Canonical made public a database of 1,300 certified components for Ubuntu and Linux, said to enable original design manufacturers (ODMs) to more quickly develop Ubuntu- or other Linux-based computers. Meanwhile, Canonical and Autonomic Resources announced an integrated “ARC-P-UEC” cloud computing platform for use in the federal government, based on Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud running on Dell Blade servers.

The Canonical catalog lists over 1,300 certified components from 161 manufacturers, making it the largest list of Linux-compatible components available, says the Ubuntu sponsor. The company also published a catalog of Ubuntu certified PCs, laptops, and servers.

Canonical says its components database will not only be useful to those developing server and desktop systems running Ubuntu, but also systems running any Linux distro. The database is a good source for up-to-date information due to "Canonical's position at the heart of the server and PC industry, which enables the company to get components first as it deals globally with a huge range of manufacturers," says the company.

The database also enables corporate buyers to more easily specify the design of their Ubuntu desktops or servers from manufacturers, says Canonical. In addition, end users can check the list to ensure that a PC or peripheral they are considering buying will run Ubuntu or another Linux distribution of choice, says the company.

In a ZDNet blog posting, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols welcomes the catalog as a useful tool, but is skeptical of its applicability beyond Ubuntu. What's really needed, he writes, is for the Linux Foundation to compile a similar list for all the major Linux distributions, as well as hardware developed by the foundation's hardware members.

Stated Victor Palau, Platform Services Manager at Canonical, "By making this open and easily searchable we want to speed the component selection for Ubuntu machines, and allow us and our partner manufacturers to focus on the value-added user experience."

Canonical spins UEC-based cloud platform for the feds

Canonical and Autonomic Resources announced an integrated cloud computing platform for use in the U.S. federal government called ARC-P-UEC, reports Fahmida Rashid in our sister publication, eWEEK. Combining Canonical's Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) and Dell Blade servers, the solution will be packaged and deployed for "budget-restricted" government agencies to invest in large-scale and efficient cloud computing deployments, Autonomic said.

ARC-P-UEC comes bundled with Canonical's Ubuntu Advantage support service for servers and clouds, which gives access to telephone support, says the story. It also integrates the "Landscape" system management platform.

UEC is based on Ubuntu and Eucalyptus, an open-source cloud operating system with built-in support for Amazon EC2 APIs. As a cloud computing provider for the federal government, Autonomic has previously used UEC for private cloud deployments in the private sector, the company said.

Canonical has been busy with a number of cloud partnerships recently. Less than a week ago, Canonical announced cloud-ready servers with UEC preinstalled on Dell PowerEdge C2100 and C6100 servers. Canonical also publicly announced it will support OpenStack, another open-source cloud operating system, backed by Rackspace and NASA, in Ubuntu 11.04, Server Edition, expected in April.

Availability

The Canonical component database for Ubuntu is available here, and its list of Ubuntu certified machines may be found here.

More on ARC-P-UEC may be found at Autonomic Resource's ARC page.

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