Before delving into the Ubuntu Desktop, let’s go over some general concepts that will lay a foundation for things to come.  Let’s start with Open System Software.  Open System Software is high quality software, and free.  It is written by a dedicated, caring, group of developers.  The software is continually improved, leading, sometimes, to frequent updates, which adds  new features, and bug fixes.  You’ll sometimes find several different programs for the same application, as each group of developers endorse a different design philosopy, trying to create the best possible product.

This is one of the reasons that the Linux operating system has not had the mass appeal that Windows has experienced.  You’ll notice Microsoft only comes out with one version of Windows at a time.  In contrast, there are many different versions of Linux available, called distros, as each development team tries to create an operating system that addresses their particular specialized needs, whether for scientific users, internet server needs, or desktop users.  Ubuntu, is the most popular desktop distro of Linux, mostly because the makers of Ubuntu are dedicated to making a distro for the desktop user that is easy to use, and continually improving their product by releasing a new version of Ubuntu every six months.

Because using an operating system from the command line is not user friendly to the non technical user, graphical user interfaces, GUI’s, were developed as applications the are run on top of the operating system that makes using your computer easier.  Windows is a good example of a graphical user interface that for a long time ran on top of the DOS operating system, and the Ubuntu Desktop is another.  In each of these applications, you can get to the command line of the operating system, and operate the computer that way, but of course, the GUI is easier.

Just like with the distros, there are several GUI’s available for Linux.  The two leaders are, KDE and Gnome, each has a slightly different feel and desktop arrangement, and are about equal in functionality.  Ubuntu 9.10 uses the Gnome version 2.28 graphical user interface, here after known as the Ubuntu Desktop.

The Ubuntu Desktop

You’ll find the Ubuntu desktop has the same functionality as the Windows desktop, however, the Ubuntu Desktop is not Windows. What I mean is you’ll find that the Ubuntu Desktop has the same functionality as Windows, but the two desktops are implemented differently with different menu names, menu layout, and commands, as they should be, their different GUI’s.  I personnally think the Ubuntu desktop is laid out better than Windows.  In other words, there is a learning curve as you learn how to drive a new interface, the Ubuntu Desktop.  Once you learn how to drive, you might not want to go back.

There are some similarities and outright borrowing from Windows.  All the applications use the same three symbols, the _ to minimize the window, the box to maximize the window, and the X to exit the application in the upper right corner of the application taskbar, just like Windows uses.  The Ubuntu desktop, just like Windows, makes use of the right mouse button.

Every thing on the Ubuntu Desktop is movable, if you don’t like where an icon is you can move it.  This is done with the right mouse button.  You can lock an icon to its position on the desktop, or remove it completely, and you can add icons to the desktop by clicking, “Add to Panel.”  A little caution here, I want  to make sure you know what the right mouse menu is when you encounter it.  I do not recommend reconfiguring or removing anything from your desktop at this time.

Icons and menus are initially located in each of the four corners with most being in the top task bar, as opposed to windows putting icons in the bottom task bar.  We’ll go over each of these icons and menus in later posts, unitl then, the first thing every one wants to know is how do I shut off the computer.  The upper right corner has an icon that looks like a power button with your name next to it, give it a left mouse click.  There you’ll find the Switch User, Log Out, Restart, and Shutdown with a couple of other choices.  Hmmm…looks suspiciously like what you find in Windows, except Windows takes three mouse clicks to turn off your system, Ubuntu only two.  I think you’ll find that Ubuntu is a lot quicker turning off the computer than Windows ever was.

Let’s take a tour of the Ubuntu Desktop.  The Ubuntu Desktop, really the Gnome desktop, is divided into three main sections: two panels, which are the bars along the top and bottom, and a desktop in the middle.  The top panel bar has menus, icons, date and time, and a power icon with your name on it, which is used to shut down the computer. The bottom panel has a desktop switcher, a trash icon, and icons for your desktops.

The Application Menu & Accessories Category

I think you’ll find the menus are laid out much better than the Windows layout.  The menu applet contains three menus, and you can customize your own menu if you like.  The first menu, the Applications menu, provides easy access to every program installed on your computer.  The menu is laid out a little different than Windows, because menus are grouped into categories: Accessories, Games, Graphics, Internet, Office, Sound and Video, and the Ubuntu Software Center.  If you run through each of these sub menus you’ll find that Ubuntu provides you with a lot of applications when you first load your operating system.

The Ubuntu Software Center

The last choice on the Applications Menu, the Ubuntu Software Center, is a little like Windows “Add & Remove” programs only laid out a tad better with more functionality.  The Software Center tracks all installed programs, let’s you remove them, locates free software on the internet that will run with Ubuntu, and installs the program of your choice on your system, installing the program in a category in your Applications Menu with an icon, program name, and brief description of the program, nice.  What’s nice is that you don’t have to go looking for a download site, download the file, unzip it, and install it, the Software Center takes care of all of that for you.  You can go ahead and open all of these initial Ubuntu programs and check them out, to shut a program down, click the X in the upper right corner of the application, just like in Windows.  I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the functionality that Ubuntu provides with the operating system.

THe Places Menu

The Places menu is like Windows, My Documents, Explorer, and recent Documents all-in-ome.  This is where you can find all your files on your computer.  All of your music, video, documents, and other data are stored in the Places folders and are easily available to you.  This is your files system, places on your computer where your data is stored.  Double click on any folder and an explorer like windows opens to show you the files in your folder.  Want to move a file to a different folder, click on it and drag it to the new folder.  Want to make a new folder, right click, like in Windows.

The Systems Menu is like the Windows Control Panel and Device Manager, in it you can change the appearance of your desktop, configure your system, install printers, networks, drivers, and run various system utilities.

The Systems Menu and Update Manager

One program I want to have you run right now is under Administration->Update Manager.  This program keeps all the software on your system up to date.  Click “Check”, put in your password, and let the program go to work.  When I initially installed Ubuntu, I had 41 things that needed updating, let the program run and do it’s job. Presto your system is updated.

Icons, like icons in Windows, are used to launch or start programs.  You should find the help icon and probably the firefox icon in the top panel.  You can add more icons by right click->Add to Panel, find the program you want to put on the top bar your done.  When I initially loaded Ubuntu I was playing with the desktop and had all my menus disappear.  If this happens to you, don’t panic, go to the top panel, right click, Add to Panel->Main Menu.  You can also add your own custom menu.  I did say every thing on the desktop could be moved, if you don’t like where the icons are, move them by unlocking the “Lock to Panel” in the right click menu for each item and then drag the icon to a new location and lock it again.   The other icons toward the right in the top panel are for: sound with a volume control, networking with information about your network connection, and empathy and email applet that you can use to set up your emails.

This brings us to the date and time.  Right click and you can copy time and date to place in your documents, left click and you’ll see a calendar with a day/night clock which allows you to edit date and time and put locations on the world map.  When you put in a location in the world, a clock will appear below the day/night clock showing the time at that location.  To close this application, you’ll have to click on the top icon again. This is much better than the Windows calendar and clock set up.  The last icon in the top panel with your name allows you to turn off your computer.

The next main section below the top panel is the desktop.  The desktop is like the Windows desktop, it can contain files, folders, and icons to start applications.  You can create a new folder, document, or launcher, an icon to start a program.

The bottom panel starting from the left, has a desktop swithching applet, if you click on it you’ll switch between your open windows and another desktop.  A desktop is the same as the main section described in the last paragraph, only you can have as many desktops as you want. In each desktop you can have a series of open applications which will appear as tabs in the bottom panel just like in Windows.  A desktop for your spreadsheet, one for email, one for playing a game. If you look over to the right on the bottom panel you will see desktop icons.  Each icon is one of your desktops.  Click on them to switch to a specific desktop.

The Trash Folder

The final icon on the far left is your trash folder.  It operates just like the Windows trash folder, in that a deleted file will not be removed from the system, until you specifically “Empty Trash.”  If you click on the trash icon you will open an explorer window showing your trash folder.

I think you can see from this overview that the Ubuntu Desktop has everything you need to take charge of your computer.  As I mentioned earlier, I think the layout is easier to use and more understandable then Windows ever was.

We’ve downloaded Ubuntu 9.10 from their web site, downloaded the Infrarecorder program, to burn the Ubuntu iso file to a CD, not a DVD, built a computer from hardware components, and loaded the Ubuntu operating system. Loading Ubuntu takes less time than it takes to load Windows, and you don’t have to register the product.

What most people, who have not tried Ubuntu, don’t know is that Ubuntu comes with a bunch of free applications that load with the operating system. Let’s briefly go over these applications, as a way to show you that you have a complete computer when you load Ubuntu.

Email: Ubuntu has an email program called Evolution.  Evolution is more than just an email program though, it is a full fledged Personal Information Manager with email, calendar, contacts, address book, memos, and tasks.  It can sync with your PDA, mobile phone, and Microsoft Outlook. It was the easiest email program I have ever set up. Presto, your getting your emails.

Instant Messaging: If your in to chatting with your friends with instant messaging, Ubuntu comes with an instant messaging program, called Empathy that will allow you to integrate Gmail, AIM, Windows LiVe, Jabber, AOL, Yahoo, QQ, etc.

Web Browser: Firefox and if you attach an Ethernet cable to your computer when you initially load Ubuntu, click on the browser, and presto, your on the Internet.  Ubuntu sets every thing up for you.

Office Applications: Let’s cover these all at once.  Open Office.org was developed by Sun, to compete with Microsoft Office, Sun gave the application and source code to the community, and it is now maintained as Open Source software, it’s free, and comes loaded with Ubuntu.  It can read and save documents in Microsoft format, so other’s can read your documents, and you can read the Microsoft documents other’s send you.  Ubuntu has renamed the Open Office.org program names to make things understandable. Let’s go through each program with the Windows equivalent: Word Processor – Microsoft Word, Spreadsheet – Excel, Presentation – Powerpoint, Evolution – Outlook, and Drawing – Paint.  Open Office.org also has a database program, you can install.

Ubuntu One gives you an interface and 2 Gb’s of storage on the Internet for you to use to transfer files from one computer to another over the Internet.

For graphics, we have F-Spot, a photo manager, you can manage all your photos and pictures.  GIMP, a photo editing program that has been around for years and has the functionality of Adobe Photoshop. If you have a scanner, there’s Image Scanning software called XSane.

Ubuntu has a music application, called Rythmbox, that resembles Winamp in functionality with a music player and library, but unfortunately is not quite there in the skins department.  It does have an internet radio library and an icon for Last.fm. You can download music, buy music, download your Ipod and MP3’s, and listen to podcasts. There’s an audio and media player, the Totem Movie Player.  This will handle a multitude of formats and supports full screen video playback to view your favorite movies.

There are games for you to play: Logic, AisleRiot Solitaire, Blackjack, Chess, Gnometris, Lagno, Mahjongg, Nibbles, Robots, and Tali.

And the “piece de resistance” the Ubuntu Software Center.  This is an easy to use catalog laid out in a nice interface that loads other application that run on Ubuntu.  The Software Center loads these programs with a click of the mouse.  It also removes software you’re no longer using. This is all done with a few clicks of the mouse.  You don’t have to search all over the Internet for software, Ubuntu takes care of all of that for you.

By now you are familiar with the initial installed Ubuntu background.  When you use a computer every day, you know that after awhile you want to change the appearance of your computer, just as a change of pace.  Ubuntu has not forgotten the aesthetics, and gives you just as many choices as Windows.

The Initial Ubuntu Background

For those Windows users, Windows calls their background the desktop, and the way you change the picture on the desktop in Windows is to right click on the desktop, and bring up the properties menus.  In the properties menu you can change the theme and sounds, the desktop picture, what you use for a screensaver, the appearance of menus, and the screen resolution.

Let’s see what we can do with Ubuntu.  Just like in Windows, right click on your desktop, and there you will find a “Change Desktop Background,” menu,  left click, and up comes “Appearance Preferences.”  You’ll find 22 backgrounds you can choose from, or if you click the “Add” button you can use any of your pictures.  You can also down load additional pictures from Gnome Art.  Remember Gnome is name of the Graphic User Interface that Ubuntu uses.  This site has a bunch of additional themes and backgrounds that are easily downloaded and installed by clicking on the “Get more backgrounds online” link.

A New Background

Through the upper tab menus on Appearance Preferences,  you can change the theme, by changing the look of your: controls, colors, window borders, icons, and mouse pointers. Not only that you can change the fonts that are used along with the size of the fonts for menus and documents from the fonts menu. If your eyes need a little bit bigger fonts it’s no problem to adjust them here.

Font Preferences

There’s one other thing you may want to change, and that is your screen saver.  To change your screen saver in Ubuntu, go to the “System” menu in your upper left menu, click on “Preferences” and then “Screensaver.”  This is also where you can configure Ubuntu to go to “sleep” after a period of inactivity or just to shut the display off.  This is under the “Power Management” menu in “Screensaver Preferences.”

Screensaver Preferences

In summary, you can change the entire look of Ubuntu, and make it your own with a few clicks of the mouse.

Ubuntu comes with drivers for most of your peripherals, except printer drivers, which normally are installed separately.  In a previous blog I have written favorably about the Canon MX850 compared to the equivalent HP ink-jet all-in-one printers.  Having a good feeling about Canon, I went to their web site and made an email inquiry about a printer driver for Ubuntu.  Here is their reply, “While considering the desire to provide the best possible support for Canon’s products, Canon must make decisions on which products to support when new operating systems are introduced.  Currently, Canon has decided to support only the Microsoft Windows and the Macintosh operating systems.”

Pardon me, Canon, but Ubuntu and Linux are not new operating systems.  They’ve been around almost as long as Windows, and the Apple operating system is based on Linux.

Have no fear, though, this happens occasionally and what you’ll find when you go looking for a solution is other solutions.  Searching further, for Canon printer drivers, there is a free solution, the CUPS-BNJP Printer Driver, which mimics the Canon BNJP printer protocol for the Canon Pixma printers and works over the network. This also works with the XSane scanning software provided with Ubuntu to allow scanning of documents.

CUPS-BNJP is based on CUPS, CUPS works with other printers besides Canon.  It was built for the Fedora distribution of Linux.  Since Ubuntu uses the Debian distribution, there may or may not be an issue in using CUPS with Ubuntu.  We can check that easily.  If you go to Applications->Ubuntu Software Center->Get Free Software->System Tools and scan through the list of available software, you’ll come to two choices: Printing, Printers.   If you click on “Printing,”  a CUPS printer driver is available.  “Printers” on the menu system gives you a GUI interface between CUPS and the printer.

CUPS uses your web browser to view print jobs, manage your printers, and for online help.  However, it makes use of the command line for its configuration.  The printer GUI in the Ubuntu Software Center. according to the software description,  seemed like it depended on some other software for configuring remote printers on a LAN,  if you don’t want to install a series of dependent software, or if you prefer not to use the command line interface, you probably want to check out a commercial solution, TurboPrint 2 for Linux.

TurboPrint 2 supports ink-jet printer’s from: HP, Bother, Epson, and Canon for all Linux distributions.  For the modest cost of $29 you can be ensured that you printer will function, and pick up a nice set of additional features with the software.

TurboPrint2 features include: high print resolutions, color management that matches screen document color to printed color, printer status monitoring to track print progress and errors, like a low ink cartridge, printing on both sides of the paper, print preview of what your about to print, and intelligent ink management to save ink and extend cartridge life. The one remaining question that I had is will it work on a printer attached to your network, and it will.  This intelligent printer utility has Windows and individual manufacturers printer drivers beat hands down.

The company provides a trial version to see if it will work on your system. You can download from the web and hook it up and if everything works, then purchase the software.  What’s not to like!

Given I was not sure about the Cups-BNJP distribution with Ubunutu,  the GUI configuration tool appeared to need additional software to pick up my printer on my LAN,  which meant there may be some additional configuration issues beyond just downloading the software, and  a free trial of TurboPrint was available, I decided to go with the TurboPrint option and give it a try.

TurboPrint Control Center and Printer Monitor

I downloaded the correct distribution for Ubuntu from their website. Clicked on the install button, the install wizard came up and installed the software.  The installation was painless.  The only thing that made me pause was the request to add a printer before other functionality was available.  This is done with the “Add” button in the Print Control Center.  My model Canon was recognized immediately on my LAN and that was it.  I printed a test page, checked the level of my ink cartridges, and was suitably impressed.

Considering I didn’t have to read any documentation, install several pieces of software,  or potentially do a command line configuration of the printer.  I was up and running in 5 minutes,  and had some one to turn to for support if any problems cropped up, it certainly is worth the $29 asking price for Turbo Print to me,  so much for printer drivers.

One of the things that separates Windows from Linux or Ubuntu, a Linux distribution, is the way the operating system handles the graphical user interface. Microsoft Windows is an integral part of the operating system. It is integrated with the operating system and at this point, Windows 7, you can’t operate the computer with out the Window’s graphical interface. To be fair, you can still get to the old DOS command line by typing cmd in the run window, but it’s more there for a link to nostalgia, than it is to do day to day operations. In a lot of ways, I miss the DOS command line, I was good at it. Alas, even some of the old DOS commands are missing, like fdisk, for example. That’s all done through the windowing system, now.

In contrast, Linux has two windowing systems, KDE, and the one used in Ubuntu, Gnome. These two windowing systems are independent applications, and more important, they run as applications, just like OpenOffice or a game would run.

Linux consists of a kernal, and another layer that runs user applications, and never the twain shall meet. The kernal uses its own memory space, and each application runs in its own memory segment. If an application needs to access a disk drive, it calls the kernal, the kernal accesses the drive, and passes the information over to the calling applications memory space. Because of this the desktop can crash, say from a video game that has a bug, and it will not bring the computer down. It will just shut down that application, which you can restart from the Linux command line.

In contrast, Microsoft integrates windows with the operating system. So if you have a problem with your video driver, the entire system crashes, and you have to reboot the computer. This is one of the reasons Linux is more secure than Windows.

I mentioned you can restart an application from the command line in Ubuntu. How do we get there?  In Windows, you type cmd in the run window, and you get a black window with the command prompt.  Ubuntu is pretty much the same.  From the Gnome desktop, in the upper left corner, go to Applications->Accessories->Terminal. You’ll find a nice black window pop up with a $ prompt. Welcome to the Ubuntu Linux distribution command line.

Bringing Up the Ubuntu Terminal Window

Putting an Icon on Your Desktop

As a digression, I am at the command prompt much more often than in Windows, so I put an icon on my desktop to bring it up quickly.  To put an icon on your desktop, go back to Applications->Accessories->Terminal, but instead of left clicking to bring up the window, right click, and your given a couple of choices. You can add an icon to the laucher panel, this is a tiny icon that appears on the top bar of your screen, like the current Firefox icon, or you can add the icon to your desktop.

There is another choice, of putting it in the menu, as a drawer, the equivalent of a folder in Windows, or a an actual menu item.  Since we’re making an icon for the desktop, we don’t need to put it in the menu, since it’s already there.  By the way,  if you would like to rearrange your menus, change the drawers, or remove some menu items, the menus are completely configurable.  Go to the Applications choice on the top menu bar, for example, right click and select “Edit Menus.”

Back to the terminal window, the terminal window gives you complete access to the Ubuntu distro,  i.e. the Linux operating system command line, and its plentiful commands, but that is the subject of another post.  As a teaser, I’ll give you a couple of commands to get you started.    Everything is in lower case, type “pwd” for print working directory.   It tells you where you are.  Type, “ls” to list the files in that directory, or better “ls -al” to get a long alphabetical listing.  Some things come from DOS.  Type “cd ..” for change directory  to move up one level in the directory structure, and or to go down, type the name of the directory , for example,  “cd home”  goes down to the home directory, that should keep you busy for awhile.  Have fun and enjoy Ubuntu.

And finally, less we get carried away, you can still explore your file system through the GNOME graphical user interface, like Windows Explorer, without using the terminal window or the command line, by going to the “Places” menu in the upper tool bar.

The new release for Ubuntu, which does biannual releases, has been designated Karmic Koala, or Karmic for short.  The new version, 9.10, is scheduled for release on October 29, 2009.

Ubuntu has a unique way of doing these six month releases.  After a release, they get together an interested developers conference.  The latest was held in May.  Developers attending the conference decided what should be in the next release.  Not only do they decide on the specifications, but they assign someone to commit to implementing the specification without passing it on to someone else.  Remember this is open source software, and developers can come from all over the world.

So what can one expect in the next release.  Well, one of the items that peaked my interest is a new GRUB loader, called GRUB 2.  GRUB is the boot loader that allows you to do multiboots.  I have long had issues with GRUB and the way it trys to take over the operating sytem booting from Microsoft and look forward to an improved version.  GRUB 2 also promises a faster, smoother, and flicker-free start-up.

There will be improved synchronized file sharing with other computers, which led to a new file system, called ext4.  You can still use the current ext3 file system, or upgrade to ext4.

Other hardware related improvements will be an improved power management system for those running on laptops, and a new Intel video driver for those who use the Intel graphics on the motherboard.

For software applications, Karmic will embrace the Amazon EC2, Elastic Compute Cloud web services interface, for customers that would like to do all their computing on the Internet.  This will lead to more use of Netbooks or what has been termed, Virtual Machines and Cloud computing.

Ubuntu 9.04, known as “Jaunty Jackalope” was just released on April 23.   It is the latest version of the popular Linux distro.  This version has significant  feature enhancements over the previous version.  For one thing, they rewrote the boot and install programs, so the operating system should load easier,  and more important, boot quicker at start-up, something Windows has had a problem with for ages.  Boot times may be as short as 25 seconds in some configurations.   With this release, Ubuntu is claiming to be on a par with both Windows and Mac’s OS, Leopard.   They may be right.

With Ubuntu comes OpenOffice.org and a full desktop application suite that is starting to rival Microsoft Office in functionality, and at the same time be completely compatible with Microsoft formats and Mac formats.   They put a lot of your favorite applications in a library so you don’t have to go all over the web to find the correct Ubuntu version of your favorite application.  It’s all available right from the desktop, as are easy updates for all your software.   Another plus that has been bugging Linux Distros has been support for advanced video drivers.  This version of Ubuntu supports the NVIDIA advanced video drivers, so you should not have any video problems.   We are going to take a slightly closer look and be back with you in a bit on our overall impression.

Jaunty Jackalope is available from the Ubuntu web site.

Ubuntu keeping up with its six month release cycle is getting ready to release its next version 9.04 dubbed, “Jaunty Jackalope.”  The Alpha1 prerelease version has been out since November, the official release is due in April, 2009.

Founder of Ubuntu, Mark Shuttleworth, wants to make this version more competitive with Windows and MacOS.  This release is focusing on: improving performance, an integration with Mono2.0, Novell’s new .Net implementation, integrating web services tightly with the desktop, and, tah dah, improving boot time.  They are also getting Ubuntu ready to run on all those portable devices we know and love.  Mark believes Ubuntu could be loaded on several million computers and devices this time around.  That’s millions folks.

For those of you who followed our earlier trouble loading Ubuntu, the very fact that they are taking a serious look at the GParted boot loader is music to our ears.  We are mildly optimistic, that maybe this time they got it right.

From looking at the screenshots, we think Ubuntu could be getting ready for prime time.  Imagine never having to buy Microsoft software ever again.  Well, we think that reality is very close at hand.  The Ubuntu version of Linux is stable and looks like a desktop that will play well with users.

The next release of Ubuntu, version 10.04, “Lucid Lynx” is set for April 29, 2010. The Alpha 3 version is out, and there is much buzz about what to expect from the next release.

This release is set for long term support which offers bug fixes and security patches for three years for desktops and five years for servers. Usually the six month Ubuntu releases are supported for only 18 months.

Something that all the Linux distros have struggled with is keeping up with video drivers. Ubuntu has made a concerted effort to support NIVDIA drivers, even though NIVIDIA keeps its drivers proprietary. With this release, the Nouveau project will be the standard NVIDIA project used by Ubuntu. The Nouveau project specializes in high quality, open source drivers for NIVDIA cards. This is good news for system builders, who are major users of Ubuntu, and favor NIVDIA graphic cards. Currently, Nouveau offers full 2D support for NVIDIA cards. 3D support is not quite there yet, but there working on it.

Along with this, transparency in all areas of the desktop and in applications will be supported.  GNOME 3 will be available in March, before Lucid Lynx, with additional functionality for the desktop.  What all this means is that those fancy aero screens in Vista and Windows 7 with desktop stunning images now will be possible in the Ubuntu desktop. With Gnome 3 and transparency coming to 10.4, we could be pleasantly surprised with a considerable upgrade in “eye candy” for this release.

New applications include easier file sharing between Windows and Ubuntu implemented with Personal File Sharing.   Gwibber will allow for easier social networking by retrieving and combining information from Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and Digg to name a few social sites.  And there will be  support for Apples  iPhones and iTouch drag and drop in Rythmbox.

Much effort has been put into getting Ubuntu to boot quickly. Ten second boots has been the goal. This new release will be close to that goal. Boots from 10-15 seconds have been reported. That’s incredible! We’re getting closer and closer to “Instant On.”   Microsoft, which touted quick booting as a feature of Windows 7, takes twice as long. A splash screen has been added to start,  so you don’t have a period of time with nothing on your monitor while booting during that 10 seconds that is.  I’m still blown away by this kind of boot time, just amazing.

Ubuntu is getting very close to being a better operating system environment for computer hardware and software than Microsoft Windows. If the public becomes knowledgeable about just how good Ubuntu is, we could see a positive shift in Ubuntu’s market share.