Submitted by randall on Thu, 11/11/2010 - 13:50
Yes
22% (64 votes)
No
61% (173 votes)
Not Sure
17% (48 votes)
Total votes: 285
Is your computer Ubuntu-Certified?
Tip Jar
Was this interesting? Useful? Please consider clicking the "Donate" button as an act of random internet kindness and support.
Recent Posts
Popular Posts
Today's:
Real Local Community
A few years ago, I got fed up with OEMs using cheap, failure-prone components and not being able to upgrade my computer because I didn't have any idea what was actually in it to begin with, not to mention having to pay for hardware I didn't need because it was part of a pre-assembled rig, so I started buying parts from NewEgg and assembling rigs myself. Consequently, no, my machine is not certified, because it's not a name brand box. For me, certification would be useful only if Canonical started certifying components and chipsets in addition to complete systems.
OTOH, certification in general leaves a bad taste in my mouth, probably because I'm accustomed to Microsoft "certification" programs, which are really more about swearing allegiance to Microsoft than making hardware that works properly.
Interesting perspective. I too would like to see the inclusion of components (and perhaps an easy way to audit what's inside a system).
Your comment about the "bad taste" is something we'll have to consider. I hadn't realized the connotation. Perhaps there is a better word that's cleaner?
You ask this question like people have only one.
Of the systems I have, only the two netbooks (one Dell Mini 10v and one HP Mini 1000) are on the certified list. Both have worked well, but the Dell Mini 10v only avoided being a disaster (in my opinion) because of it's poor touchpad design due to work that I was involved in doing to get hardware specific tweaks into Ubuntu. I can guarantee you it didn't have any relationship to the certification status of the hardware.
My Dell Latitude D430 is not on the list but has worked quite well with every Ubuntu release starting with 8.04.
The three desktops and three servers I have here are all custom built so, of course, not certified. With the exception of one severe hard drive controller issue in 8.10, I've never had any significant hardware specific issues with them.
In my experience there isn't a lot of correlation with working well with Ubuntu and being on the certification list.
The polling system allows one vote per machine. Please give it a try.
My laptop is a Lenovo ThinkPad T61. It was most definitely not certified when I bought it, and in fact the latest Ubuntu release failed to install on it -- I had to go with an alpha of the next version (gutsy?)
Now the Ubuntu certified site says it is certified for 8.04 LTS. I'm not running 8.04 LTS, I'm running 10.10 and will upgrade to 11.04 as soon as that version is out. Does that mean my machine is cerfitied?
Even if it did, "ThinkPad T61" has a multitude of hardware variations with different video chips (Intel vs NVidia), different WLAN chips, etc. Does that entry mean _all_ of those variations were certified? I don't believe so.
To summarize, the Ubuntu certified site is not very useful for me. Should I decide to buy a new laptop, I'll pay attention to system components (Intel video, Intel wireless) and maybe try to google for that exact model number, or ask the shop to let me try a LiveCD, or buy it an hope it'll work.
Sometimes, though not always, computers will work from release to release. This is not guaranteed without certification, and even with certification it's doubtful, though the odds are better with it.
To ensure flawless upgrades, it is necessary to regression test each previously certified system against the new Ubuntu release, which I'm reasonably certain is not being done.
My advice is to NOT upgrade before at least spinning a liveCD and running the complete set of system tests located in System > Administration > System Testing.
Variations within in the same model number is a tough issue to crack.
I think there shuld be gnu/Linux certification along with ubuntu. For also accesories.I would definitely pay more with certification! nerkn.mornehir.com
The issue on this one is that kernels do vary. It's more meaningful to name and track the distribution explicitly than to try to track all the permutations of kernels, versions, modules, blobs, patches, etc.
Nomenclature like Ubuntu 10.04.1 or Ubuntu 10.10 means something very specific.
Might be worth adding something about when the Ubuntu Certified scheme was setup. Since this poll was featured on Planet Ubuntu, you may get a lot of visits from people with kit that was created a while before the Ubuntu Certified scheme was started (like mine, for instance)... which would potentially skew your results.
Good suggestion. I may re-poll at a later date with more granularity. The earliest certifications were for the Ubuntu 6.06 release, so I suspect many of these systems are now end-of-life, or nearly so,
But I bought this before Certification was up and going, and they don't sell this model anymore. Next time though, I'll give the certification list a browse when shopping for something to replace this.
Both my laptop (a System76 Darter Ultra 2) and netbook (Dell mini 9) are certified.
Although I'm pretty sure more recent certifications of the Darter were done against newer models. But it's nice that I can say it's certified even though suspend doesn't work (444187).
I'm a little less picky about buying certified hardware than I am about buying Ubuntu pre-installed... It would be nice if more System76 and ZaReason machines were on there, but I'm sure there margins are already pretty tiny.
If you aren't sure, please check here: http://webapps.ubuntu.com/certification/ (Be sure to select the version of Ubuntu that you are using.)