Ten years ago, just ahead of a trip into space, Mark Shuttleworth took out an insurance policy on his reproductive future. “I put a couple swimmers on ice,” he says. “There was going to be a gamma ray source about a foot from my balls under my seat on the Soyuz. So I made a [...]

In other news from the summit, Ubuntu developers are planning to fork the GNOME Control Center to create their own Ubuntu Control Center package. Other than GNOME Shell, it is planned that the installation CD for Ubuntu 12.10 “Quantal Quetzal” will include almost all core components of GNOME 3.6, including Clutter.

Indeed, while Red Hat dominates the data centre, every survey I’ve seen suggests that Ubuntu is still the dominant cloud OS, above RHEL, CentOS, and even Windows. This is the case for AWS, Rackspace, and other public cloud infrastructure. It’s also true of the market for public websites where Ubuntu also surpasses Red Hat.

Dell has launched an experimental project called Sputnik to produce a Linux laptop that is tailored to meet the needs of software developers. The first stage of the project is a six-month exploratory effort that will pair Dell’s XPS13 Ultrabook with Ubuntu 12.04.

There was a very interesting session at UDS by Google developer Thomas Bushnell. He talked about how Ubuntu, its derivatives and Goobuntu (Google’s customized Ubuntu based distro) are used by Google developers.

It appears that Unity 2D — the Qt non-accelerated desktop version of the Ubuntu Unity desktop — will be abandoned by Canonical. There’s also going to be some GNOME 3.6 packages appearing in Ubuntu 12.10.

Precise Pangolin is a big step up in many regards. The new Ubuntu OS is friendlier with legacy hardware. It’s peppier and more responsive. I find it is far less sluggish on my older gear. It flies on my newest hardware. However, while its Unity interface has been improved somewhat, it’s still too limited and [...]

In a rather unexpected move, Electronic Arts has added two web-based game titles to the Ubuntu Software Center of the popular Linux distribution, and although they’re far from the newest games, Linux users will likely welcome Command and Conquer Tiberium Alliances as well as the Lord of Ultima with open arms.

Through its Project Sputnik, Dell has been working on a prototype open source laptop aimed at developers, based on Ubuntu Linux 12.04 “Precise Pangolin” and Dell’s XPS 13 hardware.

Chris Kenyon, the VP of sales and business development for Canonical, just spoke this afternoon at the Ubuntu 12.10 Developer Summit about what Canonical does with OEMs and ODMs. He also tossed out some rather interesting numbers about the adoption of Ubuntu Linux.

2012 has already seen a major update of what’s arguably the most important Linux desktop: Ubuntu 12.04 and we’re also seeing the most radical update of Windows with Windows 8 Metro coming since Windows 95 replaced Windows 3.1. So, which will end up the better for its change?

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 264 for the week April 30 – May 6, 2012.

The new version of Ubuntu–12.04, codename “Precise Pangolin”– is officially here, meaning two things: I get to be really happy about new features, and some people get to complain about Unity in the comments. Horray!

Here’s the first shot at using a USB-based DisplayLink graphics adapter with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

Free of charge, free of viruses and designed to outpace its rivals on low-end systems – Ubuntu has some obvious advantages.

The release of Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin) hasn’t exactly made critics warm to Ubuntu’s Unity interface. However, Unity having gone through several versions, a definite tone of acceptance — or maybe resignation — colors discussion of the new release.

Strong sales of the iPhone 4S are putting renewed pressure on Android to innovate. Ubuntu for Android could give the platform a key capability iPhone is still missing.

Also with an eye to the future, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth on Tuesday spent an hour answering questions about what else is coming down the pike for Ubuntu in version 12.10 and beyond. As part of Ubuntu Open Week this week, Shuttleworth’s “Ask Mark” session offered a compelling glimpse at what’s to come.

The news has been quick to spread today that Electronic Arts will be making a brief presentation at the Ubuntu Developer Summit next week. As other publications have been quick to point out, word of EA at UDS comes just days after I mentioned on my Twitter, “Separate from anything #valve, #Ubuntu does evidently have [...]

Now available as a free download, Ubuntu Tweak 0.7.0–also known as “Precise Tweak”–is a brand-new version designed to help you make Ubuntu 12.04 your own. If you’ve been playing around with the new Ubuntu and wish some things were different about it, this new open source tool can help you make it what you want.

In kicking off the Ubuntu 12.10 development, GCC 4.7 is being uploaded to the Quantal repository to serve as the release’s default compiler. GCC 4.7.0 was out before the 12.04 LTS release, but the “Precise Pangolin” was shipping with the older GCC 4.6 series release.

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 263 for the week April 23 – 29, 2012.

In this short roundup, I’ll look at some great third-party applications that you can get from the Software Center to augment your Ubuntu installation.

As someone who started off disliking Unity I’ll admit I’ve come around. Somewhat. I’m still disappointed with the Dashboard’s search capabilities, but with addition of HUD Canonical’s overall vision is starting to make more sense.

Ultimately Ubuntu12.04 is not a pleasant experience for home office or professional users requiring either more mouse clicks or time away from the mouse typing searches.

Verdict: Unity has come of age, while the HUD shows how the interface will progress in the future. This is everything we want from a LTS version of Ubunt

The long-term support update, released on Thursday, adds more usability features and software management tools to the operating system. However, Ubuntu-backer Canonical is stressing the design changes in Precise Pangolin. These include its Unity interface, which has divided Ubuntu supporters, and its associated file-search tool, the Head-Up Display (HUD), described by Ubuntu Project founder Mark [...]

Ubuntu has earned a reputation for being one of the easiest Linux distributions to install and use. Ubuntu 12.04 is a long-term support version (known as LTS). This means that it will receive security updates for five years, making it ideal if you don’t want to keep upgrading every six months.

12.04 Precise Pangolin is the latest long-term support (LTS) release of the Linux-based operating system, and it is indeed a work of precision. Under the hood, bug fixing and performance improvements were the focus of the past six months. On the surface, Ubuntu has also undergone a major facelift since April 2010 when the last [...]

The release of Ubuntu 12.04 on Thursday 26th April is a big one, as this latest LTS version is not only going to be supported for some time, but it’s also bringing with it improvements and new features. While the Wendy Windows and McZee’s of this world might have their own problems, here are five [...]