Never one to rest on their laurels, the Ubuntu team is hard at work on the next cutting edge version of their popular distro, Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex (who the heck names these releases?).

As with most other Ubuntu alphas, there isn't much to write home about yet. However, much to our surprise, it has a new interface theme, for the first time since Dapper Drake. "That ugly brown theme", as many people on the internet referred to it, has been the standard on Ubuntu for over a year now, and you either love it or hate it.

"NewHuman" takes the art of Ubuntu in a new direction, and only time will tell if it makes it into the final release, scheduled for October of this year. Those who are interested in participating in the testing process may download an ISO image from the official site. As always, the Alpha versions are not recommended for production machines, so distro shufflers need not apply.

If you haven't heard of Linux Mint by now, you probably aren't listening very well. Mint is a distro that is heavily based on Ubuntu, but has gradually evolved on its own, with unique management tools and a stunning set of artwork (no dirt brown here!). This latest iteration brings clarity and convenience to the newest Ubuntu base, 8.04.

The most obvious improvement on its parent distro is the fact that it actually contains codecs and Flash support out of the box. The desktop layout is more similar to Windows, making this a good migration path for Microsoft refugees.

For those already familiar with Mint, this new version may not seem very different at first glance, but one big difference between this release and pretty much every other Linux distro is the inclusion of Flash 10 beta. Flash on Linux has been a rather sluggish experience for a while now, but on our humble Pentium 4 testing machine, sites like Youtube and Hulu seemed to work just as well as they do on Windows. The rest of the changes are generally little tweaks and usability improvements.

Mint can be downloaded from any one of many mirrors provided on the site, but we found the Torrent they provide to be very active and well seeded, so that is probably the best choice for now.

Canonical has made the Mobile Internet Device (MID) version of Ubuntu available to developers. Developers can now make the necessary changes to their desktop applications to better match the smaller screen sizes and processing power of these devices as well as take advantage of the touchscreen interface to improve the user experience.

Ubuntu MID is based on the desktop version of the Ubuntu operating system but has the necessary tweaks made to run efficiently on smaller and less powerful devices like the Samsung Q1U which currently ships with Vista. We had an opportunity to demo this unit running on Vista with the standard 800MHz CPU and 1GB of RAM and the Q1U was really sluggish and not as responsive as we would like.

Hopefully, Ubuntu MID will be well optimized to make devices like the Q1U more usable as it will include a Gecko based browser, email, calendaring and media player specifically designed for these types of devices.

But does the recent announcement of Ubuntu Linux Remix and Symbian going open source possibly take some of the potential Ubuntu MID sales away?

At any given time on the planet, there's a technology trade show in progress. Some are more significant than others, and there's no formula to figure if any given one will be worth the airfare. We're guessing that a few ultraportable laptop manufacturers, as well as a few of us (cough) normal folk, are a little intrigued with the news emerging from the Computex exhibit halls today.

Canonical let slip some further information and screen shots of Ubuntu Netbook Remix, the Ubuntu derived operating system for ultraportables. The quick and dirty information: it looks suspiciously as if the Ubuntu image is made to work solely on Intel Atom processors. How radically different is that from the other Intel processors used previously in ultraportables? Will it be a significant enough difference that it won't run with other Intel chips? Are VIA machines left in the dust? Maybe, maybe not, but we're guessing it'll affect performance on some level.

It seems that Canonical and Intel are working with various manufacturers to get Ubuntu Netbook Remix into our hot little hands, but it probably won't happen much before late 2008. They were so kind, however, as to release some screenshots of the demo version.

Ubuntu Netbook Remix looks... well, a little bit like the "Easy Mode" settings in the Eee PC's customized Xandros. Maybe not quite as simplistic, but we have this funny feeling that many people picturing "Ubuntu on an ultraportable" were thinking more along the lines of the traditional look with a few GUI tweaks. We're not sure if this is really a good or bad thing, as yet. Ultraportables are different animals, and used in a different manner than a desktop. Perhaps a different looking user interface is enough of a disconnect to make it all work (and keep us from trying to install the sorts of things on our ultraportables that they aren't intended to run due to processing limitations).

What will be interesting, and promises to push Linux on ultraportables to the next level, is all that scary stuff on the backend. The most intriguing bit of this conversation seems to focus on the use of Moblin, and the push for developers to get Ubuntu packages to work well -- really well -- with the specific requirements of the processor and ultraportable hardware.

There is a subculture among the Download Squad bloggers (and you thought you couldn't get any further sub-anything) of ultraportable computer users. We love the little things. They're teeny, have the right amount of power to do their designated tasks well and with little fuss, and they're fairly inexpensive.

But sometimes we're not real enamored of the default operating systems. The Eee users among us love the machine, but the verdict is out on Xandros in either simple or advanced mode. We've used eeeXubuntu, and it works well, but it seems as though the project is stuck on the Gutsy release and has no plan to move forward.

In a Guardian interview, Mark Shuttleworth of Ubuntu dropped the intriguing news that there is a Netbook Remix version of Ubuntu in the pipeline. Details are scant, but it seems there is some work being done with Intel to support the custom chips it manufactures for this market (no word on whether this release could leave VIA-powered machines out of the loop). There is a Launchpad account up and running, but there's not too much to see there (yet).

Ubuntu is fairly easy to tailor to ultraportables, but we're expecting that the Netbook Remix project is going to offer a bit more than resized windows and applications altered to make the most of screen real estate.

Personally, we'd most like to see tweaks made to software to extend battery life, special repositories set up for applications optimized for ultraportables, and perhaps some utilities to better support those of us who use both the internal hard drive and a supplement memory card to house the operating system.

Fellow ultraportable users, what would be on your wishlist for Netbook Remix version of Ubuntu?

[The Guardian by way of Slashdot]

You can practically set your watch by Canonical's release schedule for the Ubuntu Linux operating system. Every six months, the organization releases a major upgrade. While open source developers are constantly tweaking and improving Ubuntu, these major releases typically include better hardware support, new software, and the latest kernel and desktop environment updates.

Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth says the team is now going a bit further. Not only will Ubuntu 8.10, 9.04, 9.10, and 10.04 be released at regular intervals, but Canonical will be releasing point upgrades for Ubuntu 8.04 every three months. Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron gets this special treatment because it's an LTS or Long Term Support release. That means Ubuntu 10.04, which will be released in April, 2010, will get the same kind of support.

Shuttleworth does suggest that he'd be willing to throw out the release schedule (or at least amend it a teensy weensy bit) if another major Linux distributor like Red Hat, Novel, or Debian were willing to collaborate on a coordinated release.

For our part, we'd like to see Apple and Microsoft enter into that agreement. If there was a new version of Windows, OS X, and Ubuntu out every 6 months, or even every 2 years, consumers would always have the option of picking among the latest, and most up to date operating systems, whether free and open source or commercial and closed source. Not that this will ever happen, but sometimes it's nice to dream.

Hey, did you hear that there's a new version of Ubuntu out today? Yeah, we know, we're shocked too. But seriously, Canonical comes out with a new version of its popular Linux distribution every six months, so we're starting to feel like the product launch isn't particularly big news. And of course, we've been installing and trying test builds for the last few months. The truth is, we imagine that many Download Squad readers have been running Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron for at least a few weeks if not months already.

That said, Hardy Heron is a pretty significant release, because it's considered an LTS or Long Term Support release. That means Canonical will offer 5 years of support instead of its usual 18 months, making Hardy Heron a good choice for enterprise users.

Here are a handful of things that set Hardy Heron apart from Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon, which is so last week:

• Firefox 3 beta is the default web browser
• Install Ubuntu from within Windows using Wubi
• Updated Linux kernel and new versions of Gnome and KDE desktops, with the option of using KDE 3.5 or KDE 4 as the default desktop for Kubuntu
• New BitTorrent Client
• New VNC client
• Virtualization software built into the kernel

f you've never tried Linux before, Ubuntu comes as a LiveCD. That means you can check out the operating system without harming your current OS and file system by burning the disc image to a DVD and booting your computer from the disc. It's a perfect try before you buy sales pitch, except there's nothing to buy. If you like what you see you can install it for free.

Are you running Hardy Heron yet? What do you think so far? What did Canonical get right, and what still needs some work?

Recently, we reviewed Ubuntu 8.04 beta. We received several complaints for cranky people in the comments, and so we decided to take a look at some newer code. Always in search of variety, however, we decided to spice things up a little bit by trying Kubuntu instead of Ubuntu. We downloaded the nightly build of the alternate installer, and took it for a spin.

As you can see in the gallery below, there is a lot to like. The latest Ubuntu family of distros now has support for partition encryption, provided that you use the alternate install CD rather than the graphical one. Users that chose this feature are prompted for the encryption password at boot time, making the system nice and secure.

We also found the KDE system management tools to be visually appealing and useful, but the Kubuntu APT frontend was sluggish and confusing compared to Synaptic on Ubuntu. We also had X crash for no apparent reason and without warning on several occasions, but since this is a nightly build of beta software, we won't complain too much, lest a thousand nerds shoot cheetos through their braces onto their monitors in indignation.

All in all, this is a distro that is shaping up well. It's not perfect, but there is plenty of time to polish up the edges. If you want to help the community with bug testing, check out the nightly build service.

Wine Doors is a project that aims to make the installation of Windows software on Linux as easy as regular apps are via a package manager. Like any respectable Linux package manager, Wine Doors has a software database and resolves dependencies automatically (at least in theory).

After playing around with the latest version of Wine Doors, we have mixed feelings about this program. While it looks stunning, and seems to have some pretty powerful macro based installation technology, it doesn't actually work. Obviously, this realization was the biggest disappointment for us. We used the app to install 3D Mark 2000 and Internet Explorer 6, but neither program would actually run. Some poking around in the console revealed that Wine Doors had failed to resolve a DLL dependency.

Although the program might not be ready for mainstream use yet, we see real promise, and look forward to a 1.0 release.

Ubuntu has become so popular, so quickly, that it is almost synonymous with the word "Linux". Common wisdom holds that it is the easiest to use, simplest, and most stable Linux based OS out there, and that it is the best hope for "Linux on the Desktop". This reputation is a well earned one, but after trying out the latest beta of Ubuntu Hardy, due out this April, I can't help but wonder if they are getting a little careless. More on this after the jump.

With just over a month to go until launch day, Canonical has released the first public beta version of Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron. To be honest, most of the features in the beta first made their appearance in early alpha releases. But there are a few relatively minor improvements, and a ton of tweaks that set Hardy Heron apart from Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon.

• Firefox 3 beta 4 is the default web browser
• PulseAudio is enabled by default
• New PolicyKit manager for advanced permission controls
• Gnome 2.22 is the default desktop environment. You can also install Kubuntu 8.04 which comes with KDE 3.5 or KDE 4, depending on which version you prefer

There's also a new disc burning application, BitTorrent client, and VNC client. Virtualization software is built into the kernel. And you can install Ubuntu from Windows using Wubi.
Keep in mind, this is still beta software, and it's not recommended for installation on production machines. The full version of Ubuntu 8.04 is due out on April 24th.

When Apple released the latest generation of iPods, the company also caused a great deal of pain for Linux users. While Linux developers had an easy time getting every other iPod in the past to work with Linux distributions like Ubuntu and SUSE, the latest iPods are different. In their infinite wisdom, Apple redesigned the iPod music database in such a way that it is encrypted with a hash key. Not only does this make it difficult to develop third party software that can access that database, but if you try to sync your 6th gen iPod with Ubuntu 7.10, it will destroy the database, making your music unplayable on the iPod (but still accessible in disk mode).

Of course, the Linux community being what it was, it took just a few days before a highly technical solution started making the rounds. But how does Joe Six-pack use this to sync his shiny new iPod? Download Squad delivers. Read on for step by step instructions!

For many, desktop Linux has been like a magic elixir that brings old hardware to life. Indeed, this very article is being written on a Dell Latitude c640, a computer that is generally considered outdated an obsolete, and yet it runs Ubuntu 7.10 like a dream.

However, there are many people who aim to run Ubuntu on even older hardware, or specialized tiny hardware such as the Asus Eee PC. With cramped ram requirements and less robust processors to run on, Ubuntu starts to lag just like anything else. Thankfully, there are ways to minimize this. Linux.com has published a great feature on lightweight web browsers, file manages, music players, and more, all that can be installed with a single click in the Synaptic Package Manager.

The author of the article embarked on a hours-long journey across the Internet in search of low-fat software when his girlfriend brought over her Mini-PC running Ubuntu. While there are plenty of Distributions targeted to this kind of hardware, he wanted to stick with Ubuntu. We think that there are plenty of people who like the author, would rather stick with the distro they already have. Plus, it's just plain fun to try new software, and that's what Linux is all about.

All right, the headline is a little bit of a lie. Some Linux installs are hairier, take longer, and just aren't as soothing as the one we're about to show you. They do all work approximately the same way, however, and that's just fine for us as a point of illustration.

So there we are, looking at the "Download" page of an Ubuntu derived distribution. We decide that we'll download the x86 version of the distro (we'll assume we don't have a 64 bit or PPC system or don't want a 64 bit OS). So we click on the file that ends in .iso, and it starts downloading.

Now what?

What's wrong with Ubuntu? No, that's not a rhetorical question. The developers behind the popular open-source Linux distribution are soliciting feedback using a Digg-like forum called Ubuntu Brainstorm. Anyone can submit an idea, and other users can vote a story up or down. The top suggestions are then showed on the front page of the site, bringing them more attention.

The concept is based on Dell's IdeaStorm web site, which the computer maker uses to solicit ideas. Right now, some of the top suggestions for Ubuntu are:

• A better interface for managing network connections
• Use less power
• Combine the Preferences and Administration menus and condense some of the submenus
• Let users know which application is using a volume that cannot be unmounted because it's in use
• A prettier bootloader
• Quicker boot speed

And the list goes on. What would you fix in Ubuntu if you had the chance?

[via Slashdot]