The new anticipated release of Ubuntu 10.10, named “Maverick Meerkat” (currently in alpha2) is said to be radical, according to Marc Shuttleworth, chief of Canonical.
Canonical head Mark Shuttleworth mentioned on his blog that the upcoming Ubuntu version 10.10 will be focused on being social and fast. Shuttleworth says “The OS is getting faster and faster when it comes to boot times but the final push remains”. In the mean time, he said that the Netbook Edition of Ubuntu 10.10 will have a revamped UI and will be the fastest booting, fastest network OS for netbooks at this time. Canonical is the company that finances and oversees the Ubuntu project.
Ubuntu 10.10 is being called “Maverick Meerkat”. Meerkats are social creatures by nature and very family oriented and therefore has been adopted for this release. The Ubuntu project has been working very hard to become a viable and open source alternative to leading operating systems such as Mac OS X and Windows 7.
Ubuntu is probably the most installed Linux distro currently, thanks to many different flavors (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, Ubuntu Studio and Ubuntu Netbook Edition). These variations include desktop and server versions including applicable applications and default settings. The last one is for netbooks and started with the amalgamations of Intel’s Moblin (Mobile Linux) into Ubuntu.
Ubuntu 10.10 promises to make everything faster and better than ever before, but ultimately will depend on how good Canonical is at keeping promises. Ubuntu has become a strong competitor and real alternative, and that is especially true for netbooks. For the average consumer, power users and production systems, the benefits come in the form of low cost, good stability and increased security.