Canonical wants Netbook partners to open drivers for Ubuntu
We took our first look at components of the Ubuntu Netbook Remix last week shortly after it was announced at the Computex show in Taiwan. Canonical's original announcement provided little insight into plans for subnotebooks based on the software and left questions unanswered about how the Netbook Remix will be distributed, but a blog entry by Canonical boss Mark Shuttleworth offers some answers, along with news that Canonical will push hardware partners to release open source drivers. Shuttleworth says that Canonical is currently collaborating with several hardware manufacturers (though he can't disclose their identities at this time) to create custom installation images that are tailored to particular mobile products. These installation images will focus on hardware-specific optimizations for increased performance, shorter boot times, and extended battery life. They will not be released to the public alongside the regular Ubuntu builds because they will contain third-party ...