long-term support which will carry through five years, until 2013. The Ubuntu OS is a Debian derivative. They meet semi-annually at alternating locations between the U.S. and Europe (soon to also include Asia) to plan the features of the next release. 8.04’s meeting will take place at the end of October near Boston, MA. The meeting will be highly technical and will involve Linux developers from the Ubuntu and other communities world-wide.

Shuttleworth said, "We haven’t announced [the Ubuntu Mobile Edition] widely because the hardware platforms are still largely experimental or developmental. We expect that hardware to run UME will be available to the market in 2008, so it’s likely that the 8.04 mobile release will be the first one that ends up going into consumer electronics products." When asked by a reporter about the cutesy code names used during development, like Dapper Drake, Edgey Eft, Feisty Fawn, Gutsy Gibbon and Hardy Heron, Shuttleworth said almost laughing "I like the names. We’ll find a way to keep them in there."

UPDATE: In response to a commenter, I wanted to provide some additional information about Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a Debian based distribution, which includes a quite capable package manager. Ubuntu specifically comes with two graphical package managers. There are more than 2000 software titles included in the official Ubuntu-supported installation packages. There are over 18,000 other software titles which are available through non-Ubuntu-supported installation packages, but which do operate correctly with Ubuntu through its Debian roots. To accommodate these products, there is the bulit-in Add/Remove package manager. These deal with the 2,000 software titles and allow for single-click install/uninstall access. For the remaining 18,000 there is a product called Synaptic Package Manager, which works identically to the Add/Remove program, except that it touches the remaining software titles.