Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
The kernel freeze is a deadline for kernel updates. At this time whatever progress has been made on the Linux kernel – by that team, who are entirely separate to Ubuntu and is the core of Linux wherever and however it may be packaged – is brought into Ubuntu and sealed until the next release. Exceptional circumstances may justify an exemption to this, but for the most part the state of the Linux kernel as at October 16 will be the state of Ubuntu 8.10, Intrepid Ibex.
The developer summit split into seven distinct tracks – community, server, platform, quality assurance (QA), kernel, mobile and desktop. Not all of these tracks have uploaded reports on their discussions and determinations at this time.
The platform track has been active, however. They have announced the intention to make sure Firefox has full KDE support and is customised for Kubuntu. They have determined they want faster boot speeds and have determined they can achieve this by taking advantage of multithreading on multi-core systems, by restructuring the order of boot operations and some other means. There are plans to reduce the amount of memory required by GNOME. There are plans to investigate using the Intel connection manager to handle 3G and WiFi and emerging technologies like WiMax.
As well as shipping on a CD image, the plan is to provide a range of USB installation images too. These will target the classic Ubuntu desktop, but also mobile devices and servers. The idea of a USB image actually need not imply a smaller or bare-bones release but given that USB sticks can have capacity in the order of gigabytes actually gives the Ubuntu team more space to play with.
The server track have been looking into encryption and discussing whether it is required and if so, what performance hit there may be. A significant matter raised at the developer summit is how to come up with a Linux answer to Microsoft Exchange. It was identified as a “killer app” and a reason why people stick with Microsoft. Ubuntu want to focus on getting Linux clients able to connect to Exchange servers and conversely make it easy for Microsoft Outlook clients on Windows PCs to connect to Linux servers.
At the same time, the team wants to bring in a groupware solution. This would be a big coup for Ubuntu and it will be interesting to see if they pull it off. A range of candidates were considered but some have licensing issues, slow release cycles, turn out not to be open source or have various other restrictions. Still, a reasonably sized collection of possibilities still exists and no doubt the Ubuntu team will work through these.
Also on the server track, identity management is a hot issue and Ubuntu are seeking to provide LDAP tools that are simple and straightforward and will ensure Linux can slot into an existing Active Directory (or other) infrastructure.
So, that’s the future of Ubuntu and invariably, based on popularity, the future of the common perception of Linux. Let’s see how it pans out.
David Bass
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