Debrandification [LWN.net]

Debrandification

Posted Feb 6, 2009 4:34 UTC (Fri) by SEJeff (guest, #51588)
In reply to: Debrandification by jspaleta
Parent article: HP releases custom Netbook version of Ubuntu Linux (ZDNet)

While not disagreeing with you my opinion is you are off the mark. If you
think about it, HP has a chance of doing it better than Canonical. They
certainly have more Linux engineers and much more experience with Linux.

In reality, this looks like a prettied up version of Ubuntu's netbook
remix. In fact looking at the video from Canonical demoing the netbook
remix and looking at the original article that zdnet links to the
screenshots are virtually the same. Notice the same mostly fullscreen
window with what looks like a metacity titlebar and buttons. It even uses
Tango icons for goodness sake. Chances are you won't ever find out but
there is a good chance this isn't Ubuntu branded and that is what Canonical
wants. Either way, Ubuntu gets attention because a tier 1 OHM is using
them. That can only be good in the long term for Canonical / Ubuntu.

http://www.canonical.com/files/video/netbook-screencast.ogg
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2009/02/04/hp-releases-netbo...
ubuntu/

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Debrandification

Posted Feb 6, 2009 17:08 UTC (Fri) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (1 responses)

Ya... HP has a sort of long standing relationship with Debian going back a ways.

But, IMO, HP's efforts would be best spent getting behind Intel with their Fedora-based Moblin V2 project as a long term thing, instead of pursuing a Ubuntu fork much further.

Hopefully with a commercially oriented desktop focus Intel and friends can work with a distributions to help solve some long standing usability and API issues with the Linux desktop.

Debrandification

Posted Feb 6, 2009 17:18 UTC (Fri) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

It's probably a somewhat of a mischaracterisation that moblin is Fedora based. My limited understanding is Moblin is a mismash of sorts between Fedora and Suse and new packages.

I think they qualify as a Fedora Remix under the updated trademark policy, but I don't think they would be comfortable calling themselves a Fedora Remix...so I'm a bit cautious about making that sort of claim for them.

-jef