Everyone’s asking about Jane — now we have some answers, straight from the source. As the COO of Canonical and head of business development, Jane plays a crucial role in the breathtaking growth of the Ubuntu juggernaut!

In a lengthy interview at the Desktop Linux Summit in San Diego, Computer World ask about the upcoming Ubuntu 6.06 LTS release and business strategy. Meanwhile, the BehindUbuntu team quiz Jane about Canonical’s inner workings, and what she enjoys most about working on the project.

Bonus Newsflash! BehindUbuntu has teamed up with some of the Ubuntu localisation teams to bring you great interviews in as many languages as possible! If you would like to help with translations please email the team.

[Discuss]

Due to the schedule slip, the final release of Dapper didn't ship today, but instead the team has delivered a rock-your-socks-off beta for our testing pleasure… If ever there was a time for keen testers to upgrade, it's now! We strongly encourage you to try it out and report bugs so that the Ubuntu team can make sure 6.06 is the best release EVER.

The Ubuntu team is proud to announce the Beta Release of Ubuntu 6.06 LTS – codenamed “Dapper Drake”. The Beta Release introduces the new Desktop CD, which can be used both to try Ubuntu “live” and to install the system.

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (long-term support) will be the first Ubuntu release to be supported for three years on the desktop, and five years on the server.

See the release announcement for download locations and a list of tasty treats you'll find in this awesome release!

[Discuss]

sabdfl has declared that the version of Ubuntu past 6.06 will be named “Edgy Eft”. Usually referred to as “Dapper+1”, edgy is expected to be a little more … edgy:

So dream a little about Xen for virtualisation, Xgl/AIGLX and other wonderful wobbly window bits, the goodness of Network Manager, a first flirt with multiarch support for true mixed 32-bit and 64-bit computing on AMD64, the interesting possibilities of the SMART package manager… and other pieces of infrastructure which have appeared tantalisingly on the horizon.

The release is still expected sometime in October in 2006. But don’t throw away those shiny Dapper servers just yet, the work invested so far will be around for a long time to come, so if you are concerned about being stuck in a release treadmill sabdfl goes on to say:

We can afford to take some risks with Dapper+1, because Dapper has turned out so well. We have a great answer for people who need super-solid and super-predictable results: Dapper is still fresh, will continue to work on modern hardware for some time, and has plenty of legs in its support cycle left to run.

[Discuss]