Freedom and Community

I have read a great many posts about the events of the past ten days in the world of Canonical. Each has an opinion and I, as a rule, understand that people have their own unique opinions. I will not call them wrong or incorrect even though I may disagree with them. Why? It is because I know everyone has a different lens to view the events from; they may see things I do not and vice versa. What follows is a sample of these comments and my opinion.

Canonical started making the relationship unequal, though. They have their reasons and they make sense to them. But they are hurtful to me and I can’t be true to myself and live under them at the same time.

Their true side starts to show itself in those heated moments when you wonder what is really going through  their head.

 Greg Grossmeier (full text)

The first part quote from Greg’s post is spot on. Greg no longer ‘agrees’ with the decisions and direction of the community. Everyone has a right to have an opinion and a belief. What troubles me is the the second quote from the post; it implies that Canonical has been dishonest. If you read the rest of the post Greg clearly states that Canonical has been lying to him. I will admit that I am not fully aware of the relationship between Greg and Canonical, but I do believe there could be another explanation. An explanation that does not require one of the partners to be vilified. Is it possible that both Greg and Canonical shared the same vision and dream in the beginning, but things have changed? Is it possible that Greg and Canonical had similar visions and dreams, but that Greg missed slight differences?

When Ubuntu launched I doubt many thought smart phones would run full blown OSes and be capable of replacing laptops. It took the iPad in 2010 to make people believers in tablets as computing devices for the masses. The slogan was Linux for Human Beings. At launch that meant desktops, laptops and servers, not tablets and phones. I do not view the push to go to tablets and phones as a deviation from that original slogan. The computing world is changing and that is driving changes to how things need to get done in order for Ubuntu to be Linux for Human Beings.

People are leaving

From Planet Ubuntu + Google+ at least 4 community members have left the Ubuntu community because of Canonical’s decisions. Most of them even gave up Ubuntu membership. Is this what we want? Canonical being “Big Brother” in the Ubuntu community?

Howard Chan (full text)

It is true that people are leaving the community. People were leaving the community before these announcements. People are also joining the community after these announcements. Here again there is an assertion that Canonical is being bad when the image of George Orwell’s 1984 is invoked by calling Canonical “Big Brother”. I need to be honest; this type of allegation bothers me greatly. In the past I have seen Canonical compared to the Nazi party as well. These comparisons are so far off the mark it would be funny if it was not so insulting and insensitive for someone to invoke them. Canonical has not declared war, taken innocent people prisoner nor have they tried to brainwash people.

Jono,

You were warned plenty. It’s not your fault. You had to deliver decisions against the best interests of the Ubuntu peer community and in favour of the Canonical community. Driving so hard towards product nirvana that peer relationships were driven into the ground. I’m sure you disagree that the community is dead, but eventually those scales will fall or the fake smile will stop. I don’t know what kind of Community you want, but it sure isn’t the peer community I signed up for.

Council,

Unless you can see a way forwards to rebuild this broken dream, disband. Focus your great skills on Debian. I’m sorry we couldn’t make it work, we were overpowered.

Martin Owens (full text)

The component of Martin’s complaint that expresses that the community has changed and is not the one he signed up is accurate. Going to the point of asserting that Jono has been forced to deliver decisions and that he is presenting a fake smile is going too far. The second part to the Community Council also goes to far because it makes the assumption that there was a shared dream. Martin also tries to instruct the Community Council what to do. Is that not what Martin is accusing Canonical of doing?

In all of these posts I see a bit of a double standard. From my viewpoint Canonical has said “This is what we are doing”. They have not coerced or forced the community to follow. They have not implied that the community members that have chosen to leave the community are in some way bad or evil. Clearly Martin, Greg and Howard want to do something different. I want a community that allows for freedom; freedom for Canonical employees, Canonical as a company and every individual. I would never dream of trying to force Martin, Greg or Howard to work on something they did not believe in. I also would not try to force Canonical to work on or fund something that they did not believe in. While it is painful to see people leave that I have become friends with, that have inspired me and that I have great respect for I refuse to lash out with accusations. I respect these people and their opinions even when they differ from mine.

In closing I would like to share some quotes about Freedom.

“Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Freedom lies in being bold.”
― Robert Frost

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
― S.G. Tallentyre

“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.”
― Abraham Lincoln

Ubuntu: Time to Take the Shot

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
It has been an eventful week in the world of Ubuntu. It started with a move to an online format for UDS, progressed through a discussion about the possibility of rolling releases and the announcement of Mir as a replacement for X windowing. That is a lot of change. I have waited until now to write about these changes because I wanted to take my time to reflect on each of them and Ubuntu as a project.

Today the Ubuntu Community Council had a discussion about these events with Mark Shuttleworth. There was one consistent theme; we all want Ubuntu to be successful. One thing Mark expressed is that for Ubuntu to be successful it must succeed with lots of people across all the platforms they use. I agree with him; I would not consider Ubuntu a success if it ends up being no more than the most popular linux distribution for desktops and laptops.

It is my opinion that the emergence of phones and tablets as personal computing devices presents an amazing opportunity for Ubuntu. The two major players, Android and iOS, are tablet and phone operating systems only. Apple has OS X and Google has chrome, and there is no doubt in my mind that they are working towards a convergence as well. The time for Ubuntu to take the lead is now. This would be a dramatic change for Linux in general and Ubuntu specifically. I have no doubt that the incredibly talented people at Canonical and in the Ubuntu Community have a real shot at taking the lead and getting their first. I imagine this process will involve periods of chaos and moments of pain that will require decisive and difficult decisions.

Technology moves rapidly so this opportunity needs to be seized quickly and will require the community and Canonical to be agile. With this in mind one can begin to understand the recent changes and announcements.

UDS Goes Online:
The first thing that has to be acknowledged is that this decision was poorly timed for members of the community. Many people, including myself, are not going to be able to attend sessions due to being at work. With less than a weeks notice there was simply not enough time to take time off from work. While my initial thoughts were focused on the lack of in-person time and the informal conversations that happen outside the sessions I realized today, after attending one session, that there were many things that would be better. Todays remote experience was a far better than my previous remote sessions. I was able to clearly understand what was being said by the people in the hangout compared to poor audio from the fish bowls of the past. I saw more people contributing to the pad and more attention paid to the IRC channel. When I attended sessions remotely in the past I felt like a person that got bad seats to a sporting event. Today I felt I had an excellent seat. I saw several familiar nicks, but I saw several nicks I had not seen in the past and that was exciting. People who could not attend UDS involving travel issues will now have the chance to attend.

With UDS happening every three months this will also allow Ubuntu to be more agile and will help us take advantage of the amazing opportunity while the window of opportunity is still open.

The Potential for Rolling Release:
I would like to stress that this is one possibility. While there is a definite need to be agile, a rolling release is just one way of meeting that need. From a non-developer point of view I like the idea of a rolling release, but I also understand that a great number of items would be impacted and the idea must be discussed to fully understand what that impact would mean. In short, while I like the idea I am not sure it is the right answer.

The Community Council was approached on February 14th and made aware that Rick Spencer had asked his team to come up with a straw man plan for a rolling release so that the the idea could be discussed. Rick wanted to take the idea to the community and we were asked what we felt the best way to do that was. I replied to this with a suggestion that the idea be presented to the community and that we use Google+ to have Rick explain the plan and take questions from the community. If anyone took issue with the Google+ hangout please blame me, and not Rick or his team. Here is the closing note from Rick’s post to the ubuntu-devel mailing list

Such a change needs to be discussed in the Ubuntu community. Therefore, Iasked my team to put together a strawman proposal for how such moving to amonthly cadence with rolling release might work. I will be discussing arough outline of  this proposal on Friday 27th Feb at 6pm UTC / 10amPacific / 1pm EST at http://www.ubuntuonair.com<http://www.ubuntuoneair.com&gt;.Then we can talk specifics next week at UDS. (full text)

If you have thoughts  about these changes please make them heard. Participate in UDS, blog and discuss the changes with the teams you are a part of.

Wireframe Options

Recently I became involved in Ubuntu Friendly and one of the tools I wanted was a wireframe application so I could make quick mockups moving forward. I learned about several options:

• Pencil – Pencil is built for the purpose of providing a free and open-source GUI prototyping tool that people can easily install and use to create mockups in popular desktop platforms.
• Wireframe Sketcher – WireframeSketcher is a wireframing tool that helps designers, developers and product managers quickly create wireframes, mockups and prototypes for desktop, web and mobile applications. It’s a desktop app and a plug-in for any Eclipse IDE.
• Balsamiq – Using Mockups feels like drawing, but because it’s digital, you can tweak and rearrange easily. Teams can come up with a design and iterate over it in real-time in the course of a meeting.

I eliminated Balsamiq because it requires Adobe Air (which is no longer being developed for Linux).

Pencil:
I found working with Pencil very easy to create the mockup of Ubuntu Friendly. Pencil included resources for Windows, Android, iOS and Web Applications. The drawing produced is very clear and does not simulate being drawn by hand. I had one rather important issue with Pencil; it would not export the mockup as a .png. The dialog box would come up and you would take the steps to save a file, but no file was actually saved. When making a .pdf file the table resource was not rendered.

Wireframe Sketcher:
Working with Wireframe Sketcher was not quite as easy as Pencil, nor were there as many built-in resources. The program had no tool to create a table. The resulting sketches simulate being drawn by hand and the program was able to export .png files. This software is also not free and will cost roughly $100.

In the end Wireframe Sketcher is the winner as it is able to create functional mockups without requiring Adobe Air or Java and was able to successfully save .png versions. An added feature, that I will not make use of, is that it works with Ecplipse IDE as well. If you are comfortable with Eclipse, or even Visual Studio, the application will be comfortable immediately.

The IDE style allows you to build an application with multiple screens and even have the screens be interactive. All the other mockup programs I tried lacked this depth. The program even allows for custom made svg images to be used as additional shapes or icons.

If you are an Ubuntu User like I am you can find it in the Ubuntu Software Center.

Friendly Needs You!

A little while ago I blogged about Ubuntu Friendly project and this post is an update in regards to some of the specifics of how you can help the project. The team is in the process of getting everything rolling and we need a little rock for the community. The initial meeting will be held on:

• Wednesday February 6th at 01:00 UTC on irc chat.freenode.net #ubuntu-meeting

Topics will include:

• hexr
• improving the submission process
• ubuntu friendly website

The great thing about Ubuntu Friendly is that you can help contribute to the community no matter what your level of technical comfort is. There is always a need to have more submissions of laptops and desktops to build the database of equipment that works well with Ubuntu. In the initial meeting we need input from people who would like to give us feedback on the submission process as well as from people who have ideas on improving the usability of friendly.ubuntu.com itself. Come help build Ubuntu Friendly!

Ubuntu: That was friendly!

When I first started using Ubuntu the difficulty with using it on a laptop was centered around wireless issues. Today wireless issues are much less common, but Linux laptop compatibility is still plagued with problems due to ‘optimus’ graphics and poor bios decisions from many vendors. As an IT professional I know enough to avoid certain hardware, but for people without my IT background trying to find a laptop that works well might seem an impossible task.

Option 1:
A consumer willing to purchase a laptop on-line might order a laptop with Ubuntu pre-installed from a vendor like System76 or Dell.  For many of people they would prefer to order from HP, Lenovo, or a local store like Best Buy.

System76 Lemur Ultra

System76 offers excellent laptops for a broad range of users including power-hungry gamers (with Steam being on Ubuntu graphics power is likely to be much more sought after). Dell offers a fantastic ultra-book with Ubuntu pre-installed that is aimed at Developers.

Dell XPS 13

These options still amount to a very small selection of laptops and many people would like to get specific features in their hardware that are not offered on models with Ubuntu pre-installed. In the past when people got a laptop and then installed Ubuntu themselves it has resulted in experiences like the following:

After 3 days of solid searching, installs, compiles, theories, interfaces config, supplicant creation, and “this is what worked for me”- I’m once again at the end of my rope.

I’ve been having a real hard time staying with linux because of my laptop. it doesn’t have the worst combination of hardware, but the ATI card is really close to the worst thing.

Having a hell of a time installing ndiswrapper and wpa-supplement to get my wireless working. Again. ndiswrapper did come with Ubuntu, but wpa-supplement didn’t. I had it on a flash drive though, so I attempted to go compile it. Except it took about 50 tries before I realized Ubuntu must not have installed any dev tools. Got Make installed and tried to compile this stuff, now I can’t figure out why it keeps choking on some stupid error. I’m sure I’m doing something stupid that a Linux pro would a laugh at, but I’m so frustrated at this point I may give up.

All of the above issues could be avoided by knowing what hardware will work before a purchase is made. Around May of 2011 Ara Pulido and a small team from Canonical started Ubuntu Friendly to address this concern. Ubuntu friendly differs from the ‘Certified Program’ in that it is driven by community submissions. Ubuntu Friendly is a brilliant idea and will help as more and more people want to use Ubuntu.

Ubuntu Friendly

There is a need to transfer this project from the Canonical employees to a community team. Nicholas Skaggs and I had a discussion on IRC last night and we both hope to get this process rolling in the next few weeks. There is a need to ensure the information on the wiki page is accurate and up-to-date as well as get familiar with the current process. I am sure that the needs will include web development, database work, testing application work and documentation. As the details are worked out I will blog more about the specific team needs, but if you are interested in helping out please contact me or join the discussion on #ubuntu-quality of irc.freenode.net. This is a fantastic opportunity to contribute to the growth and success of the Ubuntu Community.

Are Ubuntu LoCo Teams Effective?

Most of the time we, as humans, do what we know, because it is comfortable and we trust it. I have been an LoCo team contact for a long time and served on the Ubuntu LoCo Council as well; I am comfortable with the structure of LoCo teams. I know the people that are involved and they are all highly energized and devoted. Today an article I read on Datamation made me take a step back and ask a few questions.

• Are LoCo teams effective?
• What is the ‘focus’ or ‘purpose’ of LoCo teams? (was the author expecting something from LoCo teams that they are not ‘focused’ on)

For my part i have not really come to any conclusion because I have seen many successful LoCo teams and each had their own way of becoming successful. The purpose of this post is to expose more people in the Ubuntu Community to the question. First let me go over some of the points made in the article.

The first quote defines the ‘audience’ that the author was talking about:

However, for those who have been exposed to Ubuntu Linux at some level, the temptation to give the OS a shot might finally take hold. These individuals are usually more tech-savvy or might be the family tech support person. Assuming the PC is fast enough to support it, Ubuntu suddenly looks like a viable option in these instances.

For my part I would say LoCo teams are well suited for the helping tech savvy users who have heard about Ubuntu explore using the OS. I do not think the Ubuntu LoCo teams can function in a manner similar to an Apple ‘Genius’ or a ‘Geek Squad’ member at Best Buy. This level of support is for the type of user who really needs extensive hand holding; on their schedule not on someone else’s. My mother is a user like this and she bought an iPad because she liked being able to go in to the Apple store and get individual help when she wanted it.

The second quote indicated that the author felt that LoCo teams could have a positive impact on the adoption of Ubuntu.

A more natural approach would be a greater focus on the Ubuntu LoCo teams. These are Ubuntu support groups who volunteer to put on events in their local areas. They help those who need assistance with Ubuntu, along with providing other great benefits.

Here the author describes what he believes to be one function of LoCo teams. One key item is the idea of local areas. In the United States LoCo teams are organized by state and some states cover rather large areas. In large states like New York, Texas, Florida and California the geographic distance makes it possible to have a well established active group in one city and no activity in another. The information on the LoCo Team wiki page shows that the focus may be less on helping people become Ubuntu users and more on assisting Ubuntu users meet other Ubuntu users.

Ever since the birth of computers, enthusiasts and fans around the world have collected together in garages, universities and pubs to talk about their interest, learn from each other and help promote their interest. Combine this with the huge popularity of Ubuntu, and you have the Ubuntu LoCo project.

With the incredible success of Ubuntu around the world, the LoCo project is here to help groups of Ubuntu fans and enthusiasts work together in regional teams to help advocate, promote, translate, develop and otherwise improve Ubuntu. Our worldwide network of LoCo teams is providing a strong backbone to our already vast and extensive Ubuntu community.

I would say advocating and promoting Ubuntu includes making people aware of Ubuntu as an option to OS X or Windows, but does it include activities that would actively help people transition to Ubuntu? My LoCo team has participated in install festivals, but we do not provide ongoing classes for new users.

The author goes further though and gives his experience with looking to his LoCo team for these kinds of events.

With this in mind I went to my own LoCo group page thinking surely there would be lots happening considering how new Ubuntu 12.10 is, right? Sadly, I was mistaken. Upon visiting, I was presented with a static website and crickets.

Washington LoCo Last Edited

Washington LoCo Events

I will admit that having old resources like this does not help. People will be turned away when they do not find recent events or even upcoming events. Also, having a team event scheduled that is 388 miles or seven hours away is not likely to be any better either. While many community events can take place on IRC those events are not likely going to capture the attention of the audience the author is speaking about. For my part I have met very few tech savvy OS X or Windows users who know what IRC is and less who use it. If they do use an on-line text based chat it is of the instant messaging variety.

The author continues by discussing where he sees the LoCo teams as successful.

After poking around the various LoCo resources, I realized why the expertise gap remains between Ubuntu and Windows and how incredibly ineffective the current LoCo setup is. Honestly, I’ve seen local Linux User Groups with better organization than this! While the LoCos do okay with coordinating international events, they remain largely within their own little echo chamber. And last time I checked, that isn’t a great way to get new users on board.

I can see this perspective given that the author found the resources he mentioned and then found Ubuntu Hours on loco.ubuntu.com. I would also agree that I think the LoCo teams do a great job of coordinating international events such as Open Week or Developer Week. In order to really evaluate the the question of the effectiveness of the LoCo teams you have to first answer the question of what the purpose of LoCo team is. I believe as a community we have to avoid asking the author why he is not building a team in his area; while that ethos is part of the Open Source Way I do not think that will extend to the large audience of users we all hope Ubuntu will find. I also think this is a valid question that has been floating around in the Ubuntu community for the last several cycles as we eye crossing the chasm:

• Who Will Help Us Cross The Chasm? – Randall Ross
• Ubuntu Community Lexicon, Part 3 – Randall Ross
• Four Years And The Chasm – Jono Bacon
• Crossing the Chasm – Wikipedia article on what Crossing the Chasm means

Is Ubuntu ready to cross the chasm? Are Ubuntu LoCo teams effective in helping to reach the audience that helps Ubuntu cross the chasm? Are Ubuntu LoCo teams supposed to be focused on reaching that audience? As a community it is healthy to take a step back and ask questions like these from time to time. I am still thinking about this and I hope you will too.

Ubuntu 12.10 Launch Party

In the past Ubuntu-Us-NY Loco has done more technically oriented launch parties complete with presentations and upgrades; food and conversation was a secondary item. This year, motivated by the success of Randall Ross generating outstanding events in Vancouver, it was decided to make be more social and less technical. The ‘party’ aspect of release day was put to the front complete with a Quantal cake. The result was an outstanding turnout that included several new attendees. The event was hosted by Interlock Rochester and co-sponsored by LUGOR.

Joseph shows off some Ubuntu TV stuff he is working on

The amazing food brought in and shared by all

working on upgrading laptops and relaxing

David L. cuts the cake he provided for the party

Quantal Cake is Yummy!

Ubuntu Server Wake on Lan over Wireless

Recently I cascaded a desktop to my eldest daughter and in turn got her old desktop to use as a server. I strongly dislike noise so I wanted to use this server in the basement of my house. I also wanted to be able to suspend the server when I am not using it. The only hurdle was the fact that I have no Ethernet in my basement. In order to use wireless and still be able to do wake on lan I made use of an Asus Wireless-G Access Point (WL-330GE) in client mode. This allows the server to make use of its Ethernet connection, but the communication will go wireless from the Asus WL-330GE.  The Asus is currently old technology and I would suggest using the new ASUS 802.11b/g/n Portable Wireless Router (WL-330N) if you needed to buy a unit now. Both of these devices are traditionally used as travel routers and offer several modes including a wireless bridge.

The program you need to use to send wake on lan signals is ‘etherwake’.  To install etherwake do the following command in a terminal window.

sudo apt-get install etherwake

After the etherwake is installed you send Wake on Lan packets with the following command:

waekonlan ##:##:##:##:##:##

Where the you replace the ## with the mac address of the target computer. The target machine must have Wake on Lan enabled in BIOS in order for this to work. For me Etherwake and the ASUS travel router worked perfectly to get the desired outcome.

Ubuntu’s Raring Ruckus Much Ado About Nothing

I have been an ardent supporter of Ubuntu for a while now and had the amazing opportunity to attend UDS and meet the amazing people behind the distribution. This includes Canonical employees and community contributors from around the world including Mark Shuttleworth himself.

It was with sadness that I watched Mark’s blog post twisted and turned in to something ‘ugly’. Here are a few of the twisted headlines:

Key parts of Ubuntu 13.04 will be developed in secret, to escape the critics’ ire

Ubuntu moves some Linux development inside

Canonical’s Mark Shuttleworth Tires Of Critics, Moves Key Ubuntu Developments Out Of Public Eye

There are others, but what I find interesting is that the headlines were so far from reality. We all suspect why that would be… to get more clicks. Sensational titles that stir strong emotions make for great hit counts. Fortunately for the bloggers and associated sites I have a higher standard of Ethics so I will not name names, nor will I claim that I know their motivations.

For those that have not seen it here is the part of Mark’s blog post that is being distorted.

So, we thought we would extend the invitation to people who trust us and in whom we have reason to trust, to work together on some sexy 13.04 surprises. The projects range from webby (javascript, css, html5) to artistic (do you obsess about kerning and banding) to scientific (are you a framerate addict) to glitzy (pixel shader sherpas wanted) to privacy-enhancing (how is your crypto?) to analytical (big daddy, big brother, pick your pejorative). But they all make the Ubuntu experience better for millions of users, they are all groundbreaking in free software, they will all result in code under the GPL (or an existing upstream license if they are extensions to existing projects). No NDA’s needed but we will need to trust you not to talk in your sleep . We’ll also need to trust you to write code that is thorough and tested, stuff you’ll be as proud of as we are of the rest of the Ubuntu experience. Of course.

Mark Shuttleworth

I put in red the key parts of this text that caught my eye. I am not sure how extending an invitation or producing code under the GPL is a bad thing. I am not sure how an honest person could produce a headline claiming that Mark did this because he was ‘tired of critics’. I saw this as a positive opening up of projects like Unity; an opening up in the infancy stage of the project. That is a positive step towards more openness while preserving the ability of Canonical and Ubuntu to make headline release splashes at tech events. Those ‘splashes’ and headlines allow the distribution to pierce the popular media and gain recognition in global computer user population who goes to a big box store to buy a computer. Seriously go ask a non-tech minded computer user what Fedora is and they will tell you it is a type of hat. Ask them what Ubuntu is and you have a far, far better chance of telling you that has something to do with a computer. I, in fact, had this experience Thursday night at my last Linux User Group Meeting (LUGOR) when a young college student stumbled upon our meeting.

student: What meeting is in here?

linux user 1: It is a Linux user group.

student: What is Linux?

Fedora user: You know, like Fedora.

student: It is a meeting about hats.

Ubuntu user: Have you heard of Ubuntu?

student: Yeah, that has something to do with computers, right?

That exposure is important for Ubuntu, Canonical and Linux as a whole. I understand the need for ‘splash’ and ‘magic moments’ in the process of growing a community.

There is another aspect though. Why does the first iteration of a piece of code have to be completely public? Is there some requirement that it must be? I have no issue with someone,  or a group, who has an idea trying to build their first release in a small circle. I would take issue if they did not open up the code after or were unwilling to take feedback and improve the code. What is happening with 13.04 is a more open environment than what happened before, not a more closed environment.

Now, over the years Canonical has invested extensively in building components to help grow and improve the Ubuntu experience. Examples of this include Unity, Juju, Launchpad, Bazaar, Ubuntu One, and various other projects. The majority of these projects are fully open and anyone can participate in them.

Jono Bacon

So, in the future we can expect the community to have people ‘sitting at the table’ with Canonical developers when projects like Juju, Ubuntu One and Unity are being born. I see this as an amazingly good thing. An amazing amount of trust being extended by Canonical and the individuals working on the projects. I also think it will help produce better results and stronger first release code.

Please note that this is my opinion and from my vantage point. I fully acknowledge that others have different frames of reference and are entitled to their opinions.

Lenovo T530: Ubuntu 12.10 and UEFI

As many of you know I purchased a Gazelle Professional a while ago and was initially happy with the laptop. Due to the heat issue and poor battery life I decided to return the laptop and eat the loss of shipping both ways (approximately $80). After much waiting I was finally able to purchase a Lenovo T530. Here are the specs as orderd (green items are better than the Gazelle and red items are worse):

Processor           Intel Core i7-3720QM
Operating system    Windows 7 Professional 64
Total memory        4 GB PC3-12800 DDR3 (1 DIMM)
Hard drive          320GB HDD 7200rpm
System Unit         T530 NVIDIA Optimus with 1GB (Intel 4000)
Optical device      DVD Recordable, UBE w/SWR
Battery             9cell LI Battery TWL70++
Bluetooth           Bluetooth 4.0 w/ antenna
wireless LAN        Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300
Wireless WAN        Mobile Broadband upgradable
Display Panel       TW530 15.6FHD Anti-Glare, WWAN
Keyboard Language   KYB (Backlit) US English
Warranty Type       2YR Onsite Next Business Day + Accidental
Price:              $1261.46

I wanted more ram so I ended up buying 16GB of Corsair Vengence ram and doing the upgrade myself. I also replaced Windows with Ubuntu 12.10. The resulting configuration is as follows:

Processor           Intel Core i7-3720QM
Operating system    Ubuntu 12.10
Total memory        16 GB PC3-12800 DDR3 (2 DIMM)
Hard drive          320GB HDD 7200rpm
System Unit         T530 NVIDIA Optimus with 1GB (Intel 4000)
Optical device      DVD Recordable, UBE w/SWR
Battery             9cell LI Battery TWL70++
Bluetooth           Bluetooth 4.0 w/ antenna
wireless LAN        Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300
Wireless WAN        Mobile Broadband upgradable
Display Panel       TW530 15.6FHD Anti-Glare, WWAN
Keyboard Language   KYB (Backlit) US English
Warranty Type       2YR Onsite Next Business Day + Accidental
Price:              $1351.45

One additional feature not mentioned above is support for an mSata drive in the Lenovo T530 which would allow me to add an SSD drive without the need to remove the optical drive. I still have not decide if I want to make use of this, but it is nice to have that option.  I am currently debating adding a Crucial M4 256GB mSata drive. I have confirmed on Lenovo forums that it is possible to use this mSata drive as a boot drive and not just as a caching drive. If anyone has any experiencing with mSata and Ubuntu I would appreciate any advice.

The cost I paid for the Gazelle Professional was $1352. If I had added the extra year of warranty for the System76 the cost would have been $1462 and would not have included on-site or accidental coverage. I consider this a clear win in price for the T530. At the time of the original purchase the price was slightly in favor of the Gazelle Professional because of the difference in sale prices at the time.

Some may ask if I would still recommend System76 and the answer is a resounding; yes! While this particular model did not work out for me I was amazed at the level of support that I received from System76 and their commitment to customer satisfaction was outstanding. In many cases returning a laptop would have not been possible. System76 has a 30 day satisfaction guarantee and gave me no hassle with returning the laptop.

The install of Ubuntu 12.10 was amazingly easy and was completed using the UEFI bios only option. All of the special function buttons work including the LCD and keyboard back lighting. The palm rest has not once been warmer, to the touch, than room temperature and the reported battery life with the lcd at 80% brightness is 7 hours and 9 minutes on a full charge.

Beautiful 1920×1080 95% gamut monitor

T530 Backlit Keyboard