Issue21/News

NEWS

Ubuntu Pocket Guide And Reference

Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference is available in both print and PDF editions. The print edition is available for $9.94 from Amazon.com, and the PDF edition is completely free and is identical to the print edition.

Author Keir Thomas told FCM:

In the 48 hours since the site went live, the book has been downloaded over 100,000 times. It has become easily the most widely-read Ubuntu book out there and, possibly, the most widely-read Linux book of all time! I'm pleased to say the book is also topping the Amazon.com Linux books best-seller list.

Source: http://www.ubuntupocketguide.com/

Amazon.com link: http://url.fullcirclemagazine.org/bce9ea

Jaunty Alpha 3 released

Jaunty Jackalope Alpha 3, which will in time become Ubuntu 9.04, has been released. Alpha 3 is the second in a series of milestone CD images that will be released throughout the Jaunty development cycle. The Alpha images are known to be reasonably free of show stopper CD build or installer bugs, while representing a very recent snapshot of Jaunty.

See http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Mirrors for a list of download sites.

Pre-releases of Jaunty are *not* encouraged for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even frequent breakage. They are, however, recommended for Ubuntu developers and those who want to help in testing, reporting, and fixing bugs.

Source: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Issue125

KDE 4.2 - 'The Answer'

The KDE Community have announced the immediate availability of "The Answer", (a.k.a KDE 4.2.0), making ready the desktop for end users. KDE 4.2 builds on the technology introduced with KDE 4.0 in January 2008. After the release of KDE 4.1, which was aimed at casual users, the KDE Community is now confident we have a compelling offering for the majority of end users.

Source: http://kde.org

FCM#20 COMPETITION WINNER

Congratulations to David Coston who wins our copy of Ubuntu Kung Fu. We'll get that sent off to you as quickly as we can.

If you didn't win, sorry, but there'll be another competition next month.

Ubuntu 9.04's blazing boot times.

According to IT Wire's David M Williams, the results of the latest alpha release of Ubuntu's Jaunty Jackalope are spectacular. The next major release of Ubuntu will be out this April and Ubuntu’s engineers have, as always, included the latest Linux kernel to come out of Linus Torvalds’ hands. While the kernel always includes more drivers, better performance and various bug fixes, often times these go under the radar because they are obscure, or only of niche interest. The Linux kernel 2.6.28 delivers a stable implementation of the ext4 file system. It’s this file system which is getting geeks worldwide all steamy under the collar. ext4 looks set to offer greater file performance along with greater reliability and stability. What’s more, while ext3 was designed well before the advent of SSDs, ext4 is fully aware of such drives. ext4 includes the ability to maximize the lifetime of solid state drives and thus should theoretically offer a boost to netbooks without any corresponding fear of a shortened lifetime. Here's to Ubuntu 9.04 and better disk speed!

Source: http://www.itwire.com/content/view/2267

Shuttleworth praises Windows 7

Blogger Gavin Clarke reports on Mark Shuttleworth's reaction to Windows 7.

Shuttleworth states he is looking forward to a good, clean netbook fight with Microsoft following the release of Windows 7. He believes that with Microsoft having to sell Windows 7 to OEMs instead of giving Windows XP away to them, it will improve Ubuntu's place in the market. Shuttleworth thinks that a good version of Windows will end the current phony war between Windows and Linux in the high-growth netbook market, and reignite the fight on features and capabilities.

Even with the new features that Windows 7 is coming out with, the plans for Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope, will up it's game to keep pace.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/22/shuttleworth_windows_7/

and: Ubuntu Weekly News https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Issue126

Ext4 Arrives In Ubuntu 9.04

Ext4, the next generation of Linux's Ext3 filesystem, is now available in the latest Ubuntu 9.04 installer images. Ext4 was officially declared stable in version 2.6.28 of the Linux kernel, which was released last month.

Ext4 is designed to provide better performance and increase reliability. It also increases the maximum filesystem size to one exabyte and reduces the amount of time that is required to perform a fsck operation.

Linux hardware site Phoronix has released benchmarks (above) based on extensive Ext4 performance testing that was conducted with a solid-state drive. The most impressive results can be seen in the IOzone test, which measures write performance for a large file. In this test, Ext4 annihilated the competition and significantly outperformed XFS, JFS, ReiserFS, and Ext3. The new filesystem also outpaced its peers in the Intel IOMeter File Server Access Pattern Test.

Source: http://arstechnica.com