01.15.14

Links: Ubuntu/Canonical in January 2014

Posted in News Roundup, Ubuntu at 11:16 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: News from the past couple of weeks, touching on the different parts or projects at Canonical

Server

Canonical’s OpenStack Interoperability Lab Will Rise to Prominence

At November’s OpenStack Summit in Hong Kong, members of the OpenStack Foundation made clear that many IT departments are either already experimenting with the open cloud computing platform, or will do so this year. The foundation’s OpenStack Survey involved 387 OpenStack cloud deployments across 56 countries, and determined that OpenStack is very high on the list of technologies to work with at enterprises in 2014.
Nginx joins the big leagues in Ubuntu Server

Ubuntu Server 14.04 is set to include Nginx Web server as standard, along with the old favorite Apache
Ubuntu Linux Endorses Nginx Open Source Web Server
Ubuntu puts Nginx Web server on equal footing with Apache

The next version of Ubuntu Server is expected to include Nginx in the main archive, meaning it will “sit alongside Apache in 14.04 with full security updates over the life of the release,” Canonical employee Jorge Castro wrote today.

Financials

Ubuntu maker boosted revenue in 2013 but doubled loss to $21 million
Canonical Is Still Operating At A Significant Loss
Canonical posts a $21 million loss – is Ubuntu’s future doomed?

The financial result for the Ubuntu maker is out. The company posted a loss of $21.3 million in fiscal year 2013, a straight fall of $10.2 million from the loss posted in fiscal year 2012, which was $11.1 million. The revenue earned in 2013 however, was $65.7 million, up from $56.8 million reported a year earlier.

Desktop/Tablets/Other

Ubuntu 13.04 Received Its Last Major Kernel Update

A few days before the announcement for the end of life of Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail), Canonical has released the last major update of its soon to be unsupported Ubuntu operating system, fixing no more than nine vulnerabilities discovered by various developers in the upstream kernel packages.
Ubuntu 12.04 Is More Secure Than Windows 8 and Mac OS X, Says UK Government

The UK government now says that Ubuntu 12.04 is the safest operating system available, way ahead of Windows 8 and Mac OS X.

The Communications-Electronics Security Group (CESG) is the UK National Technical Authority for information assurance and they’ve done a series of tests to find out what is the most secure operating system available for the governmental apparatus.

The security assessment made by CESG included the following categories: VPN, Disk Encryption, Authentication, Secure Boot, Platform Integrity and Application Sandboxing, Application Whitelisting, Malicious Code Detection and Prevention, Security Policy Enforcement, External Interface Protection, Device Update Policy, Event Collection for Enterprise Analysis, and Incident Response.
Not Quite Off Topic: Switch to Linux/Ubuntu
Previewing Canonical’s New Icons for Ubuntu Linux
Top 13 developments of Ubuntu in 2013
Will Ubuntu dominate tablets in 2014?

Tech Republic has five reasons why an Ubuntu tablet could do quite well in 2014.
What to expect from Ubuntu in 2014

You won’t see an Ubuntu Edge at CES this week. Ubuntu’s parent company, Canonical, raised $12.8-million on Indiegogo to develop and build this Ubuntu Linux/Android-powered Ubuntu Edge combination smartphone and PC, but it still fell far short of its $32 million goal. So what?
Ubuntu hints at full convergence and semi rolling updates

In an interview with PCpro that it was revealed by Mark Shuttleworth that Canonical is now leading the race for full convergence across all devices and architectures. There is also a possibility of shifting over from bi-annual releases to semi-rolling releases as mobile users are accustomed to updates being released ‘whenever’ they’re ready by the maintainers.
Ubuntu 12.04.4 Officially Arrives on February 6

Canonical has confirmed that the next point release of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) will be available on February 6.

The company has postponed by two weeks the release of the fourth maintenance build, but now the release date has been confirmed and set in stone.
Ubuntu 13.10 – The “Marmite” Linux Operating System

Ubuntu is the “Marmite” operating system within the Linux community. You either love it or hate it.
Ubuntu 13.04 Reaches End of Life on January 27, Get Ubuntu 13.10

Adam Conrad has announced earlier today, January 7, that the Ubuntu 13.04 Linux operating system, also known as Raring Ringtail among its fans, will reach end of life (EOL) on Monday, January 27, 2014, as Canonical will no longer provide security/critical fixes and software updates for it.
Ubuntu developer builds Pirate Bay torrent search into operating system

Torrent search would be added to Ubuntu’s Dash, a central tool that lets users search files and applications on their desktop as well as online sources like Amazon or Wikipedia. The search tool prototype uses the Pirate Bay as a data source. It may be modified to filter out pirated content, but users can change the filters to suit their desires. It’s also possible that a future version could use a different data source.
Ubuntu In 2014

2013 was a phenomenal year for Ubuntu. It is difficult to believe that it was just a year ago today that we announced Ubuntu for phones. Since then we have built and released the first version of Ubuntu for phones complete with core apps, delivered Mir in production on the phone, built a vastly simplified and more powerful new app delivery platform complete with full security sand-boxing, created a powerful smart scopes service to bring the power of native search and online content to devices, delivered a new SDK with support for QML, HTML5, and Scopes, built an entirely new developer.ubuntu.com, created extensive CI and testing infrastructure to ensure quality as we evolve our platform, shipped two desktop releases, extended the charm store, delivered Juju Gui, spun up multiple clouds with Juju, and much more.
Introducing Ubuntu Unity for Arch Linux

Back in June, we were ready to announce the immediate availability for download of a new Linux distribution, called Unity-for-Arch, which used Ubuntu’s Unity user interface on a basic Arch Linux Live CD.
Linux distro Ubuntu enables SSD TRIM support by default

The popular Linux distribution Ubuntu will enable TRIM support for SSDs by default in its upcoming Ubuntu 14.04 Long Term Support (LTS) release. For those unfamiliar with what TRIM is, it is a command the OS instructs to the drive to wipe invalid flash blocks when they are no longer needed.
Hurrah for SSD fans! Ubuntu 14.04 will have TRIM turned on