Category: linux

Ubuntu 10.10 is Released

Original post from Ubuntu

Some time ago a group of hyper-intelligent pan dimensional beings decided to finally answer the great question of Life, The Universe and Everything. To this end, a small band of these Debians built an incredibly powerful distribution, Ubuntu. After this great computer programme had run (a very quick 3 million minutes…or 6 years) the answer was announced. The Ultimate answer to Life, the Universe and Everything is…42, and in its’ purest form 101010. Which suggests that what you really need to know is ‘What was the Question?’. The great distribution kindly pointed out that what the problem really was that no-one knew the question. Accordingly, the distribution designed a set of successors, marked by a circle of friends…to ultimately bring Unity to all things living…Ubuntu 10.10, to find the question to the ultimate answer.

And with that, the Ubuntu team is pleased to announce Ubuntu 10.10. Codenamed “Maverick Meerkat”, 10.10 continues Ubuntu’s proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution.

Read more about the features of Ubuntu 10.10 in the following press
releases:

Desktop and Netbook editions
http://www.ubuntu.com/news/ubuntu-10.10-desktop-edition
Server edition
http://www.ubuntu.com/news/ubuntu-10.10-server-edition

Canonical has also launched the ‘Ubuntu Server on Cloud 10’ program. Anyone will be able to try out Ubuntu 10.10 Server Edition on Amazon EC2 for free for one hour. Visitors to the download pages will now be able to choose to experience the ease and speed of public cloud computing and Ubuntu. For a direct link to the trial, please go to

http://10.cloud.ubuntu.com

Ubuntu 10.10 will be supported for 18 months on desktops, netbooks, and
servers.

Thanks to the efforts of the global translation community, Ubuntu is available in 37 languages. For a list of supported languages and detailed translation statistics for these and other languages, see:

http://people.ubuntu.com/~dpm/ubuntu-10.10-translation-stats.html

Ubuntu 10.10 is also the basis for new 10.10 releases of Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, UbuntuStudio, and Mythbuntu:

Kubuntu http://kubuntu.org/news/10.10-release
Xubuntu http://xubuntu.org/news/10.10-release
Edubuntu http://edubuntu.org/news/10.10-release
Mythbuntu http://mythbuntu.org/10.10/release
Ubuntu Studio https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuStudio/10.10release_notes

To Get Ubuntu 10.10
——————-

To download Ubuntu 10.10, or obtain CDs, visit:

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu

Users of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS will be offered an automatic upgrade to 10.10 via Update Manager. For further information about upgrading, see:

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/upgrading

As always, upgrades to the latest version of Ubuntu are entirely free of charge.

We recommend that all users read the release notes, which document caveats and workarounds for known issues. They are available at:

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/1010

Find out what’s new in this release with a graphical overview:

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/1010overview

If you have a question, or if you think you may have found a bug but aren’t sure, try asking on the #ubuntu IRC channel, on the Ubuntu Users mailing list, or on the Ubuntu forums:

#ubuntu on irc.freenode.net
http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/

Helping Shape Ubuntu
——————–

If you would like to help shape Ubuntu, take a look at the list of ways you can participate at:

http://www.ubuntu.com/community/participate/

About Ubuntu
————

Ubuntu is a full-featured Linux distribution for desktops, laptops, netbooks and servers, with a fast and easy installation and regular releases. A tightly-integrated selection of excellent applications is included, and an incredible variety of add-on software is just a few clicks away.

Professional services including support are available from Canonical and hundreds of other companies around the world. For more information about support, visit:

http://www.ubuntu.com/support

More Information
—————-

You can find out more about Ubuntu and about this release on our
website:

http://www.ubuntu.com/

To sign up for future Ubuntu announcements, please subscribe to Ubuntu’s very low volume announcement list at:

http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-announce

Handsfree Ubuntu

Ubuntu developer Canonical is experimenting with new hardware sensors as it looks at computing beyond the keyboard and mouse.

All computer users are used to controlling their desktop with a mouse and keyboard. But how about controlling your PC without using your hands at all and just using your body?

It’s something that Canonical, the maker of Ubuntu Linux, is starting to work on.

Broadly grouped under the title of “hardware sensors”, Canonical is experimenting with new techniques to manipulate your desktop by simply moving your body.

In a blog posting earlier this week Canonical’s Christian Giordano wrote: “During a small exploration we did internally few months ago, we thought about how Ubuntu could behave if it was more aware of its physical context. Not only detecting the tilt of the device (like iPhoneapps) but also analysing the user’s presence.”

So, for example, if a user is watching a video on screen and leans back the video could automatically be increased in size. Or if the user is further away from the screen than usual popup notifications could be increased in size to compensate for the extra distance.

Other examples which Giordano suggests include being able to change the view of the desktop depending on the position of the user. The “parallax” effect would mean that certain windows would change position depending on the angle they were viewed from.

Giordano has also posted a video on the Canonical Design blog with a rough mock-up of how such a technique would work.

There are endless possibilities when a PC is aware of its user, from pausing a video stream when the user moves away to switching between screens when a user moves. These techniques are, however, still in their early phase of development so won’t be finding their way into Ubuntu this year but could well do in future releases.

Ubuntu ‘not necessarily competing’ with Windows 7

Paul Holt, Canonical, Director Corporate Sales, talks to the
Westminster eForum on open-source software in business and government.
Ubuntu is not in direct competition with Windows 7 in the desktop
operating system market, according to a top Canonical executive.

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/desktop-os/2010/09/23/ubuntu-not-necessarily-competing-with-windows-7-40090229/

Ubuntu 9.04 reaches end of life

Ubuntu announced its 9.04 release almost 18 months ago, on April 23,
2009. As with the earlier releases, Ubuntu committed to ongoing
security and critical fixes for a period of 18 months. The support
period is now nearing its end and Ubuntu 9.04 will reach end of life
on Friday, October 23, 2010. At that time, Ubuntu Security Notices
will no longer include information or updated packages for Ubuntu
9.04.

The supported upgrade path from Ubuntu 9.04 is via Ubuntu 9.10.
Instructions and caveats for the upgrade may be found at
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/KarmicUpgrades. Note that upgrades
to version 10.04 LTS and beyond are only supported in multiple steps,
via an upgrade first to 9.10, then to 10.04 LTS. Both Ubuntu 9.10 and
Ubuntu 10.04 LTS continue to be actively supported with security
updates and select high-impact bug fixes. All announcements of
official security updates for Ubuntu releases are sent to the
ubuntu-security-announce mailing list, information about which may be
found at https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-security-announce.

Since its launch in October 2004 Ubuntu has become one of the most
highly regarded Linux distributions with millions of users in homes,
schools, businesses and governments around the world. Ubuntu is Open
Source software, costs nothing to download, and users are free to
customise or alter their software in order to meet their needs.

http://fridge.ubuntu.com/node/2132

Ubuntu 4GB Ram Limitation and Solution

I’ve total 8 GB RAM installed in my dual boot Ubuntu Linux 10.10 (32 bit) version, but free -m command only shows 3291 (3G) memory. How do I use 8GB RAM under Ubuntu Linux? I do need to install Physical Address Extension (PAE) aware kernel under 32 bit Ubuntu Linux. It is a feature of x86 and x86-64 processors that allows more than 4 Gigabytes of physical memory to be used in 32-bit systems.

Without PAE kernel, you should see something as follows:
$ free -m

Sample output:

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          3291        801       2489          0         95        342
-/+ buffers/cache:        363       2927
Swap:         1906          0       1906

You have two options here as follows:

Option # 1: Use 64 bit Ubuntu Linux

64 bit Linux kernel will take care of 4G or more memory. Just grab latest 64 bit version and install it.

Option #2: Install PAE enabled kernel

Open terminal and type the following command:
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo sudo apt-get install linux-headers-server linux-image-server linux-server

Once kernel images installed, just reboot your workstation, type:
$ sudo reboot

After reboot, login into your system and type the following command to verify memory usage:
$ free -m

Sample output:

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          8105       1292       6812          0         38        483
-/+ buffers/cache:        770       7334
Swap:         1906          0       1906