Kickass Features that will make Ubuntu 10.10 "the perfect 10"

Written on April 3rd, 2010 at 00:34 am by shredder12

With the announcement of Ubuntu 10.10's mascot, Maverick Meerkat, Mark Shuttleworth shared his vision to make it a great release. The upcoming Ubuntu 10.04, Lucid Lynx, being a LTS release, the major focus was on its stability and refinement. In his post, Shuttleworth mentioned his excitement and plans to start experimenting again with Maverick and make it the perfect 10.

In past few years, Ubuntu has started symbolizing the power Open source and free software possess. And due to the efforts of the developers and its amazing community, Ubuntu keeps on getting better and better by bringing many major improvements with every release. It has no doubt falsified people's claim of Linux being a non-user friendly OS.

Features in Ubuntu 10.10

Mark plans to enhance the new "light" theme of Ubuntu to many levels. This new light theme was recently a major change in Ubuntu user experience. There was some amount of controversy about the new design but many liked the way Ubuntu was dynamically changing itself to constantly come up as a major Desktop OS.

One of the main goals is to make Ubuntu Netbook Edition the best OS for Netbooks by improving the web experience, faster boot, faster net connect and better browser. It should be noted that IBM and Simmtronics launched a 190$ netbook earlier this week.

Ubuntu 10.10 will witness a special focus on social networking. More and more applications will have social web features. This release will indeed bring a better web experience to users.

According to Mark Shuttleworth, this release has a huge scope of innovation and he aims to make it available on all the consumer PC from major manufacturers. Just imagine, Ubuntu being available as an option for pre-installed OS on the Laptop/Desktop you are planning to buy. "No more forced Windows installation", I am waiting for such a day .

Why Maverick Meerkat?

  • Shuttleworth says it pretty well, "Meerkats are, of course, light, fast and social – everything we want in a Perfect 10."
  • Meerkats are clever, they teach other new things and help each other out, just like the Ubuntu community.
  • Meerkats are family-oriented and Ubuntu aims to be an efficient solution on all the family netbooks.

A better roadmap of Maverick's Development will be available after the Ubuntu Developer Summit in May. The upcoming release Ubuntu 10.04, Lucid Lynx, is already looking pretty impressive and with these plans for Maverick, Ubuntu no doubt will soon be a major contender in the OS market.

14 Comments

Pony (not verified)
August 17th, 2010 09:24 pm
Meerkats are anything but family friendly. They are murderous butchers. I seriously find it hilarious that someone made this suggestion and everyone dropped all the other wonderful suggestions because the description provided was "social". Prejudice for "social" synonyms is affecting the name quality and variety of Ubuntu. Meerkats, when they find a rival burrow, will proceed to shred and kill every baby meerkat inside no matter how frail.
Anon Linuxer (not verified)
August 20th, 2010 11:34 am
Do they kill their own family ? The Linux community... Do they "shred and kill" the opposition - windows... I think I get it....
Alex (not verified)
September 13th, 2010 08:06 pm
What an aweful thing to bring up. I wish the baby meerkat could fend the big meerkat off... But anyway I don't have time for that now. I have to eat dinner (I'm having roasted duck) Enjoy your day.
Anon Linuxer (not verified)
October 19th, 2010 09:18 pm
wow that's great. makes ubuntu sound more appealing.
Satan Himself (not verified)
September 17th, 2010 07:54 pm
Why is Ubuntu putting so much emphasis on social networking?? I do everything I can to avoid this fad....
Anon Linuxer (not verified)
September 21st, 2010 07:20 am
I agree, its harder and harder to stay of the grid, with google around every turn, with everything you do on the net.
Billyfish (not verified)
October 2nd, 2010 10:03 pm
I think Ubuntu is excellent and look forward to the new release however, while I agree Ubuntu is in some ways matching Windows in some ways we are lacking. For example we can no longer use audio and video in aMSN and when it comes to choice we are mainly limited to what we can find as freeware. I have yet to find a program that can match Nero for copying discs and authoring video files I have tried several free ones but none match the quality of Nero. While I like the idea of a free operating system I would also like the option to be able to install purchased software I think until we have this then Ubuntu and it's derivatives will never be fully competetive with Windows.
Ashish (not verified)
October 5th, 2010 07:29 pm
It has been taken care in meerkat , the software centre has now got a section of software's that can be purchased and installed in ubuntu. Please check the feature list of ubuntu10.10 RC.
billyfish010 (not verified)
October 6th, 2010 04:05 pm
Hi Ashish, I had already browsed and indeed installed Meerkat but I think I did not explain exactly what I meant I do know there is software to buy and use but it is very limited and what I meant was when you buy almost any program for Windows you can put the disc into the drive and the installation will take care of itself albeit with a few keystrokes of confirmation from the user with Ubuntu there are very few discs this is possible with. I believe the Ubuntu operating system is excellent and was only making the point that until we can buy a program (any program) and install it with the simplicity of Windows we are always going to be second to Windows in usability.
smiley1962 (not verified)
October 6th, 2010 07:14 pm
Billyfish, I'not sure but I believe that in linux it is way easier to install software, than in windows, a single click in synaptic does the trick no reboots. I believe in open source and the linux comunity to provide free programs to do the trick and almost never buy software.
billyfish010 (not verified)
October 8th, 2010 02:41 pm
Hi Smiley1962 I do agree with you up to a point however, if companies wrote software so it could be installed on either Windows or Ubuntu it would give people a choice whether to buy or not. I love the way Ubuntu is and for the most part the programs are excellent however, if I wanted to use a particular program I either can't or I have to find a way to install the program. I have the greatest of respect for all of the people involved in developing and creating programs for Ubuntu but in all honesty when processing films from a dvd camcorder nothing in Ubuntu can match the quality I get from Nero. I am aware that Nero have Nero Linux but it is not the complete program but if they did write the full program for Ubuntu I would buy it. It is like Gimp I think it is excellent for my needs but I know people who would not do without their Adobe. I suppose you could say it is down to personal preference and there is the rub very few of the programs I used in Windows is available in Ubuntu and I still feel until the choice is there Ubuntu will never reach it's full potential.
davey486 (not verified)
October 27th, 2010 12:57 pm
I have a copy of Windows running in VirtualBox. Any programs that needs Windows, I just use my VirtualBox App. Its all taken care of. Windows is actually running better as an app than on OS. My $0.02.
biggznd (not verified)
November 3rd, 2010 07:19 am
@ Smiley1962.. hate to burst your bubble but you can run windows programs in Ubuntu. You can use wine.. it allows you to run windows programs that were never designed to work on Linux.. It uses a bit more memory and cpu power but I don't think you are using a dinasore computer that cant handle it. By the way I've used Nero for years and I'm very experienced with it but it isn't all that as you put it to be. There are a lot of other programs as good and even better than Nero, but i guess its you who cant adopt to other softwares...
Bill (not verified)
November 3rd, 2010 07:33 pm
biggznd, I think your comments were actually directed to me "billyfish010" since it was I who commented on Nero and programs that can be installed in both Windows and Ubuntu. I am well aware of Wine and yes I use it for installing Windows programs into Ubuntu, however, it is not entirely successful and most of the programs I have installed via Wine directly and via Codeweavers can be said to be a perfect replacement for the program in Windows. I know there is lots of free software for Video editing and have tried a lot of them but in my experience none of them match the quality and slickness of Nero. As for not being able to "adopt other softwares" I think you have a cheek to make such a comment, you don't know me and you would not have a clue about my ability to use other softwares. For the record I am constantly trying new softwares and I would rather have good free software but this does not mean I am not prepared to buy software if I want it. It is this blinkered approach that holds back development of good usable paid for software for any of the free operating systems. Ubuntu is a terrific program and I would like software developers to take a look at it and maybe make their programs available to both the Ubuntu and Windows community.

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