2009-01-21

Uninformed shoppers blaming Ubuntu: a brief TODO list for Canonical

My own perception of the debacle about the end-user who decided to cancel her college enrollment because she could not get Microsoft products to install on Ubuntu is three folds:

  • Canonical and Dell evidently need to improve their marketing efforts, because the user didn't realize what she was purchasing. Knowledge of what Ubuntu is and how it can interact with the rest of the world clearly wasn't passed on in the form of a small printed User's Guide that should have come with the newly purchased laptop computer. Additionally Dell most definitely needs to make emphasize the same information in its online shop to help customers make an informed decision (and, no, eschewing the problem by obfuscating or removing non-Microsoft alternatives to the purchasing options isn't the right answer).
  • The newspaper that reported on the story really needs to do its homework to more accurately report what is Ubuntu and, perhaps, participate in the efforts to educate the masses about non-Microsoft alternatives in the Operating System market. Educating the Press to enable this might require hiring a dedicated person at Canonical to work with the non-industry Press.
  • The girl in question really needs to get a hold of herself, the sooner the better. Her hasty withdrawal from her enrollment was clearly unwarranted and her attitude of crying wolf and blaming everyone else for her own failure at making an informed purchase speaks volumes.

Personally, I think that Canonical needs to hire an individual that understands the above three aspects and, most of all, how to remedy them, as its next OEM channel Manager, if they truly want to increase Ubuntu's market penetration.

2009-01-03

Geode X.org driver fix for GX2/CS5535 released

After a rather hectic holiday season, I returned momentarily to pending Geode X.org driver issues. The current status:

  • On Debian, 2.10.1 is in Testing and Unstable, while 2.11.0 is in Experimental. For those who need 2.11.0 right away, the experimental package builds as-is using Lenny dependencies. For everyone else, I'll probably get around producing a proper backport once Lenny is released.
  • On Ubuntu, 2.9.0-1ubuntu2.5 just entered Hardy-updates with cherry-picked fixes for DCC support on GX2/CS5535 hardware. Meanwhile, Intrepid has 2.10.1 and Jaunty has 2.11.0, with a backport of the later having been requested for Hardy-backports.

I'm especially interested in hearing from users of GX2/CS5535 hardware to see if these recent uploads finally fixed DDC probing for them or not. Just respond to relevant existing bugs or, if necessary, open new bugs to report any regression.