Ubuntu Archive

Ubuntu 13.04: instant purchases from the desktop

Thom Holwerda 2012-12-11 Ubuntu 75 Comments

"Perhaps most likely to raise some eyebrows is that Ubuntu 13.04 will let users purchase music or apps directly from the desktop Dash, without having to open a browser or a separate client." That's going to go down well.

Ubuntu 12.10 released

Thom Holwerda 2012-10-18 Ubuntu 121 Comments

Ubuntu 12.10 has been released, sporting the rather... Interesting tagline 'Avoid the pain of Windows 8'. Two main features are that websites can now be treated as actual applications, integrating them into Unity. The divide between local and online content when searching has also been softened, which, they claim, makes it easier to find what you're looking for. On the server side, it includes the Folsom release of OpenStack, "Cinder, for block storage and Quantum, a virtual networking API. Ubuntu's Metal-as-a-Service bare-metal provisioning tool has been updated and now supports Calxeda hyperscale hardware based on ARM".

Ubuntu asks for donations

Thom Holwerda 2012-10-10 Ubuntu 81 Comments

Donating to software projects - or, more accurately, open source projects. It's hardly new, it's hardly rare, and I'm sure most of us have donated at some point. That's probably why Canonical has opened Ubuntu up for donations - but with a twist.

Ubuntu 12.10 to ship with Amazon advertisements

Thom Holwerda 2012-09-22 Ubuntu 107 Comments

Ubuntu 12.10 will include advertisements for products on Amazon. It will look like this - if you search, product suggestions will pop up. This seems like a rather slippery slope to me, and I certainly wouldn't want this on my desktop, laptop, smartphone, tablet, or anywhere else. On the web - fine, I'm on your site, not mine - but my desktop is mine, and mine alone. Not that it matters - open source, someone will disable them. Biggest concern: does this mean my search queries get sent across the web?

How to Undo Unity

Howard Fosdick 2012-07-17 Ubuntu 75 Comments

Like Ubuntu's Unity interface? Great. If not, you can easily change it to look and act like Ubuntu used to. This tutorial shows how.

UEFI Secure Boot and Ubuntu

Thom Holwerda 2012-06-22 Ubuntu 55 Comments

After Fedora, Ubuntu has now also announced how it's going to handle the nonsense called "Secure" Boot. The gist: they'll use the same key as Fedora, but they claim they can't use GRUB2. "In the event that a manufacturer makes a mistake and delivers a locked-down system with a GRUB 2 image signed by the Ubuntu key, we have not been able to find legal guidance that we wouldn't then be required by the terms of the GPLv3 to disclose our private key in order that users can install a modified boot loader. At that point our certificates would of course be revoked and everyone would end up worse off." So, they're going to use the more liberally licensed efilinux loader from Intel. Only the bootloader will be signed; the kernel will not.

Ubuntu Abandons Dial-Up Users

jackson 2012-06-18 Ubuntu 67 Comments

Over at the Goodbye, Microsoft web site, Brad R. takes Ubuntu to task for abandoning dial-up modem users. Apparently Ubuntu no longer includes the GnomePPP dial-up package in the distribution, without which you can't get online via dial-up. It gets better: if you do have some way to connect, when you download something from the Ubuntu repository, the first thing Ubuntu does is update its 16+ megabyte repository index. Happy waiting! Brad concludes that "Ubuntu is for broadband users only."

Ubuntu 12.04 released

Submitted by anonymous 2012-04-26 Ubuntu 36 Comments

The Canonical team has released Ubuntu 12.04 - a new long term support release. The biggest new feature is the HUD, an addition to the traditional application menu system, where you can search for the actions you want to perform instead of having to hunt for them in menus. Unity overall has been improved, and I must say that even though this new release is simply not at all ready for Asus ZenBooks, Unity runs perfectly well on it, and to my own shock and surprise, I'm slowly warming up to it. It's starting to make sense, it looks nice (especially after some custom tweaking), has become a lot more configurable, and it's really, really, really fast.

HP to certify Ubuntu 12.04 LTS for its Proliant servers

2012-04-19 Ubuntu 10 Comments

"Mark Shuttleworth has announced at the OpenStack conference that Canonical has received a ringing endorsement from HP in the form of certification for Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on the ProLiant server systems. Responding to customer demand, HP has decided to officially support the popular flavor of Linux giving sysadmins another flexible software option to leverage their current and future hardware."

Kubuntu to be Sponsored by Blue Systems

Thom Holwerda 2012-04-11 Ubuntu 7 Comments

"Kubuntu will have a new sponsor in Blue Systems from the 12.10 cycle starting in May. Kubuntu is a community led project to create a KDE flavour as part of Ubuntu. Our sponsor since it started has been Canonical who are now moving to focus on their Unity flavour. We would like to thank Canonical for this kind support and wish the best success for the Unity flavour (also called Ubuntu). Blue Systems sponsors a number of KDE projects and will encourage Kubuntu to follow the same successful formula as it has always had - community led, KDE focused, Ubuntu flavour." This makes me happy.

Is Ubuntu a poor standard bearer for Linux?

jackson 2012-03-30 Ubuntu 75 Comments

Two years ago, Linux guru Caitlyn Martin argued that "Ubuntu is a Poor Standard Bearer for Linux" due to reliability issues. She said that "Other distributions have problematic releases but other major distributions do not have significant problems in nearly every release. Ubuntu does." In her follow-up piece "How Canonical Can Do Ubuntu Right: It Isn't a Technical Problem," she explained how "...the problem I am describing is probably rooted in policy or business decisions that have been made..." and she offered specific ideas on how Canoncial could address the situation. Are these criticisms valid today? Does Ubuntu offer good reliability? Does it deserve its mindshare as the representative of PC Linux?

Canonical brings Ubuntu to Android

Thom Holwerda 2012-02-22 Ubuntu 46 Comments

Take this as a sign of things to come in the land of convergence. Yesterday, Ubuntu announced Ubuntu for Android. This new product basically allows you to run the entire Ubuntu Linux distribution on your Android smartphone connected to an external display and keyboard and mouse.

Yet another menubar might land In Ubuntu 12.04

Submitted by Anonymous 2012-02-14 Ubuntu 51 Comments

It looks like a new "locally integrated menu" will make it into Unity, starting with version 5.6.0. There's basically no information about the new locally integrated menubar, except for two bug reports which link to some custom Unity, Compiz, Metacity and Light Themes branches so to see "LIM" in action, I've compiled all these branches and here's the result. The "locally integrated menubar" can be displayed on the panel (for maximized windows) as well as in the window decoration (unmaximized windows). But it's not displayed on both in the same time.

Submitted by gogothebee 2012-02-07 Ubuntu 89 Comments

This shouldn't come as a huge surprise. Jonathan Riddell, lead developer of the Kubuntu project and the only person paid by Canonical to work on the KDE variant of the popular distribution, has announced that after the 12.04 release, Canonical will no longer be funding him, effectively putting Kubuntu on the same level as other Ubuntu variants like Xubuntu.

Submitted by fran 2012-01-24 Ubuntu 96 Comments

As much as I dislike Unity, I commend the Ubuntu team and Shuttleworth for having the guts to try to innovate and bring the desktop forward (pretty much the exact same can be said of KDE4 and GNOME3). Shuttleworth has just announced yet another significant change for Ubuntu, and it's all about replacing the menu with a search interface dubbed the HUD.

Ubuntu To Come to TVs

Thom Holwerda 2012-01-09 Ubuntu 12 Comments

"Canonical is indeed bringing a TV to CES. But it's not about hardware just yet: Ubuntu TV is a brand new derivitave of Ubuntu, with a full-in TV-optimized UI inspired by Unity, and full-on media center and DVR features. There's a movie, TV and music store, a YouTube app, and of course it's all optimized for a lean-back remote experience. The software will be free for manufacturers to package with their TVs, and Ubuntu says there will be TVs on shelves by the end of the year."

Submitted by mahmudinashar 2011-10-13 Ubuntu 144 Comments

Ah, it's that time of the year again. We already had this up on the sidebar, but I figured we'd turn it into a proper front page item - mostly because I want to discuss the move by the Ubuntu team to no longer install GNOME 2 as the 'classic' desktop option - which pretty much ends any and all involvement for me with Ubuntu (KDE 4 here I come). There's more to this than just that, of course, so those of you who do like Unity still have enough reason to upgrade.

Submitted by sjvn 2011-09-07 Ubuntu 19 Comments

Sources close to Canonical and IBM are telling me that Ubuntu may soon be certified on IBM's System p mini-computers and blades and System z mainframes.

Guest post by lemur2 2011-06-03 Ubuntu 65 Comments

Netbook innovator Asustek has announced that it will ship three models of its Eee PC with Ubuntu 10.10 preinstalled. Canonical announced Asus' decision to load the Eee PC 1001PXD, 1011PX and 1015PX with Ubuntu 10.10 from 1 June as one that will "make it one of the most user-friendly PCs on the market". Asus said that "many more" Eee PC models running Ubuntu will be available later this year. Linux fans will hope that in the three years since Asus started shipping Linux on its Eee PCs users will have realised that Linux is far more lightweight and suited to netbook computing than Windows.

The Sins of Ubuntu

Guest post by Howard Fosdick 2011-05-30 Ubuntu 131 Comments

Canonical Ltd., the company behind Ubuntu Linux, estimates that the product has over 12 million users worldwide. And why not? Ubuntu is free and it runs more than ten thousand applications. It has a vibrant user community, websites covering everything you might ever need to know, good tutorials, a paid support option, and more. Yet I often hear friends and co-workers casually criticize Ubuntu. Perhaps this the price of success. Or is it? In this article I'll analyze common criticisms and try to sort fact from fiction.