Ubuntu News Archives

Mark Shuttleworth has revealed the codename for Ubuntu 13.10.

Canonical has officially announced the release of Ubuntu 13.04 "Raring Ringtail" this morning.

The Linux kernel zRAM module allows for creating RAM-based compressed block devices and for common situations can reduce or eliminate paging on disk. The zRAM feature can be particularly beneficial for systems with limited amounts of system memory. It's quite easy to setup zRAM on Ubuntu Linux, so in this article are some before and after benchmarks.

Canonical has released new "Raring-based" Ubuntu Touch images for the Google Nexus 4, Nexus 7, Nexus 10, and Galaxy Nexus devices.

While there was the video of Unity Next running on Mir with a Google Nexus 4 hand-held, in terms of the overall feature completeness of the Mir Display Server, there is still much work ahead. Only on Friday did Mir even gain support for switching to virtual terminals.

Canonical has announced the final beta for the Ubuntu 13.04 "Raring Ringtail" products.

Canonical developers have hit the milestone of being able to run their "Unity Next" desktop atop the Mir Display Server. The work is still very early, but it shows for Ubuntu Touch they can swap out Android's SurfaceFlinger for Mir.

One of the less popular ways to use Ubuntu Linux has been through the "Wubi" Windows-based installer that places Ubuntu within a Windows installation just as you would any other application. However, Canonical is planning to remove Wubi from Ubuntu 13.04.

It's been decided at the last minute that "smart scopes", a feature of the new Unity desktop, will not ship in Ubuntu 13.04.

While the future is with Mir and Unity Next, work on the short-term includes more performance optimizations for the Unity desktop and Compiz window manager.

Upstart, the event/init daemon still being used by Ubuntu Linux rather than systemd or SysVinit, is now up to version 1.8. Compared to earlier releases that brought more changes, Upstart 1.8 just brings two official changes over Upstart 1.7.

A weekly status update on Ubuntu Touch has been shared that illustrates more work on their key applications and more ports of this phone/tablet-oriented Ubuntu Linux heading to more hardware.

For those that didn't hear already, Canonical is collaborating with the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (the Chinese government) to develop Kylin, a new Chinese operating system based upon Ubuntu.

Canonical's Mir Display Server for Ubuntu has received some interesting commits in the past day.

At yesterday's Ubuntu Technical Board meeting they discussed how long they will support non-LTS releases as well as the rolling release model for Ubuntu Linux.

More progress was made by Canonical and the Ubuntu development community on the Ubuntu Touch project for Linux on smart-phones and tablets.

While Canonical no longer does a beta release of Ubuntu itself, many of the Ubuntu derivatives are doing their first 13.04 beta today.

There's code being committed to the new Mir Display Server every few hours. There's also numerous Bazaar code branches appearing too that show early work on other functionality.

The Unity 7 desktop has been granted a feature freeze exception so that the updated desktop with "a lot of new code" can be landed in Ubuntu 13.04.

Further differentiating itself from the GNOME desktop stack it was previously based upon, developers are working on their own calendar, weather, and clock applications that are written against the Ubuntu SDK. They've even developed their own Sudoku and other games.

Mark Shuttleworth recently downplayed the likelihood that Ubuntu would turn into a true rolling-release distribution, but that changes were likely abound. He's now written another blog post about considerations being made at the company for future Ubuntu Linux releases.

With the start of another week comes another round of information on the Mir Display Server out of Canonical.

The Ubuntu Tech Board approved last week that Ubuntu GNOME is now an official flavor/derivative of Ubuntu Linux.

Rick Spencer of Canonical wrote last week the straw-man proposal to make Ubuntu a rolling release distribution. While there's some concerns over moving to a full rolling release process for non-LTS Ubuntu releases, he is seeking feedback on three possible proposals for handling future Ubuntu Linux releases.

Following a tough week for Canonical with controversies surrounding the Mir Display Server and uncertainties about whether Ubuntu 13.04 would be released or turned into a rolling release model, Sam Spilsbury one of the lead Compiz developers and former Canonical employees, had some harsh words for the Ubuntu backer.

Mark Shuttleworth has written a third blog post today. After he started blogging to come to his defense on Ubuntu, he's written a third post that largely is defending Canonical's position on developing the Mir Display Server and the feelings right now by derivatives like Kubuntu and Xubuntu.

Mark Shuttleworth hadn't written on his blog -- where he posts just a few times per year -- since last December. That changed this morning though where he's already written two separate blog posts to come to the defense about Ubuntu rolling releases and saying criticism is misplaced about Canonical not taking care of the Ubuntu community.

Following word earlier this week that "Unity Next" is being written in Qt/QML and that this next-generation Unity desktop will run on the Mir Display Server and be a converged user-interface from phones and tablets to the Ubuntu desktop, more of Unity's future was talked about at the online UDS.

While Ubuntu developers still are set on continuing to use their own Upstart event-based init daemon rather than the widely-used systemd, the developers at Canonical are planning to begin using systemd's logind component.

Another item discussed on the first day of the virtual Ubuntu Developer Summit is about the roadmap for the Ubuntu SDK.

With Ubuntu preparing itself to land on tablets, smart-phones, and other consumer devices, Canonical is beginning to look at ways to support multimedia content protected by Digital Rights Management.

At the first day of Canonical's inaugural virtual Ubuntu Developers' Summit, it was decided to release Ubuntu 13.04 as scheduled. The fate of turning Ubuntu into a rolling release distribution for non-LTS releases is undecided.

If you are now to look at Ubuntu's Mir specification page for their new display server, you will see that their open criticism of Wayland/Weston has disappeared.

The latest coverage of today's surprise announcement of Canonical developing Mir, their own display server for Ubuntu, is information on building and running the Mir display server with the code they open-sourced today. There's also a Phoronix video showcasing the (sad) state of the Mir client demo.

Given Canonical's lack of upstream involvement with the development of X.Org, DRM, and Mesa/Gallium3D over the years, it was interesting to see who at the company is actually on-staff to work on the just-announced Mir Display Server for future releases of Ubuntu.

It shouldn't be a surprise that Canonical has been moving the Ubuntu desktop (namely, Unity) in the direction of Qt/QML over GTK. The Unity phone/tablet interface is using Qt as is other components and for the next major iteration of Unity they're seeking for it to all be written in Qt/QML.

Canonical developers are again taking a serious look at moving Ubuntu over to a rolling-release model. Under this form, there would be the Ubuntu Long-Term Support (LTS) releases every two years but between that new packages would be pushed out on a rolling-release basis.

Performance testing of Ubuntu Linux -- in the form of the brand new Ubuntu Touch Developer Preview -- on the Google Nexus smart-phones continues to move forward, but so far findings are mixed.

Here's some more details on my adventures with the Ubuntu Touch Developer Preview after experimenting with it for a little more than 24 hours on the Google Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 devices.

One of the first things I wanted to check when installing the Ubuntu Touch/Tablet Developer Preview is seeing what display server / compositor was in use by this newest Ubuntu Linux variant. Wayland? Compiz on X?

The initial Ubuntu Phone/Tablet Developer Preview images for the Google Nexus 4, 7, and 10 devices are now available for those wanting to try out this touch-optimized version of Ubuntu Linux.

The countdown for the Ubuntu Tablet announcement that began yesterday is now over.

Canonical has made it not so subtly known that they will be making an Ubuntu tablet related announcement tomorrow.

Canonical will be releasing a preview of their new Ubuntu Phone platform next week for the Google Galaxy Nexus.

There's a report out today that Ubuntu will begin to ship on smart-phones beginning this October.

There's been talk already this morning in the forums, Twitter, and via email to Phoronix that Canonical is allegedly developing its own display server rather than using X.Org/X11 or Wayland.

Starting with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS next year, Canonical may switch Ubuntu Linux to a rolling-release model whereby package updates the bi-annual Long-Term Support releases would be the official images with rolling package updates for those releases.

If you are an Ubuntu Linux user and rely upon Intel integrated graphics, Ubuntu developers could use your help in trying out Intel's SNA as they decide whether to enable this experimental acceleration architecture in Ubuntu 13.04.

Ubuntu 12.04.2, the first Long-Term Support point release of Ubuntu Linux where new hardware support is back-ported to the LTS release, has been delayed.

The Compiz window manager is not going to be ported to Wayland. The lead Compiz developer also sees no reason to continue the compositing window manager's development beyond maintenance purposes.