Ubuntu 6.10 – Edgy Eft – released today!

By boredandblogging | Published: 2006-10-26

Ubuntu 6.10The Ubuntu team have been proud to announce the release of Ubuntu 6.10, codenamed Edgy Eft!

Edgy includes some cool new stuff, including:

  • Tomboy: an easy-to-use and efficient note-taking tool.
  • F-Spot: a photo management tool that enables tagging, photo editing and automatic uploading to on-line web management sites such as Flickr.
  • GNOME 2.16: which in addition to new features such as enhanced power management, makes the GNOME desktop more secure, faster and more stable.
  • Upstart: substantially faster startup and shutdown, plus bonus high-resolution graphics.
  • Firefox 2.0: offering inline spell check support in web forms, easy recovery of crashed sessions, built-in phishing detectors, enhanced search engine management with built in OpenSearch support, and better support for previewing and subscribing to web feeds.
  • Evolution 2.8.0: which brings new features such as vertical message
    panes.
  • Proactive security features, preventing many common security vulnerabilities even before they are discovered.

Go and download Ubuntu 6.10 today, then tell the world!

Top of the table at the Linux Awards!

By boredandblogging | Published: 2006-10-26

Ubuntu has walked away with Best Distribution at the Linux Awards held in London last night.

Maggie Meer of UK Linux magazine Linux User and Developer presided over the show with guest presenter Perry McCarthy—formerly of BBC TV car show Top Gear—who kept the awards rolling.

Canonical’s Jane Silber was there to pick up the award, a transparent, and extremely sharp glass trophy with the wording UBUNTU engraved into the glassword. Jane spent the rest of the evening closely guarding her new toy.

Also at the ceremony Jon “maddog” Hall picked up the Lifetime contribution recognition, won last year by Linux kernel developer Alan Cox. Representing the four boys from Wolverhampton, Jono Bacon took home the prize for Best Open Source marketing campaign on behalf of LUG Radio Live 2006, narrowly beating Ubuntu’s Ship IT free CD-ROM scheme.

Fans will be pleased to know that following a previous incident, Jono’s famous beard has grown back.

Reading out the nominations, Perry McCarty had great fun with some of the more interesting project and company names, at one point tongue-twisting himself over Canonical (“Camomica”). After the meal and award ceremony, dancing and drinking continued at the Millennium Gloucester Hotel until late into the morning.

The trophy only mentioned Ubuntu, but we’re sure that this includes Edubuntu and Kubuntu aswell. Pictures will follow as soon as we at El Fridge have managed to wrestle the gong away from Jane’s firm grip… Congratulations all around!

Ubuntu update is 'Edgy' on boot speed

By boredandblogging | Published: 2006-10-26

Zdnet Australia have noticed that Thursday 26th will be Release Day for Ubuntu 6.10. The version has been code-named Edgy Eft and follows the naming scheme of previous releases, where by the current year and month form the version number. Included in the article are a run-down of features, with the opening paragraphs dedicated to the init-replacement named upstart.

The full story includes a feature list covering the web browser and included tools:

Edgy Eft also comes with the newest version 2.6 [sic] of the Gnome graphical user interface; fans of the KDE alternative can use a variant called Kubuntu.

The new Linux product also includes Firefox 2.0, released Wednesday, and two applications that use Novell’s Mono software foundation: Tomboy, for taking notes, and F-Spot, for sorting, tagging and uploading photos. It also includes version 2.8 of the Evolution e-mail software.

The report notes that our friends over at the Fedora Project made their latest Core 6 release less than 48hours ago. Grab a peek at the full report for all their coverage.

BBC World Service listeners tune in

By boredandblogging | Published: 2006-10-24

The latest edition of the weekly BBC World Service show Digital Planet, carries an interview with none other than our SABDFL, Mark Shuttleworth.

On the show, Mark talks about Ubuntu, with his inspirations for running the Ubuntu project. The role of free software in education and developing countries is discussed regarding a South Africa project supported by the Shuttleworth Foundation allowing students to download and print certified educational materials for no cost.

You can download and listen to the podcast of the show from the Digital Planet homepage. Mark Shuttleworth’s interview on an Open Source future is right at the very beginning.

Note: It has been reported that the commandline-based MP3 decoder 'mpg123' may have trouble the podcast MP3 link (11MB). Mplayer plays this file fine after skipping some initial data at the front of the file.

Flipping Fantastic: next Ubuntu codenamed Feisty Fawn

By boredandblogging | Published: 2006-10-23

Mark, glorious leader of the Ubuntu project, has announced the codename for the next development version of Ubuntu, and explained his plans for the next release. Key features for the next release will be:

improvements to hardware support in the laptop, desktop and high-end server market, and aggressive adoption of emerging desktop technologies. Ubuntu's Feisty release will put the spotlight on multimedia enablement and desktop effects.

Mark cites “courage and restlessness” as two of the themes for the spirit of the next 6 months of Ubuntu development, and has declared that the codename will be The Feisty Fawn.

We at the Fridge think this is the best Ubuntu codename so far. Find out more about the Ubuntu codename system and read some users' suggestions for cool codenames on the DevelopmentCodeNames page on the Ubuntu wiki!