I have a question about the free personal tier of Ubuntu Pro.
I know that Ubuntu Pro is free for personal use on up to 5 machines. I’ve also seen that Landscape is mentioned as a feature of Ubuntu Pro. However, I’m a bit confused about whether Landscape is actually included in the free personal subscription, or if it requires a paid plan.
Specifically:
Does the free 5-machine Ubuntu Pro subscription include access to Landscape SaaS for managing those machines?
If so, are there any limitations compared to the paid version?
I’ve tried setting up Landscape with my free Pro token, and I can log into landscape.canonical.com with my Ubuntu One account, but I’m running into an issue where “Remaining registrations” shows 0 even though I have active Pro subscription seats.
Before I dig deeper into troubleshooting, I just want to confirm: Is Landscape actually included in the free personal Ubuntu Pro tier, or do I need a paid subscription to use it?
I just want to clarify — I’m aware that Landscape is part of the Pro subscription. Since I’m using the free personal Ubuntu Pro tier (which is still a Pro subscription, just limited to 5 machines), my understanding is that Landscape should be included.
This is what the official Ubuntu Pro pricing page indicates as well — Landscape is listed as one of the features of the Pro subscription, without any explicit exclusion for the free tier.
Also, I’m able to log into landscape.canonical.com with my Ubuntu One account, and I can see the “Pending computers” list and send registration requests from my WSL instance. If Landscape were completely excluded from the free tier, I wouldn’t expect to have any access to the Landscape portal at all, let alone see pending registration requests.
So I think the issue might not be whether Landscape is included, but rather that my free tier seats (5 total, 3 currently active) aren’t being properly reflected in the Landscape license allocation — it shows “0 remaining registrations” even though I should have 2 available.
Is there a known step to manually sync or link the Pro subscription seats to the Landscape account? Or could this be a bug in the license allocation for free tier accounts?
When we join a Ubuntu platform like this one we set up what Ubuntu calls a Single Sign On account (SSO). It allows us to log in other Ubuntu services with the same user name and password. Even Ubuntu services we do not know existed.
Go to this web site. You will find that you are already logged in.
You will see your personal details there. I am not surprised that you can access Landscape.
There is a lot of documentation about Ubuntu Pro and Landscape. From the little I have read it seems that Landscape SaaS (Software As A Service) is bundled with our Ubuntu Pro subscription. That would be an accurate statement if we had a paid for Ubuntu Pro subscription. It should also be accurate for the personal free subscription.
There are three levels of Landscape. Some are part of a Canonical service cntract.
Thanks for your detailed explanation, @graymech . That’s really helpful.
I also want to thank @paddylandau for his input — I appreciate the discussion.
To clarify my original situation: I understand there may be different tiers of Landscape. But the reason I’m asking is that the Ubuntu Pro pricing page lists Landscape as one of the features of Pro. Since the free personal tier is also Pro (just limited to 5 machines), I assumed it would be included.
Here’s the actual issue I’m facing:
My Ubuntu Pro dashboard shows 3 active machines (out of 5 free seats), so I should have 2 seats available.
In my Landscape SaaS account, “Remaining registrations” shows 0.
I can log in, see the Pending computers list, and send registration requests from my WSL instance — but I cannot accept them.
If Landscape is not included in the free tier, I would expect to see a message like “you need a paid subscription to use this” or not have access to the portal at all. Instead, I have partial access but hit a license limit.
So my core question is: if free tier is supposed to include 5 Landscape-managed machines (as the Pro pricing page suggests), how do I sync my Pro seats with Landscape? Or if it’s not included, why do I have any access to the portal and registration features?
Has anyone else with a free Pro subscription successfully used Landscape? If so, is there a step I’m missing to make the seats available?
The free and paid pro tiers do indeed only differ by the amount of machines. I.e. landscape is included in both… do you have the landscape client installed on all the machines you want to manage?
Thanks for the confirmation, @ogra — really appreciate the official word on this. That’s exactly what I understood from the Pro pricing page as well.
To answer your question: yes, I have the landscape-client installed and configured on the WSL instance I’m trying to manage. Here’s exactly what I’ve done:
On the WSL instance:
Attached the Ubuntu Pro token: sudo pro attach <my-token> — successful
Enabled Landscape: sudo pro enable landscape — shows “Landscape is already enabled”
Sent registration request: sudo landscape-config --silent — shows “Registration request sent successfully”
In the Landscape web portal:
I can see the pending computer in the “Pending computers” list
My Ubuntu Pro dashboard shows 3 active machines (out of the 5 free seats), so I should have 2 seats available
However, my Landscape “Account” page shows “Remaining registrations: 0”
The “Computers” list is completely empty (checked “All computers” and “Deleted computers” views)
When I try to accept the pending computer, it fails because it says no licenses are available
It seems like the Landscape license allocation isn’t seeing the available seats from my Pro subscription. Is there a manual step to sync or link the Pro subscription to the Landscape account? Or could this be a known issue with free tier license syncing?
I’m happy to provide any logs or additional details if that would help diagnose the issue.
One more detail I should add: I’m actually planning to manage two machines in total through Landscape:
Machine A: A WSL instance (this is the one currently pending in Landscape)
Machine B: A standalone Ubuntu system that I also plan to manage through Landscape
Machine C: A VM that I’ve already decommissioned (no longer in use)
Both are attached to the same Ubuntu Pro free personal subscription (5-machine limit). I haven’t started configuring the standalone machine yet — I wanted to get the WSL instance working first to make sure the Landscape setup is correct.
Since I’ll eventually have both machines under Landscape, I want to make sure the license allocation is working properly before I proceed with the second one. Right now, with 3 active machines already on my Pro subscription, I should have 2 seats available — which would be enough for both the WSL and the standalone machine.
I’m not sure about the status of WSL support with landscape, but I’d start by checking my client configuration, there are some values you might want to set (not sure if –silent sets everything needed here) …
The Ubuntu Pro dashboard and the license tab in landscape saas are not directly linked you should be able to register a device and have it there as a free license … up to 5 unless you pay up 25$ / extra device.
Thanks for the clarification, @ogra — that’s really helpful to know.
To confirm, I’m using Landscape SaaS (landscape.canonical.com) with the free Ubuntu Pro subscription.
For my WSL instance, I did configure the Windows-side Ubuntu Pro for WSL app as per the documentation, and I can see the pending registration in the web portal. The issue I’m hitting is that I can’t accept the registration because the “Remaining registrations” shows 0, even though I have only 3 active machines out of my 5 free Pro seats.
On the WSL side, the Landscape client config (/etc/landscape/client.conf) looks like this:
Could the “Remaining registrations: 0” issue be related to how the free tier seats are allocated for WSL? Or should I be looking at something else in the configuration?
I’m also planning to register a standalone Ubuntu system (non-WSL) with the same Landscape account, so if the free tier includes Landscape, I’d expect to be able to manage both types of systems.
Thanks for the clarification, @abudimi — this is really helpful.
So if I understand correctly:
Ubuntu Pro dashboard shows my 5-machine free entitlement (3 active, 2 available)
But Landscape SaaS doesn’t automatically pick up that entitlement — I need to manually set or “claim” the 5 free seats in Landscape first?
If that’s the case, could you point me to where/how I can manually set this up in Landscape? I’ve looked in the “Account” and “Licenses” pages, but I didn’t see an option to specify that I’m using the 5 free Pro seats.
Is there a specific workflow or document that covers how to sync or manually assign the free Pro license to a Landscape account?
Thanks again — this has been a very helpful discussion!
Thanks for the link, @ogra — I actually came across this guide yesterday and followed the steps for registering a WSL host.
One quick update: I just received the pending request this morning (there was some delay), but I accidentally rejected it by mistake.
I’m planning to re-send the registration request from the WSL side. Is there any cooldown or wait time I should be aware of before the new request shows up in the Pending list? Or should it appear shortly after I run the registration command again?
Also, just to confirm — the guide mentions the [features] wsl_management = true setting for self-hosted Landscape. Since I’m using Landscape SaaS (landscape.canonical.com), I assume that setting isn’t needed. Is that correct?
Ubuntu Pro gets auto-attached to the WSL instance when you’re running the Ubuntu Pro for Windows agent, on the Windows host machine. You will also see the Windows machine appear in the new UI, and a parent-child relationship between the WSL instance and the Windows machine will appear.
To help you get started, I’ve put together two video walkthroughs of enrolling Windows machines and provisioning WSL instances from within the Landscape web portal:
Enrolling Windows Workstations: https://youtu.be/I2Wl467pHrQ
A guide on using PowerShell and the Ubuntu Pro for Windows agent to automate Landscape enrollment without sharing tokens with end users.
WSL Profiles: https://youtu.be/oIu7kSeiQh4
How to use Landscape to trigger the creation of custom Ubuntu instances using cloud-init configuration files.
Thanks for the video walkthroughs, @rajanpatel — I really appreciate you putting those together! They’re super helpful.
I’ve already followed the official documentation and ran the Ubuntu Pro for Windows agent on the Windows host machine. I can see the Windows machine appearing in the “Pending computers” list, and I understand the parent-child relationship should appear once it’s accepted.
However, I’m still stuck at the “Remaining registrations: 0” issue. My Ubuntu Pro dashboard shows I have active machines, but the free seats don’t seem to be syncing with my Landscape account. Because of this, I can’t accept the pending Windows host.
I’d like to confirm: once I get the seat sync issue resolved, will the parent-child relationship between the Windows host and the WSL instance show up automatically? Or is there an additional step I need to take to link the two?
When Landscape shows “Remaining registrations”, it considers only our “Legacy” licenses, not Ubuntu Pro licenses available in clients.
Landscape will allow up to 5 “Free tier” Ubuntu Pro clients to register per Landscape Account (even if those belong to different Ubuntu Pro accounts/tokens).
Landscape will allow any client with a “paid” Ubuntu Pro token attached to register.
