Our friends at the UK’s premier third-rate IT blog, The Register, have a new interview up with Benevolent Dictator Mark Shuttleworth branding him a “millionaire cosmonaut and self-funded Linux guru” and talking about taking Ubuntu to the mainstream.

Mark reveals that Canonical is using about $10m/year on building and promoting Ubuntu, all currently coming from Mark’s personal wallet. We thought we’d also take the Google Trends link that measures the number of searches on a particular topic and compare Ubuntu to Red Hat, Suse and even Microsoft’s Vista. We think you’ll enjoy the results!

Dapper has been given a “Recommended” award by IT Reviews:

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS is a very complete and usable Linux distribution and one that’s remarkably easy to get to grips with compared to some others. All of which makes it a good starting point for newcomers, but don’t be fooled into thinking it’s cut-down in any way. As well as appealing to the hobbyist, Ubuntu is a full Linux implementation with everything needed for business use, including automatic updates and commercial support should you need it.

LXER.com has published an interview with Simon Law, head of Quality Assurance for the Ubuntu Project.

Specifically for QA, you can join the Ubuntu BugSquad. We’re a tight-knit group of people who are interested in helping with the neverending flow of bugs that come in. You can start by helping to triage new bugs and testing experimental bits of software. Plus, we give out lots of virtual hugs.

If you’re new, you can join in the “Hug Day” in starting on Wednesday, 19 July, in every timezone. For more information on how to get involved, Jeremie Corbier has a nice summary of everything you need to get started.

[Discuss sfllaw’s “Bug Czar” interview on the Ubuntu Forums]