More Than Just Another Release

The New Features of Ubuntu 9.10

Matthew Craig

Copyright

Now with even more Brown!!!1

Where to Start? ...GNOME Empathy!

• One of many new features in GNOME 2.28
• Ported from Nokia Internet Tablets
• Mission Control and Telepathy framework
• Adium message style themes
• Convenient video-chat is finally here!

The One Hundred Paper Cuts Project

• A mission to improve the desktop experience
• Driven by Canonical user interface teams for 9.10
• A trivially fixable usability bug that the average user would encounter on his/her first day of using a brand new installation.

Redesigning the Boot: Upstart

• Canonical developed (GPL)
• Starts and stops processes
• Replaces SysV init daemon
• Already adopted in Fedora, Maemo, and webOS
• May even replace cron one day

Redesigning the Boot: Upstart.

• Event-based and may be received from any process
• Jobs are defined in files placed in /etc/init
• Using start, stop, and status
• Configuration file definitions are still unstable
• More technical information at upstart.ubuntu.com

Redesigning the Boot: From old Usplash...

Redesigning the Boot: ...to new Xsplash

Redesigning the Boot: A Modern Bootloader

• GNU Project developed (GPL)
• Graphical interface and menu splashscreens
• Scripting support, with functions and variables
• Rescue Mode for unbootable cases, no more Stage 1.5 errors
• Boots to ISO files and supports more modern hardware (GPT)
• Complete rewrite for modularity and portability

Redesigning the Boot: A Modern Bootloader.

• Bye-bye menu.lst! Hello grub.cfg!
• Edit general configuration in /etc/default/grub
• Edit specific configurations in /etc/grub.d
• Finally run update-grub2 to update grub.cfg
• Or... just install the startupmanager GUI

Rethinking the Installer

Redesigning the Filesystem: EXT4

• A new default filesystem
• Handles huge-sized files, huge-sized volumes
• Backward compatible with mounting EXT2 and EXT3
• Cutting-edge filesystem technologies
• Requires Linux 2.6.28 - Ubuntu 9.10 uses 2.6.31

New Hardware Support: USB 3.0

• USB 3.0? Yep. We got that covered.
• So sorry, Windows 7 upgraders...
• 10x speed over USB 2.0 at 4 Gbit/s
• ASUS P7P55D-E Motherboard ($299)
• ASUS U3S6 PCI-E Card ($30)

New Hardware Support: AMD-ATI Radeon

• Kernel Mode Support (KMS)
• Direct Render Management (DRM)
• Open source "radeon" drivers

New Software: Ubuntu One

New Software: Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud

• Default only in Server Edition
• Compatible API with the Amazon EC2
• Uses Eucalyptus client framework (BSD)
• Canonical developed Landscape management

GNOME Desktop 2.28: Epiphany

• Gtk+ WebKit HTML render engine (LGPL, BSD)
• Supports HTML5 features
• Supports browser extensions
• Not installed by default

GNOME Desktop 2.28: Bluetooth

• New gnome-bluetooth replaces BlueZ framework
• Much better user interface and desktop integration
• Better passkey configurations
• NetworkManager and PhoneManager

GNOME Desktop 2.28: libClutter 1.0

• Graphics library for creating user interfaces (LGPL)
• Installed by default
• Easy to use API to OpenGL / OpenGL ES
• 2D interfaces, 3D interfaces, and animations
• The stage. The actors. "Action!"

GNOME Desktop 2.28: Location Awareness

• LibChamplain display maps in Gtk+ applications
• It is a Clutter "Actor" (widget)
• GeoClue uses WiFi, GPS, GSM, IP, and other identifiers

GNOME Desktop 2.28: Location Screenshots

GNOME Desktop 2.28: Evince

• A PDF-comics-Impress viewing utility (GPL)
• Improved security with AppArmor support
• Adds annotation feature for PDF documents

GNOME Desktop 2.28: Animated Wallpapers

• Space... the inevitable theme
• Configured by a XML file
• ~/.gnome2/backgrounds.xml

GNOME Desktop 2.28: GNOME-Media

• Better integration to Gstreamer
• Includes Sound Recorder
• New volume control "capplet" (applet)

New Software: Software Center

New Software: Quickly

• Canonical and Ubuntu developed (GPL)
• Create new applications quickly
• ... Note, not called "easily"

New Software: Quickly - Templates

• Makes extensive use of templates
• Installs with Ubuntu-Template
• ... which sets-up Glade, pyGTK, and CouchDB

New Software: Quickly - Workflow 1of2

• $quickly create ubuntu-project MyProgram
• $cd MyProgram
• $quickly glade
• $quickly edit

New Software: Quickly - Workflow 2of2

• $quickly run
• $quickly package
• $quickly release

New Software: Firefox 3.5

Hope you had fun...