Q: The PogoPlug is easy to use for end-users, as well as advanced enough to where software developers can modify the code it runs, why did you go with an open platform versus a closed platform?

While more and more computer peripherals and gadgets these days are running Linux internally, not many vendors are matching their internal Linux support with external Linux customer support. For the Pogoplug though, which is made by CloudEngines, this is not the case.

What's small and pink, incorporates a Linux kernel and an embedded ARM compatible processor, and let's you set up your own personal cloud? The answer is the latest Pogoplug device from Cloud Engines Inc.

For the past few releases, Canonical has put quite a bit of energy into making Ubuntu a first-class OS for use in the cloud. Ubuntu now has cloud support for Amazon’s EC2 and Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (a “private cloud” system based on Eucalyptus).

Canonical is touting private cloud capabilities in an upgrade to its Ubuntu Linux OS being announced on Tuesday. Available for free download on Oct. 29, Ubuntu 9.10 Server Edition introduces UEC (Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud), an open-source cloud computing environment based on the same APIs as Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud). Businesses can take advantage of private clouds, Canonical said.

If you're building an internal or private cloud, Canonical wants you to use Ubuntu Linux 10.04 as your operating system of choice. To that end, the newest version of Ubuntu includes a feature set called Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud.

Red Hat's Deltacloud project is developing a open source standardised API for addressing different cloud architectures in a uniform way. Cloud service users can use the Deltacloud API to access Amazon's EC2 as well as private clouds that are based on Red Hat Enterprise Virtualisation (RHEL-V); drivers for private VMware ESX clouds and the cloud services offered by Rackspace are to follow.

Have you been wanting to fly to the cloud, to experiment with cloud computing? Now is your chance. With this article, we will step through the process of setting up a private cloud system using Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC), which is powered by the Eucalyptus platform.

Red Hat today officially launched an ambitious new effort called Deltacloud to help abstract away the differences between public and private cloud deployments. Oh and it's all open source too. The way that Red Hat CTO Briand Stevens explains Deltacloud, is that that it will have drivers that map onto Amazon EC@ as well as private clouds that uses VMware or Red Hat Enterprise Linux