Canonical announces a component catalog for Linux [LWN.net]

Canonical has announced the release of a component catalog that lists Linux-compatible devices. "With this database, corporate buyers can specify the design of their Ubuntu desktops or servers from manufacturers much more efficiently. Individuals can be sure that the key components of the machine they are considering will work with their preferred Ubuntu or Linux distribution. The PC and server industry will also have a simple single source to publicize the work that they do in certifying Linux components and making that knowledge freely available." This looks to be a great resource, but it does not seem to make any distinction between free and binary-only driver support.

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Canonical announces a component catalog for Linux

Posted Feb 10, 2011 17:17 UTC (Thu) by brunowolff (guest, #71160) [Link] (5 responses)

The claim about other distributions seems a bit weak, since they don't indicate whether proprietary drivers are needed, just which versions of Ubuntu work. This wouldn't be suitable for people looking to see what hardware to use for Fedora.

Canonical announces a component catalog for Linux

Posted Feb 10, 2011 17:50 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (3 responses)

I agree with the drivers. Those need to be disclosed. But...

For all intensive purposes Ubuntu and Fedora are the same operating system. They use the same kernels, same compilers, same drivers. Any differences between them have far more to do with politics then technical differences.

That is your not going to find hardware that works in Ubuntu that is not going to work in Fedora and visa versa. Not unless you run into bugs and in that case they should be fixed by the distributors. If it works in one system and not the other it's probably a f-up on the part of the one that does not work.

Anyways. Logo branding and certification programs are very important. Unless your willing to sit down and spend a lot of time testing yourself, or have very high levels of technical knowledge about the specific hardware and drivers, then your dependent on this sort of thing. It helps make it easier for people to choose hardware, helps promote the OS, and helps promote the hardware manufacturer. It's a win all around.

That being said this needs to be improved quite a bit to be useful.

There needs to be a automated benchmark suite, not for posting performance numbers, but for posting compatibility information. It needs a chart with different sections on hardware and how they rate up and what exactly is certified. Most vendors offer a selection of different hardware configurations and this information is relevant.

A example would be something like this for wifi:

Dell Inspiron XXXX
-------------------

Wireless card: Dell Model Foo 2000

Driver Tested: 2.6.35 B43 Linux kernel driver

Supported Protocols: 802.11 A/B/G (Tested),
802.11 N (not tested)

Security Modes:
WEP (Tested 128bit)
WPA (Not Tested)
WPA2 (Tested)
PSK (Tested)
EAP-TLS (Tested)
EAP-TTLS/MSCHAPv2 (No)
PEAPv0/EAP-MSCHAPv2 (No)
PEAPv1/EAP-GTC (Tested)

That sort of thing. Testing should be automated as much as possible and it is up to the vendor to perform the testing, depending on the level of certification they want. Such They could run a benchmark test and provide results to Ubuntu for 'level 1' and that costs nothing. Registing the hardware gives the manufacturer a right to display a certain Ubuntu logo on the box art or website.

For top-level 'Enterprise certification', however they need to send sample devices to Canonical for testing and pay fees. Part of the services that can be provided by Canonical by the fees is that if the hardware fails they will help provide kernel/software support to get it to a passing grade and provide documentation that can be used by the vendor's customers in deployments. Once the certification is complete then Ubuntu will promote the hardware and recommend it to customers and lots of other fringe benefits. Maybe discounts for enterprise support for the hardware vendor's customers or something like that.

There is a lot of ways this can be used to help promote both the hardware and the software.

Canonical announces a component catalog for Linux

Posted Feb 10, 2011 18:27 UTC (Thu) by baldridgeec (guest, #55283) [Link] (1 responses)

"intents and purposes"!

Unless you mean Ubuntu and Fedora are similar for intensive purposes, but not for casual ones. :)

Canonical announces a component catalog for Linux

Posted Feb 14, 2011 10:23 UTC (Mon) by loevborg (guest, #51779) [Link]

A beautiful eggcorn indeed!

Canonical announces a component catalog for Linux

Posted Feb 17, 2011 20:07 UTC (Thu) by vonbrand (guest, #4458) [Link]

Wrong. There certainly are machines that work out of the box with Ubuntu, but not Fedora. E.g., Fedora is much more picky with respect to shipping staging drivers, and almost never will ship out-of-tree stuff, which Ubuntu does And don't even go to binary-only drivers...

Canonical announces a component catalog for Linux

Posted Feb 10, 2011 19:15 UTC (Thu) by xav (guest, #18536) [Link]

Well, if you look at certified systems you see the info, e.g. http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/hardware/200910-4237 says that for the Dell Mini 10v:
Proprietary drivers required
Installation of proprietary drivers is required for WiFi functionality.

In other news...

Posted Feb 10, 2011 18:12 UTC (Thu) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link] (4 responses)

"Babies-R-Us has announced the release of a food product catalog that lists baby-compatible food products. "With this database, baby caregivers can specify the design of their baby's diet from manufacturers much more efficiently. Individuals can be sure that the key components of the meals they are considering will work with their preferred son, daughter, niece or nephew. The food distribution industry will also have a simple single source to publicize the work that they do in certifying food products and making that knowledge freely available." This looks to be a great resource, but it does not seem to make any distinction between vitamins and crack."

What's your point?

Posted Feb 10, 2011 19:16 UTC (Thu) by ean5533 (guest, #69480) [Link] (3 responses)

Ok, so you took the quote and arbitrarily changed the context and details, but I'm having trouble understanding what your point is. Were you calling this catalog useless via satire? Or were you just making a random joke for no reason? If it's the former, then can you please elaborate on why you think it's useless?

What's your point?

Posted Feb 10, 2011 20:01 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (2 responses)

Uh oh. You really don't see anything wrong with fixing immediate practical problems by giving babies crack? :-)

What's your point?

Posted Feb 10, 2011 21:11 UTC (Thu) by sladen (guest, #27402) [Link] (1 responses)

Not sure about crack, but giving small babies large quantities of morphine is very common.^[1][2]

Of course, this is possibly about as tenuous a point as whatever is being suggested above having anything to do with compatibility databases!

full circle

Posted Feb 11, 2011 2:58 UTC (Fri) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

Aha, and the articles say that it's not a solution. Does this mean binary blob drivers are bad? :-)

Red Hat has the same for whole (server) systems

Posted Feb 10, 2011 20:46 UTC (Thu) by mjw (subscriber, #16740) [Link] (1 responses)

https://hardware.redhat.com/ has a nice collection of machines that will most likely work well with any modern distro. Although admittedly it is geared towards servers. (And the site is currently very slow.)

Red Hat has the same for whole (server) systems

Posted Feb 10, 2011 22:23 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

What's interesting is that Canonical is listing individual embedded motherboard controllers like on-board audio controllers that were certified as part of the system certification of a Sun Ultra system, as separate components in the component database.

In comparison RedHat's component/peripheral list seems to be components/peripherals available for direct purchase and does not include components like motherboard embedded disk or audio controllers as individual listings.

Whether or not the level of granularity exposed in Canonical's component database ends up being useful to consumers to the extent that it helps drive certification revenue dollars from OEMs/ODMs remains to be seen.

-jef

Canonical announces a component catalog for Linux

Posted Feb 10, 2011 21:14 UTC (Thu) by petegn (guest, #847) [Link]

Link is now dead

Smolts.org

Posted Feb 10, 2011 23:07 UTC (Thu) by luked (subscriber, #71129) [Link] (1 responses)

Is this not similar to smolts.org? What I like about smolts.org though is that it has a (or can have, if someone creates it) wiki page for each device.

Smolts.org

Posted Feb 11, 2011 0:36 UTC (Fri) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

The key difference here is _certification_. As in money is paid to have Canonical certify that a system or component works with Ubuntu and to potentially make the necessary technical changes to have the equipment work. Certification is a value-added service that vendors provide to equipment and system manufacturers.

Ratings at Smolts.org are crowdsourced from individual hardware owners and not a certification service. Such ratings are a best effort to codify what currently works and what doesn't by helping users share information about their experience with the hardware. But there's no vendor service associated with it that equipment manufacturers can pay for in an attempt to ensure their equipment does in fact work.

-jef

Canonical announces a component catalog for Linux

Posted Feb 11, 2011 3:26 UTC (Fri) by foom (subscriber, #14868) [Link]

Wow, the data in this database is *terrible*. It's like nobody ever looked at it before putting it up on the web.

On the list of manufacturers, it has no less than 3 Suns, 4 Dells, and numerous other such duplicates. Then, there's the large numbers of items which don't have names (only PCI IDs...), and thus no link to the detailed information. (Well, list of containing systems at least).

They really need to get an intern to spend a day or two cleaning up the data...