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There has been a lot of talk about the ‘cloud’ lately and, though the term is largely misused and perhaps a little too hyped, there’s definitely something to this new way of thinking about online applications and the infrastructure to serve them, the so-called cloud computing. Canonical, the company behind the very popular Ubuntu Linux distribution, recognizes the potential of the emerging market and has partnered with Intel and Eucalyptus to promote its Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) offering as part of Intel’s Cloud Builder program. “The Intel Cloud Builder program is intended to develop some best practice information for businesses and institutions looking to take advantage of the promise of cloud computing,” Nick Barcet, Ubuntu Server product manager, explained. The Humanity Icon Theme got a really nice update in Ubuntu Lucid today which brings integration with the new branding (purple that is) as well as a new Banshee monochrome icon for the panel. You can preview the updated icons below: In this post I’m going to list 16 things that I think could be improved in Lucid. I’m going to try my best to address the issues in detail and offer solutions. Of course, all of this is also a matter of opinion too. The object of this post is to make you think about ways we could improve each one. I’ll try to link to bugs where there are bugs, but a lot of these are quite new design decisions only present in 10.04 and hence don’t have bugs filed. All of these screenshots were taken about two hours after I installed Lucid Lynx alpha 3, daily build from Saturday March 6th 2010. Read: after the UI freeze. Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is Issue #184 for the week March 7th – March 13th, 2010 and is available here. In this issue we cover: * Lucid Kernel now Frozen This issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by: If you have a story idea for the Weekly News, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki! With Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) so far our first impressions aren’t good. 10.04 booted to the “Install” prompt from a LiveCD in 4 minutes and 23 seconds, compared to a solid 40 seconds on Debian Squeeze (“testing” repository) from a LiveCD on the same machine, and Debian’s LiveCD isn’t even the “normal” way of installing Debian. During the boot X changed resolutions 7 times, before hanging for 10 seconds before allowing the “Try Ubuntu” button to be clicked. After clicking the “Try Ubuntu” button X had to change resolution again (even though it changed resolutions now 8 times and flickered the screen, the resolution stayed at 1024×768) and it hung again for 20 seconds as it loaded the desktop. The release of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS “Lucid Lynx” is quickly approaching next month and it will arrive with a whole set of new features and improvements including a faster boot process, a long-awaited new theme, the Nouveau driver to replace the crippled xf86-video-nv driver, the unveiling of the Ubuntu One Music Store, integration of Plymouth, Ubuntu ARM advancements, and many other advancements for this Linux distribution. While it may not be as exciting as looking at these new end-user features, in this article we are testing out the available kernels for Ubuntu 10.04. Besides the standard Linux 2.6.32 kernel used in the Lucid release, there is also a specialized server kernel as well as a new -preempt kernel is now available. We are looking at how these different kernels perform and how they compare to the mainline Linux kernels with the 2.6.32, 2.6.33, and 2.6.34-rc1 releases. When you have Mark Shuttleworth as your backer, as commercial Linux distributor Canonical does, it is a bit like having money in the bank when the bank also believes fervently in your cause. It is a rare combination, and one that has allowed the Ubuntu project to reach out from its Linux desktop beginnings into commercial servers – and with the latest releases, cloudy infrastructure – without having the profit pressure that most startups have to deal with as they try to grow. While Shuttleworth may be the Self Appointed Benevolent Dictator For Life at the Ubuntu project, that does not mean that he is the best person to lead Canonical, the commercial entity behind Ubuntu, or even that Shuttleworth, having created digital certificate and security software vendor Thawte during the dot-com boom and selling it off to Verisign before the bust for $575m, wants to steer Canonical. He clearly doesn’t, since Jane Silber, the long-time chief operating officer at Canonical, was tapped last December to replace Shuttleworth as CEO. The big news out of the Ubuntu world this month is the radically refurbished look introduced to accompany Lucid when it’s released in April, replacing the orange-brown “Human” theme that Ubuntu users have known and loved–or not–since 2004. Here’ s a look at the new face of Ubuntu, with an attempt at abstract thoughts related to it. Ubuntu’s traditional theme never enjoyed universal acceptance. For some users, earth tones just didn’t look right on an LCD display. For others, there wasn’t enough contrast between colors. Personally, I grew to like the Human theme, despite all the controversy. I can’t say I was in love with it at first sight, but it grew on me–and not only because the orange-on-brown color scheme brought pleasant thoughts of the chocolate orange that’s given to me every year at Christmas. Indeed, I suspect that the conventional look grew on a lot of Ubuntu users, if only because they used it long enough that it became familiar and comforting. Everyone has heard of Ubuntu Linux and how great it is on the desktop, but have you heard that there’s a server version of that same uber-cool operating system? There is, and you should know about it. Ubuntu Server not only follows the same twice yearly updates (April and October) as its desktop counterpart does, but it also benefits from unsurpassed commercial support, consulting and training available through Canonical. In the race to the data center, you might feel like you don’t have room for yet another Linux-based operating system, but Ubuntu is different from the current No. 1 choice: It’s free. You purchase support for it only if you need to or want to. And, the upcoming version, due for release next month, 10.04 LTS, is the long-term support version, making no time better than the present to connect with Ubuntu Server. Long-term support means that, should you select Ubuntu Server 10.04 for your data center needs, it’s fully supported for five years after the release date. Canonical releases an LTS version every two years. The Ubuntu Ubiquity Slideshow is a project which uses Webkit that provides a slideshow when you install Ubuntu. Here is how the Ubuntu 10.04 Ubiquity slideshow looks currently: |
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