Ubuntu 10.10 is released and raises the bar for the Linux desktop again

Well, we have been testing it for five months, and playing with all the new features and functions that the latest software from the open source community can give us. So, if you want to be pleased with just how easy this release is to install or upgrade, then give it a try.

You can read the full release notes at the Ubuntu web site for more detailed information on exactly what each version of this Linux distribution is going to deliver, but it has impressed me on every server, desktop and virtual image I have installed it onto or into, and this post is coming from my just up dated work laptop.

Ubuntu is not every Linux users friend, and I understand some of the resistance, but most open minded open source people can see a definite role for this in the whole open source universe. I use a great deal of Linux, in many different forms, but if you want a desktop that just works, then certainly look no further.

If you are currently using Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, you will need to modify your software sources to allow updates from newer releases, and not just LTS releases. Once you have done that, you will be offered the choice of this new version. This will ask a few simple questions, download about 1,000 files, and prompt you during the process for a few answers. That's it , you are now on the latest version.

An amusing thing about the date of release, is that it was 101010, which in decimal is 42. Douglas Adams has already informed us that this is the meaning of life, the universe and everything, so you can't get much higher praise than that. We can now use this release of Ubuntu to figure out what the question was ;-)

Anyway, go and grab a copy and give it whirl , you won't be disappointed.

Using and looking at Btrfs in the latest Ubuntu Maverick build

I love looking at new technologies and assessing what they might be able to offer not only me, but the people that I do consultancy for. There is nothing like being able to pluck a technology white rabbit out of the hat in front the of the decision makers.

Well, for several years the modern file system designed by Sun called ZFS, has been rightly getting plaudits for not only it's usability but the built in functionality that companies have been paying large sums of money to Symantic to have the same features.

Ironically, an open source project was started within Oracle to come up with a system for Linux that would offer the same features - the company that now owns Sun and ZFS.

Well the developers in the Linux community have been busy with this next generation file system, and it is now available in the latest Ubuntu 10.10 Alpha 2 builds, and I have just installed it using the alternative iso file into a Virtualbox test machine. I will be doing this on real hardware as well next week.

The installation was easy enough using the ncurses method as opposed to the more modern GUI mode, and the virtual machine started without any issues. At the moment you have to keep the /boot partition on ext4, as btrfs doesn't work with that as yet, but it is being worked on.

One of the features I'm looking for along side the advanced features of easy command line snapshots and duplication is a speed boost, only time will reveal if this is to be realised.

Using the command btrfs from the command line you can take snapshots of subvolumes and resize the filesystem on the fly, which offers so much simplification over the tools and methods we current use, like LVM etc.

I'm looking forward to spending some more time investigating all of the features of this very interesting new filesystem.

 

 

Looking at the next release of Ubuntu 10.10 with Virtualbox

As the first Alpha iso was placed up on the mirrors for us all to start having a play , I decided to run it up in a virtual machine and see what - if anything - has changed. The install went fine, with my first run I just followed the usual install options , clicking next, and then install. All went fine until right at the end it had to removed some information with "dpkg" and then it started to error. I clicked through these and it finished, in what on the surface seemed to be a successful and stable install. Once rebooted however, I noticed there was something wrong with the way packages were not being installed , so I decided that this initial release had issues. I did have a good look at the errors that were being generated, and it was obvious that those errors on install, were more of a problem than I had originally thought.

Not a big problem, as I left it over the weekend , knowing come Monday on the daily builds the problem would almost certainly be fixed, and it was.

So, rather than download the latest daily iso image, I used the really useful zsync utility to just upgrade my iso - look here on how to use this utility.

Once all was installed and up and running, I had a look around. At this early stage there is not a great deal to see, except the latest kernel 2.6.35 (see the picture above). Gnome is the same and most of the apps are the same, as far as I can tell, except the software centre which has had an upgrade and looks a much improved. I'm sure most of the underlying apps have had their versions bumped, but to the eye it looks very similar to Lucid, not surprisingly.

I installed Google Chrome to see how that worked with the new OS, and all went well. It is worth doing this, as under the virtual image this gives you just that little extra performance.

At least the Meerkat is out of the cage now so I can keep an eye on where this great distribution is heading next in it's evolutionary track.