Canonical announces Ubuntu 10.04

Robert Hallock 30 Apr, 2010 at 12:38am ET Article published in Tech

Canonical yesterday unveiled the official version of Ubuntu 10.04. Known also as Lucid Lynx, the newly-minted version brings a fresh user interface, social network integration, improved performance and more.

“Changes like the new look and feel and the addition of a music store, layered on top of our relentless focus on delivering an intuitive and attractive user experience for new and existing Ubuntu users – these are the bridging elements to the mainstream market that our community, our partners and our users really want. Long-term support makes Ubuntu 10.04 LTS very attractive to corporate IT as well,” said Jane Silber, Canonical’s CEO.

Ubuntu 10.04 “challenges the perceptions of the Linux desktop,” the company said, highlighting several new features important to Lucid Lynx’s refined consumer experience, including:

Boot speed: Noticeably quicker on almost any machine and super-fast on SSD-based machines such as netbooks, which means users can speed straight to the browser for fast web access.

Social from the start: The new ‘Me Menu’ in Ubuntu 10.04 LTS consolidates the process of accessing and updating social networks including Facebook, Digg, Twitter and Identi.ca. The Me Menu also integrates chat channels so users can talk with friends or colleagues on Google Talk, MSN, IRC and nearly every network.

Ubuntu One: Enhanced desktop integration for the online service means files and folders can be shared and saved on the cloud more easily. Bookmark and contacts sharing has been added, speeding the move from personal computer to personal computing.

Ubuntu One Music Store: Music from the world’s largest labels and greatest bands available direct to Ubuntu users through the default music player. Purchase tracks, store in Ubuntu One and share DRM-free music from one location across multiple computers and devices.

Ubuntu Software Centre 2.0: An easy way to find new software, and keep track of it once it’s installed in a new, sleeker interface. Users can also single out software provided by Ubuntu, by Canonical partners or by developers who use Canonical’s Launchpad Personal Package Archive (PPA) hosting service.

Ubuntu 10.04 Netbook Edition (UNE): As well as benefiting from the improvements in the Desktop Edition, netbook users will see even faster boot speeds on SSD-based devices, faster suspend/resume that will extend battery life – and the industry-leading interface for these smaller screens.

A final highlight of Lucid Lynx is its status as a long-term support release, or LTS. Canonical’s LTS honorific assures that the OS will receive patches and security updates for the next three years, at which point users will be able to upgrade directly to the next LTS edition.

Ubuntu 10.04 is presently available from mirrors around the world. Canonical closed by noting that users running 8.04 LTS or 9.10 are eligible for a direct upgrade.

Comments

30 Apr 2010 ~ 8:37am Kwitko A definite push in the right direction. This bring Ubuntu that much closer to becoming a competitive desktop alternative. In short, daddy like.
30 Apr 2010 ~ 10:19am Cliff_Forster If the rumors are to be believed you might see Steam on it sometime this year, and I played with the beta and you could plug an ipod in and play from it in rhythembox, and Itunes runs decently in wine if you really need it, and egad, my Cannon printer is actually plug and play in 10.04! I was really excited about that, you know the little things.

It wont replace windows 7 on a primary desktop, but on an older machine, maybe a laptop that is putting along with XP, its highly advisable you try Ubuntu 10.04. Its come a long way.
30 Apr 2010 ~ 10:24am Thrax I'm seriously considering loading this or Moblin onto my netbook now that the Windows 7 RC has expired.
30 Apr 2010 ~ 10:34am Cliff_Forster

Thrax wrote:

I'm seriously considering loading this or Moblin onto my netbook now that the Windows 7 RC has expired.

If you have at least 1GB of RAM I suspect it will run decently.
30 Apr 2010 ~ 10:54am GnomeWizardd I am almost wanting to run it on my lapper in dual boot with 7
30 Apr 2010 ~ 12:04pm Snarkasm I've installed it in Wubi on my desktop to see how it performs. Last time I put it on a laptop, I was disappointed with the ACPI handling - it could suck the power right out of it. If I can get 8 hours in Vista and 3.5 on Ubuntu, the choice was pretty clear, and part of that was my laziness in not wanting to figure out how to tweak it.

Anyway, yeah. Gonna play with it on the desktop today to see how the new UI and other changes look.
2 May 2010 ~ 9:00pm ardichoke It's unfortunate that power management isn't very strong in Linux. I've managed to get good battery life out of Ubuntu, but it took installed laptop-mode-tools and doing a lot of tweaking of settings (for which there was no GUI). I really think someone needs to invest some serious time in building a better power management interface.
2 May 2010 ~ 10:10pm mirage I have just upgraded from 9.10 to 10.04. I like to delete all of the gnome settings to see the changes on the desktop as it was intended. But I did not like the new default Gnome theme and went back to Clearlooks. Fonts were too big and colors were too dark. Other than the looks and some updated software and kernel, I did not see too many changes. Even some of the GUI and superuser bugs happening with VNC server are still there with some new additions. I understand that VNC problems are not high priority but still I was hoping a fix with the new version.

I will upgrade Kubuntu 9.10 as well running on my desktop in VirtualBox. It is amazing that the complete OS is upgraded on the fly.
3 May 2010 ~ 1:40pm AlexDeGruven I'm really liking the darker theme. I'm glad they FINALLY got rid of the brown. I'm still on the fence about the left-hand buttons, though.

At PenguiCon this weekend Jorge Castro had a good talk and demo about the new release. So far, his complaints and lauds pretty closely resemble my own.
3 May 2010 ~ 1:55pm Cliff_Forster I think the endgame for Linux is acceptance that Ubuntu is "THE" desktop users distribution, and finally focus the community's efforts in that one place.

The things they could do if they had a singular point of focus. Yeah, I know thats kind of "anti" Linux, but lets face it, its the lack of focus that is holding it back.

I'd love to see the other distributions community's concede that Ubuntu is the everyman's desktop edition. Maybe have Gnome or KDE selectable on the fly (if thats possible) and just go with that as the community's desktop distro. Start developing for it heavily, and let the other projects fade, or perhaps morph for purposes other than desktop. Of course there will be separate distros for enterprise servers, and others for light duty netbooks and such, but it would be nice to see the Linux faithful concede that Ubuntu is the best desktop distro, and the one they should focus on if they want wider adoption of Linux.
3 May 2010 ~ 2:02pm mirage

Cliff_Forster wrote:

Maybe have Gnome or KDE selectable on the fly (if thats possible) and just go with that as the community's desktop distro.

This is easily possible. You can even add XFCE and any muber of other GUIs of your choice. Just logout and login again with the new option.
3 May 2010 ~ 2:02pm Thrax In b4 "the beauty of Linux is that you have options" or "focusing on a single distro defeats the point of Linux"
3 May 2010 ~ 2:03pm mirage

AlexDeGruven wrote:

I'm really liking the darker theme. I'm glad they FINALLY got rid of the brown. I'm still on the fence about the left-hand buttons, though.

I will give it another try. The buttons on left was also annoying for me too. I am looking for some consistency with the Windows, I guess.
3 May 2010 ~ 2:26pm mirage

Thrax wrote:

In b4 "the beauty of Linux is that you have options" or "focusing on a single distro defeats the point of Linux"

Agreed. Number of options or distros do not matter. In the end, users need an OS that works for their purposes.
3 May 2010 ~ 2:34pm Cliff_Forster

mirage wrote:

Agreed. Number of options or distros do not matter. In the end, users need an OS that works for their purposes.

His presentation skills are sub par, I have to say, I agree with the better part of what he is saying. Worth a listen.
3 May 2010 ~ 2:49pm mirage

Cliff_Forster wrote:

His presentation skills are sub par, I have to say, I agree with the better part of what he is saying. Worth a listen.

I would not say Linux sucks on the desktop but (what I am going to say hurts me) I still prefer even Windows XP over any Linux distro as my desktop OS.

On the server side (maybe embedded as well), the story is completely different.
3 May 2010 ~ 3:10pm Cliff_Forster

mirage wrote:

I would not say Linux sucks on the desktop but (what I am going to say hurts me) I still prefer even Windows XP over any Linux distro as my desktop OS.

On the server side (maybe embedded as well), the story is completely different.

Yeah, I don't think he says Sucks, meaning it really Sucks, but its a challenge to say we could be doing a hell of allot better. You can tell, he is a developer that loves Linux, who is trying to challenge the old community paradigm.

Here is the thing, when you see how awesome Ubuntu has become over the past few years, and when you consider all the possibilities of a really amazing open source OS, you have to give them allot of credit considering how fragmented the community resources are. Ubuntu has become a really usable desktop OS over a few short years. Now, if the community shifts gears and says, okay, Linux can be all things, but, maybe Ubuntu is the best way to serve the needs of the desktop user. They get everyone on the same driver development model, they get everyone working on the same protocols so they don't have to duplicate efforts across multiple distributions, then some really amazing stuff could happen.

I know it goes against the open spirit of the community, but if its still a move for the greater good? I don't think the other desktop projects can ignore the impact Ubuntu has had.
3 May 2010 ~ 3:27pm mirage Openness of Linux is in the sense that there is nothing stopping others from competing with the leader other than what they do with the code and what they add to it. I will for sure acknowledge Ubuntu in their effort to challenge the status quo and achievements in the desktop space. But it is still far from a measurable success. What Linux needs for success, other than improvement, is a platform shift that will level the playing field and reset the status quo. Netbooks were partly such kind of an event. Netbooks were capable of doing many things but not with the resource requirements of Windows. I believe the upcoming tablets will be an even bigger challenge for Windows and Linux will find even larger share in this space. In the end, I think, Linux will not succeed in the desktop but desktop as we know will disappear and Linux will rise in the new mobile/portable computing devices (call them PC if you want).
3 May 2010 ~ 3:53pm Kwitko The Linux community as a whole needs to address the driver issue. Installing drivers is a horrendous horror show filled with sights so evil it would make Satan himself cringe in fear. I spent eons attempting to get a printer installed. And don't get me started on connecting to Active Directory.

Forget the multitude of distributions out there. They all need to get their acts together. The average user can barely install new hardware in Windows. If the computer geeks of Icrontic struggle with Linux- with the exception of Drasnor, who compiled his own brain using GCC- imagine how Joe Sixpack is going to fare.

Linux has its strengths, but its weaknesses keep it from being a viable consumer OS. Like mirage says, it may find its niche in more portable apps, where adding printers and such isn't a big deal.
3 May 2010 ~ 3:56pm AlexDeGruven

Kwitko wrote:

The Linux community as a whole needs to address the driver issue. Installing drivers is a horrendous horror show filled with sights so evil it would make Satan himself cringe in fear. I spent eons attempting to get a printer installed. And don't get me started on connecting to Active Directory.

10.04 has drastically improved hardware support. 9.10 was pretty good for me, but 10.04 hit everything in my lappy right away, restricted drivers and all.

The real problem is precisely that, restricted hardware/drivers. Until hardware companies get their acts together and start putting out something that can be open-sourced, then we're always going to have hardware problems on Linux, no matter how much the community tries to do.
3 May 2010 ~ 4:17pm Cliff_Forster

AlexDeGruven wrote:

10.04 has drastically improved hardware support. 9.10 was pretty good for me, but 10.04 hit everything in my lappy right away, restricted drivers and all.

The real problem is precisely that, restricted hardware/drivers. Until hardware companies get their acts together and start putting out something that can be open-sourced, then we're always going to have hardware problems on Linux, no matter how much the community tries to do.

For the first time ever my Cannon MFP driver works without a fuss (in x86 mind you)

Forget the 64 bit version, drivers there are a nightmare, but the x86 is making progress.
3 May 2010 ~ 8:12pm spin498 Here I thought it was hemeroids, but it must be horseshoes. I've installed Ubuntu on 3 systems that were destined for the scrap heap and it's brought them all back to life with no driver issues whatsoever. In fact it's allowed me to go to WPA2 on an old belkin wireless card that belkin stopped writing drivers for at WinXP. Neither Vista or Win7 would go WPA at all on that card.
4 May 2010 ~ 9:20am AlexDeGruven

Cliff_Forster wrote:

For the first time ever my Cannon MFP driver works without a fuss (in x86 mind you)

Forget the 64 bit version, drivers there are a nightmare, but the x86 is making progress.

I'm currently running x64. Everything picked up just fine.
4 May 2010 ~ 9:56am Cliff_Forster

AlexDeGruven wrote:

I'm currently running x64. Everything picked up just fine.

Really, interesting.... I'll have to give it another go.
4 May 2010 ~ 11:07am AlexDeGruven One of these days, I'm going to get my Xen setup working so I'll be able to run my Win7 in parallel, rather than as a VM. I think 10.04 would be a good base to use, since it's an LTS release, and is supported 'till 2013 for the desktop version (2015 for Server).

Edit: Looks like the xen-tools package is still not available yet. Once it is, then we (being me and whoever else is interested) should be able to get a solid Xen setup going. Time to start looking for a cheap 500GB+ drive, methinks.
4 May 2010 ~ 3:46pm ardichoke Hrmm... I just upgraded 2 Ubuntu boxes from 9.10 to 10.04 in place. Both went smoothly and I've yet to find anything broken on either one.

Someone hold me... I'm scared.
4 May 2010 ~ 3:57pm AlexDeGruven

ardichoke wrote:

Hrmm... I just upgraded 2 Ubuntu boxes from 9.10 to 10.04 in place. Both went smoothly and I've yet to find anything broken on either one.

Someone hold me... I'm scared.

That seems to be the overarching theme after the upgrades.

"I just upgraded and everything's quiet... Too quiet"