Ubuntu Archive

As part of its initiative to improve the usability of the Linux desktop, Canonical has made a proposal for a desktop notification system for both GNOME and KDE. Mark Shuttleworth announced the proposal on his blog earlier this week. The mockup video shows notification more or less like the 3d party Growl system for Mac OS X. Since we are talking Linux here, the meat is in the implementation details and cross-desktop compatibility.

"The Ubuntu developers have announced the availability of Ubuntu 9.04 alpha 1, the first prerelease for this version. Ubuntu 9.04 is codenamed Jaunty Jackalope and is scheduled for official release in April. The initial plans for Jaunty were published in September, prior to the release of Ubuntu 8.10. Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth aims to boost the software experience and make the popular Linux distribution more competitive with Windows and Mac OS X on the desktop. Canonical intends to push the platform into the mainstream by putting its resources into upstream usability improvements. In addition to the ongoing long-term usability enhancement efforts, Canonical and the Ubuntu development community are focusing on several specific technical goals for 9.04, including improving performance and boot time and integrating web services more tightly with the desktop."

Canonical Ltd., commercial sponsor of Ubuntu Linux, says it's porting Ubuntu to the ARM RISC processor architecture. Ubuntu on ARM will target netbooks and other emerging device categories requiring a "rich, always-connected, mobile computing experience, without compromising battery life." The ARM version of Ubuntu, due next April, initially will support the ARMv7 RISC architecture, including SoCs (system-on-chip processors) based on ARM Ltd's Cortex-A8 and Cortex-A9 cores.

Last week, during Ubuntu's OpenWeek, Mark Shuttleworth joined in for a two hour Q&A session, where he answered a wide range of questions regarding Ubuntu and its parent company, Canonical. They ranged from questions regarding Canonical's relationship with Dell, all the way up to Shuttleworth's response to Greg Kroah-Hartman's criticism of Canonical.

Bang on target, the new version of Ubuntu Linux is available for our downloading pleasure. Amongst various changes it sports updates to the installer, improved networking, and a new 'Mobile USB' version geared towards the blossoming netbook market. Grab a copy from the Ubuntu website, and check out Linux Format's hands-on look. Or the one at Simple Thoughts. Or the one at PolishLinux. And probably a few other websites as well.

With the release of Ubuntu 8.10 only a few days away, Phoronix decided to take a look at the performance figures over the past releases - from Ubuntu 7.04 to Ubuntu 8.10. Phoronix used its own extensive test suite on fresh installations, with the same parameters, on the identical hardware. The results are rather surprising. Update: I've added some more information about this, gathered from the Ubuntu mailing list. You can find it in the 'read more'.

Sunday we reported on an interview with an MSI manager, who stated that internal research had shown that the return rate for the Linux version of MSI's Wind netbook was four times as high as that of the Windows XP version. He claimed that the unfamiliarity of people with Linux was the culprit. This claim sparked some serious discussion around the net, but now MSI's statement is being repeated by Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu.

Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth announced Wednesday that his company, Canonical, will hire professional designers and interaction experts to improve the usability of the Linux desktop software ecosystem. They will work closely with upstream developers to bring a better experience to users of the open source operating system.

The next Ubuntu release is already around the corner. Only two more months, and the next tidal wave of brown 2 paragraph reviews will be upon us. PolishLinux decided that they'd be ahead of the pack, by taking a look at what Ubuntu 8.10 looks like right now, and what new features it brings. Of course, many of these features come from upstream, and will find their way into other distributions as well - or are already there.

Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical, recently did an interview with derStandard in which he discussed issues with Ubuntu's latest release, innovation, the future of GNOME, and other subjects. Perhaps the most interesting thing he said is that Linux does not yet deliver "a good enough user experience." Of course, you could say that of any operating system. Editor's Note: QT-based Gnome was also an interesting point-of-view.

As the Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex (8.10) development gets going, many people will probably be wondering what new end-user features they can expect. This article lists the top 5 new features. My Take: Nothing really exciting. I still shiver over the inability of the default Totem installation not de-interlacing my camcomder-derived home videos and DVDs because GStreamer doesn't support it, or no full A/V support on Pidgin yet, or something as simple as this which I've been asking for years now and it would probably take 5 minutes to implement.

Canonical has released Ubuntu 8.04 Mobile Internet Device Edition, a version of the Ubuntu Linux distribution geared towards netbooks, mobile internet devices, UMPCs, subnotebooks, or whatever they're called this day of the week. It has a whole slew of optimisations geared specifically towards Intel's Atom platform, as well as a set of open source applications designed specifically for MIDs, all courtesy of Intel's Moblin project.

The Hardy Heron has taken flight: it's the second LTS (Long Term Support) release of the world's most popular distro. New features include the Wubi Windows installer and Firefox 3 beta 5. Grab a copy here, and check out Linux Format's overview of the release.

Tomorrow, Ubuntu's second 'long-term support' release, 8.04 or Hardy Heron, will propagate its way through the list of mirrors. OSNews took a short look at the beta release of Hardy Heron a few weeks ago, and concluded that "All in all, this release packs some interesting new features and frameworks, some of which should have been part of any Linux distribution three years ago. It is quite clearly a beta though, and definitely not ready yet to be labeled as a 'long term support' release." In anticipation of the release, El Reg caught up with Mark Shuttleworth in London.