Ubuntu certified hardware: not enough information

[J]

On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 10:27, Dotan Cohen <dotancohen at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am using the Ubuntu Certified Hardware tool to find a new laptop:
> http://www.ubuntu.com/certification

It's not designed to be used as a shopping cart.  It IS designed to be
used as a list of specific models that a given vendor has paid
Canonical to certify.  The general idea (and you'll see this is true
of pretty much all certification sites) is that you decide you want a
laptop and you want to run Version 123 of OperatingSystem.  SO you go
to the website, you find the systems that are certified with version
123 of OperatingSystem. Now you have a list to start shopping from.
>From that point you can start looking up models on the various vendors
websites

> This tool does not provide any information regarding memory,
True, but should it?  It's not a shopping cart and the assumption is
that if the memory didn't work, it wouldn't be certified in the first
place.  And generally, memory is memory is memory. That's different
than something like a Sound card or GPU that relies on specific
drivers.

> processor,

If you look at any system listed on the certification site, you'll see
exactly what processor the certified system contained.  For example:
http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/hardware/201103-7380
Processor	AMD Athlon(tm) II Neo K125 Processor

> screen size, screen finish,

These are things you have to get from the manufacturer.

> wifi capability,
Again, every system that has a wifi card will display that
information.  Using a different system than above:
http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/hardware/201010-6637
Network	Intel Corporation Centrino Advanced-N 6200

And if you want to know exactly what is tested:
http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/test-suite

Which is linked from the info boxes on the side of pretty much every
page (albeit not terribly clearly, that needs to be corrected).

> price, or other items of interest to a laptop buyer.
None of which Canonical controls or has any business mentioning.  They
are not a reseller for Dell, Lenovo, HP, Toshiba, Etc... they simply
publish a list of hardware from those companies that have been tested
and certified with a given version of Ubuntu.  Plus, the price for a
given model will change drastically depending on your geographic
location.  The same Dell system sold in the US may cost 3/4 as much in
the UK and 2x as much in Taiwan.  OR, the model you see listed may
ONLY be sold in China or Australia.  Computer companies are fickle
like that...

> Should I file a bug, write
> to Canonical, ask on Ubuntu-devel, anywhere else? I would even be
> willing to be the one to go out and find the missing info so long as
> it will be incorporated into the site.

You are always welcome to file bugs... in fact, I'd particularly file
one about the text for the test suite link not being clear enough.
However, the other things you mentioned are either already provided or
are not things that should be provided by an Operating System company.

And just to show that this is not a Canonical/Ubuntu thing...

check out listings at the following places:

hardware.redhat.com
http://developer.novell.com/yessearch/Search.jsp

and good luck trying to find even that much from Microsoft...

Also, Ubuntu Friendly was mentioned earlier, and if a given system
you're looking at is not listed as "Certified" it may well be listed
there... and I'd encourage all of you to run the Ubuntu Friendly tests
and submit your systems... the more the merrier, and the data you
submit could well help other people who are looking for a system that
is known to work with Ubuntu.

In any case, I get where your coming from, but the OS end shouldn't be
the first place you start.  Instead, you should decide what you want:

I want a 15 inch laptop, minimum 4GB ram, minimum 500GB HDD, DVD-RW.

Next, look for models that fit your criteria.  Then from that last of
systems find out how many are certified, how many appear on Ubuntu
Friendly and if that fails, appear on the internet at all in some form
(maybe a post on the user forums about the system saying "Yes it
works" or "It doesn't work because SOMEWIDGET doesn't work".

At least that's how I've always done it, so YMMV. But I don't ever
start with "I must run X so I need to find Y"  I always start with an
idea of how powerful I need a system to be, then work from there.
Seems to me it's easier to start from a list of 15 systems and THEN
determine OS compatibility than start off with a list of 214 systems
and try narrowing down from that based on hardware requirements.