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Dear Canonical: please let me pay for Ubuntu

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Re: Dear Canonical: please let me pay for Ubuntu

#81

Post by ajdecon »

reidrac wrote: post #29
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing RedHat sells isn't the OS itself.

This is a little bit off-topic but... they removed basic support and now there's a "self-support subscription" option instead for $350. If you don't get support for that subscription, I can't see a difference worth $350 between RHEL self-support subscription and CentOS. EDIT: ate a word EDIT 2: self-support desktop subscription is just $49. But the point is the same: no support.

> If you don't get support for that subscription, I can't see a difference worth $350 between RHEL self-support subscription and CentOS.

* Access to the RHEL repositories, with faster updates than CentOS or alternatives.

* Ability to upgrade to supported tier.

* Possibly: access to RHN pages with their forums, documentation, etc?

None of which would be huge advantages to me, but I can totally see the potential value.

Re: Dear Canonical: please let me pay for Ubuntu

#82

Post by ctdonath »

BCM43 wrote: post #52
ctdonath wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as Apple's goal was to be a hardware company, which sold an operating system to help sell hardware, Canonical would do well to sell a, er, canonical hardware configuration for the purpose of selling the OS. One of the debilitating downfalls of OSS OSes is the lack of reliable/assured compatible hardware (video drivers being a notorious examples). Arrange for manufacture of a "reference design" system with a "it…

You mean this? https://www.system76.com/

A site which won't even show home-page pictures until I roll the cursor over them? (An observation meaning little on its own, but much in light of bstpierre's experience.)

Re: Dear Canonical: please let me pay for Ubuntu

#83

Post by 0ack »

jballanc wrote: post #42

I'm surprised no one here has mentioned the obvious solution: go with the Apple model and build Ubuntu machines. Sure, Apple made some money from selling OS X at $129. It's making less now. But new OS sales were never the reason for Apple to remain closed source. That had more to do with branding/marketing. Not many people remember that one of the reasons Steve killed the affiliate program is that the Mac affiliates…

"Mac affiliates were making better machines than Apple"

So by Apple killing this the consumer loses the option to use better machines?

Personally, I wish that I could buy Apple hardware with OSX as an added "option". I could knock $129 off the price by using my own OS. But, truthfully, it's not about price. By being able to use my own bootloader and my own OS^1, I could avoid the sort of hoop jumping longtime Mac users (e.g. John Battelle and Rob Pike) have recently described.

1. At least, having Apple make this easy, not make the user resort to extensive hackery to do it.

Apple makes beautiful hardware. That part of Apple has not changed. The mounting annoyances, if you haven't noticed, all come from Apple's efforts to lock down and exert total control over software.

The idea of paying for Ubuntu, as code, only shows how far afield some Linux users have drifted. There is a difference between paying for support and paying for a license to use some (free) code. If you need help, pay for support. Suggestions to force everyone else to pay for use of free code because you need help make little sense. Is that what this is, or have I misread it?

Re: Dear Canonical: please let me pay for Ubuntu

#84

Post by unholycrab »

mseebach wrote: post #80
pedrocr wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you need to strip all the references to Redhat and recompile all packages from source (aka CentOS) and can't actually just get the install image from Redhat like you can with Ubuntu means they don't give RHEL away for free.

I don't know where you get the idea that you need to compile CentOS from source from? They distribute images that are perfectly equivalent to RedHats images. The resulting installed systems are binary compatible - I suspect it's not a coincidence that the strings "RedHat" and "CentOS" are the same length. The main selling point of RHEL is the stability and long term support that makes software vendors like Oracle com…

Probably because the company that provides RHEL does not provide CentOS.

Re: Dear Canonical: please let me pay for Ubuntu

#85

Post by b0rsuk »

AnthonBerg wrote: post #44

If you have spent a reasonable amount of time with Ubuntu, try installing Debian and playing around with it. Sadly, you will probably notice how Ubuntu have unnecessarily broken things that are working fine in Debian. Core things. Let me propose you give money to Debian instead.

Or just install Debian and see how stable it is. It's familiar enough and it will cure your upgrade fears.

I think "once every 6 months" is too often, I'd be happier if Ubuntu was released once per year but better tested.

Re: Dear Canonical: please let me pay for Ubuntu

#86

Post by petitmiam »

Tichy wrote: post #63
takluyver wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An obvious way is to require some sort of deliberate indication that the user wants shopping results, like a separate pane, or a prefix to the search term. It's a problem largely because it's searching Amazon even when you're just looking for a file on your computer.

Prefix would be good. I guess the Unity way is different keyboard shortcuts (it is possible to limit the search to certain categories). But I won't be able to memorize those.

hold down the Super key for a list of available shortcuts.

Re: Dear Canonical: please let me pay for Ubuntu

#87

Post by petitmiam »

By default, Firefox has an Amazon search listed in the search engine list. Unity lens seem pretty similar.

At present, the Amazon results are only present if you do use the shopping lens or perform an open search. As long as there is an easy way to disable the Amazon results, I don't have a problem with it.

Re: Dear Canonical: please let me pay for Ubuntu

#88

Post by aubergene »

jballanc wrote: post #42

I'm surprised no one here has mentioned the obvious solution: go with the Apple model and build Ubuntu machines. Sure, Apple made some money from selling OS X at $129. It's making less now. But new OS sales were never the reason for Apple to remain closed source. That had more to do with branding/marketing. Not many people remember that one of the reasons Steve killed the affiliate program is that the Mac affiliates…

I think this is a great idea. I would love to buy an officially support Ubuntu laptop. The Dell Sputnik program looks promising.

http://content.dell.com/us/en/enterprise/d/campaigns/sputnik

Re: Dear Canonical: please let me pay for Ubuntu

#89

Post by RobAley »

mariusmg wrote: post #55
jackbravo wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowdays I think Chinese manufactures make it pretty easy to grab one of those unbranded computers and just sell it with your own brand. Is this not the case?

Yeap. For Android tablets it costs something like 1-2$ to "brand" it.

Simply rebranding basic hardware isn't going to compete with the likes of Apple.

Cheap and cheerful (read: shoddy) hardware would quickly damage the Ubuntu brand, and the good hardware is locked up tight by the big brands. Canonical would need to put in some serious volume or R&D of their own to get good hardware that would lead to a viable Ubuntu hardware brand.

Ubuntu users, at least at the moment, are quite picky about the specs of their PCs.

Re: Dear Canonical: please let me pay for Ubuntu

#90

Post by andrewaylett »

andrewaylett wrote: post #78

What about http://shop.canonical.com/product_info.php?products_id=667 ? It's difficult to envisage charging for the distribution ending well, but you can already pay Canonical for support if you'd like to, and I'm sure they'd be happy to tell you how to disable the "advertising". TBH, though, I'm not sure how Canonical's relationship with Amazon search is any different from what Mozilla do with Google search.

Actually reading more about it: this is using Amazon's store search, not their web search as I initially thought. It's also getting money by adding referral codes, rather than Amazon paying Canonical to have their search engine listed. So there's some differences after all.
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