Canonical announces Mir display server to replace X Windows
Canonical has announced plans to develop new, open source Linux display-server software called Mir, in a move that it says will help further its goal of offering a unified Ubuntu user experience across PCs, smartphones, tablets, and smart TVs.
Traditionally, desktop Linux distributions have rendered their GUIs using software derived from the X Window System – X, for short – a venerable graphics layer that was developed for Unix by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1980s.
But many Linux developers think X is showing its age, and that it makes it too cumbersome to create the kinds of sophisticated graphical effects that modern desktop users have come to expect. Read more...
Ubuntu Preview alpha arrives for fondleslabs and phones
As promised, Canonical has released the Ubuntu Touch Developer Preview, complete with full source code and installation images for supported devices. The company warns, however, that this early, alpha-quality release is strictly for developers and enthusiasts only.
"While a huge amount of Engineering and Design work has been put into ensuring that the foundations for our user experience vision are in place, we want to stress that the Ubuntu Touch Developer Preview is currently work in progress," Canonical's David Planella wrote in the official announcement on Thursday. "It is not intended to replace production devices or the tablet or handset you use every day." Read more...
Canonical bungs kill switch onto Ubuntu’s Amazon ‘adware’
Canonical is reining in its Ubuntu Linux distro's new Amazon "adware" desktop search feature after penguinistas vented their rage.
Ubuntu community manager Jono Bacon has explained in a blog post how users can disable the controversial system that, by default, sends desktop search queries unencrypted to Amazon via Canonical's servers so that links to products related to the queries can be shown in the results.
The catch is, the fix won’t just stop you from receiving results from Amazon: it will eliminate all online results from the search. Read more...
Canonical equips Ubuntu with desktop Web apps
Canonical is adding a new feature to its Ubuntu operating system that will allow desktop users to access popular Internet services without opening a browser window. Instead, a Web page can be accessed as a desktop application.
Using this feature, a Web page "will feel like an application on your device," said Pete Goodall, Canonical product manager. "We want to make the line between desktop apps and Web apps a little less distinct."
Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth plans to demonstrate the technology, called Ubuntu WebApps, at the O'Reilly Open Source Conference held this week in Portland, Oregon. Ubuntu WebApps will first appear on the upcoming 12.10 release of Ubuntu, code-named Quantal Quetzal. Read more...
Ubuntu Android add-on designed to replace PCs
Canonical has unveiled software that will give Android smartphones the ability to run full desktop computer sessions on computer monitors and television sets.
"The processors at the heart of smartphones are approaching the power of low-end laptop processors, so we use the horsepower to power a desktop experience," said Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth. "If you link your phone to a computer monitor and keyboard, then the phone can drive a full desktop session."
The company launched the software, called Ubuntu for Android, at the Mobile World Congress, being held this week in Barcelona. Read more...
Canonical takes the Ubuntu Server pulse
Commercial Linux distributor Canonical has released its third annual survey of the Ubuntu Server installed base to show what is going on out there among the Shuttleworth faithful. The survey comes just as Canonical is getting ready to put its next big server release into the field in April.
Depending on how you slice up the Linux server racket, Ubuntu is number one, number two, or number three. On the Amazon EC2 compute cloud, it was the most popular Linux distro for quite a while. After Canonical got out in front of Red Hat and SUSE Linux a few years back by embedding the Eucalyptus cloud controller into its server distro, you could argue that it was the dominant Linux-based private cloud foundation, too.
In terms of raw adoption among corporations, though, Red Hat's Enterprise Linux has a commanding lead over SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Canonical Ubuntu Server, though it is hard to say at this point who is number two and who is number three. It is likely – but by no means certain given that the SUSE Linux division of Attachmate and Canonical are both private companies and don't report revenues from their respective Linuxes – that SUSE Linux generates more revenues than Ubuntu Server because it has a wider base of corporate software certifications. But it is entirely possible that the Ubuntu Server base by machine count – be it virtual or physical machine – is larger. No one really knows. Read more...