Canonical and AMI (American Megatrends, Inc.) announced today a partnership that brings a native “Ubuntu Cloud Installation” entry directly inside AMI’s Aptio V UEFI firmware.
Canonical’s Alexander Lehmann highlighted that the new option aligns with the company’s focus on improving the out-of-the-box Ubuntu experience.
“Our collaboration with AMI furthers our commitment to deliver the best Ubuntu experience right out of the box. It’s now even easier to install Ubuntu.”
From a technical perspective, here’s what this actually means. Instead of preparing USB installers, flashing images, or setting up external boot media, users can select Ubuntu directly from the firmware’s boot menu.
Behind that menu entry is a built-in UEFI-based netboot mechanism that retrieves the official Ubuntu installer over a standard Ethernet connection.
The firmware handles the network boot sequence itself, pulling the necessary bootloader and installation environment without requiring any configuration changes or manual PXE setup.
The approach relies on UEFI’s native networking stack:
- DHCP is used to obtain network configuration.
- The firmware fetches Canonical’s signed bootloader and kernel images over the network.
- The system then launches the full Ubuntu installer environment as if booting from local media.
Because everything is done at the firmware level, the process is consistent across hardware platforms that ship with Aptio V, eliminating issues caused by missing USB drivers, incompatible SD controllers, or misconfigured boot order.
Additionally, this enables rapid bulk deployment in data centers or labs where physical media is impractical—machines can be provisioned by powering them on and selecting the Ubuntu entry.
The new Canonica-AMI partnership will be showcased at SPS, Smart Production Solutions, in Nuremberg, Germany, from November 25 to 27, 2025. Canonical will be present in Hall 6, booth 112, while AMI will exhibit in the same hall, booth 223.
For more information, see the official announcement on Canonical’s blog.
