
HP to certify Ubuntu 12.04 LTS for Proliant servers - 11031a
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/126563-hp-certify-ubuntu-12-04-for-its-proliant-servers
======
orbitingpluto
At the end of the article ExtremeTech fails to list one of the key
beneficiaries of certification:

Sysadmins without 'buying power' who are already running Linux on corporate
infrastructure and who are taking flak from PHB management.

(Coming from someone who stood aghast at the purchase of $5k per unit of
vulnerable-by-default Windows Server based SSH servers when two Pentium IIIs
from 1998 running Ubuntu LTS would have worked better - to handle 100MB of
data three times/day on a 10Mbit synchronous cxn.)

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reitzensteinm
>it simply means that by installing Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on their current (or
future) ProLiant hardware that they won’t nullify any kind of hardware
warranty.

Would it have before? Warranty claims being denied because a server runs
Ubuntu would cause quite a shit storm. Unlike consumers, people purchasing
servers are generally sophisticated (whitepapers nonwithstanding), and Ubuntu
is a huge slice of the server market. About 45% of all EC2 images are Ubuntu
based.

This smells like a non story to me.

Edit: Updated the market share; It's actually 45% now:
<http://thecloudmarket.com/stats#/totals>

~~~
Aozaki_Touko
Well I don't think they ever had the gall to do it to their pro market but
they did void the warranty for some of their consumers when they installed
linux. [http://linux.slashdot.org/story/07/03/27/1753218/hp-
dishonor...](http://linux.slashdot.org/story/07/03/27/1753218/hp-dishonors-
warranty-if-you-load-linux)

As did other companies :
[http://linux.slashdot.org/story/07/09/12/0011209/retailer-
re...](http://linux.slashdot.org/story/07/09/12/0011209/retailer-refuses-
hardware-repair-due-to-linux)

~~~
guard-of-terra
That's not the reason. The reason is that they can bullshit you and get away
with it.

I sometimes wonder why isn't there a huge fine specifically for corporations
trying to avoid their responsibilities by bullshiting customers. It should be
in hundreds of thousands per incident. Because they do that and they feel free
to do that and you can't punish them much for doing that. The worst case for
them, they actually do their job.

~~~
freehunter
In the US, if you know the law, there are penalties for a company disregarding
consumer protection laws. I forget the name of the law, but I actually ended
up filing a suit against Alltel before us Alltel customers were moved to AT&T
following the buyout. Alltel settled as soon as my lawyer sent the papers.
It's colloquially known as the "lemon law" (though that's a term generally
reserved for used car sales). If they can't fix a defective, in-warranty
product in a reasonable time, the contract you have with them is void and they
have to refund the price.

In my case, Alltel kept sending me broken phones for my warranty claims, then
the third time I sent the phone back they said the warranty was void because I
had installed a registry browser on Windows Mobile (and that was apparently
the cause of them sending me a phone that was missing a loudspeaker).

At any rate, I don't remember the name of the law or the exact words anymore,
but look into it so you know what you can expect when this happens to you. The
FTC doesn't take kindly to it, and in some cases will actually pay a lawyer to
fight it for you.

------
vacri
I don't really understand Canonical's stated direction, unless it's changed
recently. They've stated that they intend their desktops for casual users, and
that if you're a power user, there are other distros for you... yet they're
also trying to push their server market. It seems that they don't intend to
provide a desktop for the admins of their servers to use...

~~~
nextparadigms
I'm not sure about that, but they've said the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS will get
support for 5 years, and that's probably true for future LTS versions, too.

------
Hoff
HP has (and has had) various operating systems certified on ProLiant servers
over the years, including Oracle Solaris, Oracle Linux, Microsoft Windows, Red
Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES), VMware,
Canonical Ubuntu, Citrix, NetWare/OES, and probably a few other software
giblets.

HP have also had supported hardware emulators that have been running yet other
operating systems atop one of these operating systems on ProLiant, as well.

------
otterley
Unfortunately, certifications for Ubuntu carry little value unless server
vendors begin publishing usable official package repositories for device
drivers, BIOS/firmware updates, and systems management/diagnostics software.
Merely being able to run Ubuntu without a kernel panic is not enough.

Until this happens, RHEL will remain a better option for most people running
their own hardware.

~~~
sciurus
If the focus is on the word "usable", I'm still waiting on them to do that for
RHEL.

