Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Canonical's new Ubuntu paves way for server push

Canonical plans on Thursday to release "Gutsy Gibbon," the Ubuntu Linux version 7.10 that the company hopes will lay the foundation for a serious push into the server and other markets six months from now.

That's when Gutsy Gibbon's sequel, "Hardy Heron," is scheduled to arrive. Gutsy Gibbon will have the usual Ubuntu support life span--18 months--but Hardy Heron will be the company's second version to feature long-term support, which lasts three years for the desktop product and five years for the server.



Some of the Gutsy Gibbon work involved introducing new features Canonical hopes to stabilize for Hardy Heron, said Canonical's chief executive and founder, Mark Shuttleworth. Take, for example, the "tickless" kernel, which is designed to reduce power consumption and improve server virtualization performance by letting the processor enter a somnolent state more often.

"I'm quite glad we're not trying to make the decision between tickless and long-term support. This is a fairly radical piece of surgery on the kernel," Shuttleworth said.

Among other Gutsy Gibbon developments are snazzy 3D graphics for the desktop version, desktop search called Tracker and the first incarnation of a Ubuntu Mobile version for portable gadgets.

Read the rest of the article here.

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