Ubuntu 9.10 sees the cloud above the trees

By David M Williams
Tuesday, 10 March 2009 05:16

Opinion and Analysis

Next month Ubuntu 9.04, Jaunty Jackalope, hits an FTP or torrent site near you. With its feature set pretty much frozen the masterminds at Canonical are looking to the future with Ubuntu 9.10 – Karmic Koala, I kid you not – being touted as cloud-centric.

Ubuntu is arguably the most popular Linux distribution available today. I know I’ve certainly had my share of criticism in the past for giving (say) Red Hat Linux examples which don’t work the same in Ubuntu.

It’s easy to see why; Ubuntu’s makers have really focused on slick marketing and reducing a great deal of complexity. Sure, Debian fans are right that Ubuntu doesn’t give you the same flexibility but by sacrificing some things Canonical have made Ubuntu dead simple for the beginner. Just download one CD image only, install without having to face decisions like which desktop manager to use, and so on.

While Ubuntu 9.04 is not yet in its final release form it has been for the most part frozen with no new features being introduced between now and release. So, for your next fix of “more” it’s time to look ahead to the October edition, Ubuntu 9.10, otherwise known as Karmic Koala.

Now, just like a koala – that good Australian mascot – can climb trees, so too Ubuntu aims to keep free software at the forefront of cloud computing. That link sounds tenuous to me but, hey, I’m sure Mark Shuttleworth will make it clearer in time to come.

This will be achieved by embracing the API’s of Amazon.Com’s EC2 service. This means any Ubuntu user will be easily able to set up their own cloud storage using entirely open tools.

The cloud storage space can be used for backing up data but the more visionary approach is that applications can be deployed to the cloud. You can construct applications for others to use, you can put up applications you want to be available no matter where you are working on the Internet.

Ultimately, Ubuntu want to make the Amazon cloud as straightforward as their existing Ubuntu package management tool for loading new apps onto your hard drive.

Continuing with the koala metaphor, the Eucalyptus project will allow you, using Ubuntu 9.10, to make your own EC2-style cloud within your own data centre and on your own hardware. (Actually, Eucalyptus will be part of Ubuntu 9.04 but will get more features by October.)

Oh, and just like a koala is renown for sleeping, so too your Karmic Koala powered machines will conserve energy when idle and power up again when something has to be done.

Shuttleworth has clearly become an expert in koalas because he also informs that a newborn koala spends about six months in the family before it heads off into the wild alone. I have no idea if that’s true, but it does make a nice analogy for the Canonical six-monthly release schedule.

As to naysayers, well, hey, it’s not just a koala – it’s also karmic. That means Windows no more; this time Ubuntu isn’t just personal, it’s fate.