Ubuntu Manual

Cloud computing is just getting bigger and bigger. Is it too hyped or is it just going to be a reality and bring in all those wonderful benefits which are being promised, only time will tell. But players like Apple have seen success with their icloud platform. Data synchronization and application sharing have become so easy. Ubuntu One is also joining the cloud platform evolution, but it is still a long way to go as far as its feature richness goes as compared to platforms like icloud.

Microsoft seems to have a tough ride ahead, they had lost the patent case for its Office suite. Now open source tools from Open Office.Org and LibreOffice Suites are competing aggressively with MS Office for market share. The main reason is the Open Source tag associated with the first two choices. It is inexpensive and enjoys backing from a large community of developers. Today let us take a look at the latest release from the LibreOffice Suite- the LibreOffice 3.4.

One decision, which was taken at the recently concluded Ubuntu developer meet, was appreciated by one and all. It was the acceptance of Thunderbird as the default email application. This is a major success for Mozilla, who is facing a steep battle on browser side, with competitors from the likes of Google. Mozilla, may be inspired by this decision of Ubuntu community, was quick to act on it and announced beta version of their Thunderbird 5 application few days ago.

Yep it is not a dream, now you can boot your computer in one-third the time it normally takes and connect to web in less than 7 seconds. We are talking about Ubuntu Light here, the so called alternative OS that sits on an Active Windows Partition and functions just as an OS even though with limited functionalities. At present it is available only in selected Dell models but I expect this to get the nod of other PC makers too shortly. So what exactly does Ubuntu Light offer?

Canonical joins the list of companies, who are switching to OpenStack cloud computing platform from the Eucalyptus framework. Other companies who have already opted for OpenStack include Citrix Systems, Dell, Intel and Cisco. The decision to adopt OpenStack as the default cloud platform was taken at the recently concluded Ubuntu developers Summit in Budapest. Though there are very few who have a different opinion to this move from Canonical, still it is only fair to see the reasons behind this switch over.

I happened to chance upon a post which spoke about Desktop Linux being the final frontier for Linux as it has already conquered the server market. To break the barrier vendors need to bundle Linux or its derivatives with their hardware. It seems Ubuntu has now made them think along those lines and Ubuntu preloaded PC's have started to trickle in. Lets have a look at some of them.

What is going to be in Ubuntu 11.10? Conclusions were drawn after much heated discussions and debates at the Ubuntu Developer’s Summit at Budapest. The centre of attraction of these discussions was the status of default applications that should be included and possibly excluded in the new version. Those that were shown the pink slip include Evolution, GMD and PiTiVi. Those which got included are Thunderbird, Chrome and LMD. Certain old warhorses will continue to stand strong in the new version such as LibreOffice. Now the developer community is expected to debate on these in the coming months. Here is our take on the whole thing.

As expected, this time too, we saw a heated exchange over the default apps in Ubuntu during the Ubuntu developer summit in Budapest. Sometimes I feel that there should not be any default apps, users should be just allowed to use one as per his convenience. Most of the time the debate ends in a stalemate; then why do we need to point to any one application as the default? This time the victims were the two popular clients email clients - Thunderbird and Evolution to be included in the next release of Ubuntu.

Finally, the support for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS has come to an end. Beginning from 12 May 2011, the desktop edition of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS will not offer new updates, security updates and critical fixes. However, the Ubuntu 8.04 LTS’s server version will continue to be supported till May 2013.