Hardware Advocacy or Making it easy to do the right thing.

[John McCabe-Dansted]

On 2/27/07, Joel Bryan Juliano <joelbryan.juliano at gmail.com>
> There is System76 a very good company in terms of pricing and hardware,
> providing very affordable prices, amazing specifications, and hardware that
> is fully compatible with Ubuntu.
> The cons are it does not ship abroad, only available in US and Canada.
>
> Also there is http://www.thelinuxstore.ca that also ship hardware
> preinstalled with Ubuntu. There is a very few choices of hardware, but they
> ship internationally.
>
> In my opinion, I wish Canonical to just stick with the software and support
> business because it's where they really good at. IMHO, hardware does what
> software wants and software is the sociology of hardware.

Well, Ubuntu is a brand. Maybe Canonical shouldn't be the one to do
the work. What if Canonical approached Linux vendors such as
"thelinuxstore" offering to licence the Ubuntu brand and create a
Store section of the website which links to them. Bids could be ranked
on the ability and willingness to satisfy criteria such as high
quality control and service for Ubuntu customers.

However, Canonical presumably tests and develops against at least one
set of hardware, and is fairly sure that such hardware can just work.
Canonical could offer to license the Ubuntu brand to anyone who
provides such hardware and provides an over all level of customer
service consistent with the Ubuntu brand.

As Linspire is will be based on Ubuntu, and they already have contacts
with hardware distributors, they may also have an interest in this.
Possibly the best solution would be a coalition of Linux distributors
serving different regions, working under a shared set of guidelines.

Another possibility would be for Canonical to appoint a team of
volunteers to attempt to define what hardware qualifies for the Ubuntu
brand, and what minimum set of hardware should be provided to be a
Ubuntu certified hardware reseller. The team could also handle
complaints etc.

Basically I think that the Ubuntu brand could be applied to hardware
as well as software, and could be useful to distinguish easy to use
hardware just as it now means easy to use software. If Canonical
doesn't want to develop the "Ubuntu Certified Hardware" would they
want it to be developed by someone else?

Perhaps I should add a Spec?
    https://launchpad.net/Ubuntu/+specs

-- 
John C. McCabe-Dansted
PhD Student
University of Western Australia