IBM warming to Ubuntu?

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by

Simon Scullion

Tell me its true!

Glen on his blog lets on:

So it was a big (and welcome) surprise to find not one but two groups within the company putting together distributions of the IBM desktop products for Ubuntu.

This was also picked up by Julian over at nsftools:

Ooo, that sounds tasty. A package of IBM products specifically for Ubuntu. I know it’s internal to IBM and not-for-the-public and unofficial and all that, but very interesting to hear. Maybe that’ll get us one step closer to official Debian support.

Lets hope so. I know it would make a lot of people happy, and would get IBM products in front of a lot of linux users. Imagine Dell flogging laptops preloaded with Ubuntu + Notes + Sametime + Symphony! That’d be nice!

This also gives us a glimpse of the power of social software tools behind the firewall. Without them, Glen would have found it extremely hard, if not impossible, to locate this kind of virtual community within such a large organisation. The truth is though that all organisations have these kind of dispersed groups with common interests, and tools like Sametime and Lotus Connections can allow them to unite and achieve results.

It would not surprise me to see this made available in some form at some point in the future. Please IBM!

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Comments

7 responses to “IBM warming to Ubuntu?”

  1. Carl Tyler avatar
    Carl Tyler

    Great idea, at a minimum IBM should offer to Dell at zero cost the help needed to get Symphony preinstalled on every Dell machine that ships with Ubuntu.

    Reply
  2. Simon avatar
    Simon

    Hi Carl, thanks for stopping by!

    You would think they might at least look into the possibilities with Symphony, I think it would only add further credibility to the efforts of all involved, Dell, Ubuntu and IBM.

    I mentioned Notes and Sametime more in jest, as obviously that would require rather significant licensing changes! 😉

    Reply
  3. Glen avatar
    Glen

    I’m glad you found my blog post (but to be honest, a bit surprised).

    I don’t know what IBM’s public plans are for Ubuntu. Given my experience of the past month or so, the software is working quite well.

    There are a few issues. the only software issue I have found is that some accelerator key sequences (i.e. shortcuts) in Notes get swallowed if you are running Compiz. Of course Blackberry users are out of luck but that is a Linux statement and nothing specific to IBM or Ubuntu.

    The real challenges are less to do with software and more to do with hardware. Ubuntu with Compiz hates the ATI chipset found int most Thinkpads (because the ATI Linux driver is so buggy). You can get most things working but you lose suspend/hibernate along the way.

    There is already a decent amount of information for WebSphere and DB2. Perhaps some good old fashioned grass roots campaigning at Lotusphere and other conferences will spur some activity for Notes, Sametime, Connections, etc. 🙂

    Reply
  4. Simon Scullion avatar
    Simon Scullion

    Hi Glen, I actually have been following your blog for a while, enjoying your updates as you move to Ubuntu. I’m actually more surprised you stopped by over here! 😀

    Thanks for the insight, it is interesting to hear where the issues lie. Maybe rather than working with Dell, IBM could help out Lenevo improve their support for Linux first….

    Reply
  5. Glen avatar
    Glen

    Hmmm … “Lenovo with Ubuntu” – that could be a cool offering ! (and $150 cheaper than with Vista).

    Reply
  6. Glen avatar
    Glen

    BTW – I will be posting a few more updates on the Thinkpad T60p and Ubuntu realizations. My next victim will be the T40 again and then an X60. The real challenges appear to be the video chipset. Both the T40 and the T60p have ATI (but different chips). the X60 appears to have Intel video.

    the video chipset affects not only the composite manager (compiz) but also the power management support of suspend/hibernate. With ATI, it has not been possible to get these to work.

    Reply
  7. Simon Scullion avatar
    Simon Scullion

    Hi Glen! I’ll follow your progress with interest, particularly the video on the X60. I am on a T61 at the moment, which also has an Intel video card.

    Reply

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