Ubuntu Friendly community hardware validation programme

The Ubuntu Ready certification offer will be discontinued from the release of Ubuntu 11.04. Systems that have already been awarded the status of Ready through the certification programme will retain their status for the lifetime of the respective Ubuntu release.

A new community based programme, currently called "Ubuntu Friendly", will be created by Canonical with co-ordination and guidance from the rest of the community. The focus of this programme will be self-validation of hardware by all levels of Ubuntu users.

There will be a clear process for marking results received through the Community Hardware Testing Infrastructure [1] as Ubuntu Friendly. Initial criteria for receiving the Ubuntu Friendly status will be based on the existing certification criteria, and there will be opportunities for the community to refine and extend these.

There will also need to be processes for disputing, resolving, and expiring statuses that have been achieved.

Systems that achieve the Ubuntu Friendly status will be displayed in a similar, but separate, fashion as we currently do for systems that are certified [2].

This means that we will need to scope a new system (or extend an existing one) so that we can track and display systems as they move through the programme.

Finally, components contained within Ubuntu Friendly systems should be included in the Ubuntu Component Catalog [3] (with the appropriate differentiation from certified components).

[1] https://blueprints.launchpad.net/certify-planning/+spec/cert-o-community-testing
[2] http://www.ubuntu.com/certification
[3] http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/catalog