What is Ulteo? [LWN.net]

By Rebecca Sobol
October 15, 2008

Gaël Duval, founder of Mandrake-Linux, started Ulteo after he was laid off by Mandriva in 2006. The first alpha release was announced several months later.

In the past two years the project has had some time to mature and with the announcement that OpenOffice.org 3.0 is available through Ulteo.com it seemed like a good time to revisit the project.

Ulteo is aimed at Windows users, and gives them a slow and easy to way to convert to Linux using the first of several several sub-projects; the Ulteo Online Desktop. Many Linux applications are available through a Java enabled web browser such as Firefox or Internet Explorer. OpenOffice.org, KPdf, Kopete, Skype, Thunderbird + Enigmail, Gimp and Digikam, Inkscape and Scribus and many other applications are available in the Online Desktop without installing any new software on the PC. A subscription to Ulteo Premium provides extra storage for documents and other benefits.

Once the user becomes comfortable with Linux applications they could be ready for the Ulteo Application System which is an installable system for the PC. The Application System features automatic document synchronization/backup, automatic updates and upgrades, and all the applications included in the online desktop.

The Ulteo Virtual Desktop seems to be much the same as the Online Desktop. It is designed to run under Windows and allows the use of both Linux and Windows applications. The Virtual Desktop uses coLinux to provide the Linux desktop on Windows.

The final Ulteo product, for now at least, is the Documents Synchronizer. This, like the Virtual Desktop, is Windows software but it can be used with the Online Desktop to backup and retrieve documents, whether these are produced locally with Windows applications or with Linux applications using Online Desktop.

Ulteo is not something that will be of immediate interest to the average LWN reader. Presumably most readers are already knowledgeable about running Linux and its applications. However most of us probably do know someone who is not ready to run Linux natively. At least some of those people could start using the Online Desktop and become more familiar with various Linux applications without having to download and install those applications. Who knows where they might go after that.

to post comments

What really is Ulteo?

Posted Oct 17, 2008 9:32 UTC (Fri) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] (1 responses)

It would have been nice to give a bit of technical detail how the system
works on the server side, whether the software is open source, etc.

What really is Ulteo?

Posted Oct 25, 2008 8:47 UTC (Sat) by oak (guest, #2786) [Link]

For example whether the Java Desktop thing uses something like VNC or RDP
to communicate with the "Online desktop" and a link to CoLinux[1].

[1] There haven't been any news about that for quite a long time, maybe
there should be an article e.g. on status of these:
http://www.colinux.org/?section=roadmap