Oh wow. LOVE the avatars B.
Oh yeah, I do talk a lot about Linux, and am glad you were listening.
Turned out to be one of, if not the best thing you could do for yourself.
Now, let's all join in and do a group hug at the same time we say the saying:
"Canonical is not Linux, Canonical is not Linux..."
However, I do not believe what the article is implying. I do not believe that Canonical will go away altogether from this. Many Linux distributions have come back up from similar phases, and had nothing to do it with. Shuttleworth is always there with his mega-rich self to pull Ubuntu's arse out with. They are like the flu every year - they keep coming back.
Y'know, I used to quite like Ubuntu years ago, before Shuttleworth became such a prick... ran it a couple of times out of curiosity. Also gave out hundreds of cds they sent out to us on request to promote Linux. I'd get 100 at a time and pass them out to people. Even still have a couple of them. But now it's a whole 'nother ball of wax.