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After the usual 6 months of development, Ubuntu 11.04 has finally been released. Ubuntu 11.04 doesn't come with GNOME 3 / GNOME Shell (in fact it's not even available in the repositories but only in a PPA) and instead it comes with an interface designed especially for Ubuntu called Unity (based on GNOME 2.x). Unity was already default in Ubuntu 10.10 netbook edition but besides being default for the desktop edition (the netbook edition doesn't exist anymore starting with 11.04), it was also completely re-written and now uses Compiz.

Much awaited Ubuntu 11.04 'Natty Narwhal' has been released today. Ubuntu 11.04 is getting a radical change with this release as the Unity interface has been made the default Desktop Experience for Ubuntu users. Classic Gnome Desktop is still available as an option.

The worldwide market for operating system software grew nearly eight percent to $30.4 billion in 2010, led by Microsoft Windows with 78.6 percent market share, says Gartner. Yet Linux was the fastest growing server OS, and Apple's Mac OS had the fastest growth on the desktop, says the research firm.

I contend that it's not necessary nor even desirable to upgrade an entire Linux distribution or BSD installation just to get some shiny newness like Firefox 4. It's still a "selling" point for free operating systems: "Upgrade and you'll get the new Firefox/OpenOffice/Thunderbird, etc." But what if you don't want to upgrade every last package just to get the latest web browser?

Today, the fate of the iPod and the TiVo recorder couldn't be more different. The iPod mp3 player grew up to become the iPod Touch (and the iPhone, which is an iPod Touch with phone service)...TiVo is a company about patents and not so much about getting innovative products to consumers.

Novell Chief Marketing Officer John Dragoon has left the company following Novell’s sale to Attachmate, which was completed April 27. Dragoon disclosed his departure in a blog post. More Novell executive departures are expected, though Novell says it remains committed to its partners and customers.

LXer Feature: 28-Apr-2011

Want to look like a dork with hardly any effort at all? Blame your Telco for losing Internet connectivity when it's your own fault.

Oracle has had a mixed bag of success with open source. As part of the acquisition of Sun Microsystems, Oracle inherited a long list of open source projects. Some of them, like OpenOffice and OpenSolaris have met with community opposition that have led to forks. The NetBeans IDE however is another story. Under Oracle's leadership, NetBeans is thriving with nearly a million active users. What makes NetBeans different? Why is it succeeding under Oracle's leadership while other projects are not doing as well?

Canonical announced that the Ubuntu Open Week for Natty Narwhal (Ubuntu 11.04) will take place between 2nd to 5th May, 2011, on the Ubuntu IRC, in the #ubuntu-classroom channel.

Nielsen reports that 31 percent of U.S. smartphone subscribers said they would prefer Android for their next phone, compared to 30 percent for the iPhone. Overall, Nielsen estimates that 37 percent of smartphone subscribers and 50 percent of recent subscribers use Android phones, up sharply from January.

If you don't include master pages (which are really styles under another name), then Scribus supports three types of hierarchial styles: lines, character, and paragraph. As in any other self-respecting word processor or layout application, these styles allow you to apply detailed sets of formatting options quickly, without having to change each instance of a formatting option individually.

Doesn’t it give you a warm feeling when you’re asked to do a week’s work in twelve hours or less? It should. It should give you a warmer feeling when you can do it in far less time. Give your C-Level suitors this one in under an hour and they’ll think you’re as magical as Mr. Scott aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise. Mr. Scott often surprised the always demanding Captain Kirk with his ability to fix just about anything within the very tight time constraints placed on him. Instead of dilithium crystals and altered phaser electronics, you’ll have to work with Ubuntu and Drupal.

The Gnome project announced that the Gnome 3.0 release included more contributions by women than any previous release, an increase the project attributes its new internship program.

The eventual release of Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal is almost here. And we have already featured the essential to do list after installing Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal. Now, not everyone among you is going to install the latest Ubuntu from scratch. So here are the two ways in which you can upgrade to Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal directly from Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat.

OpenQRM 4.8 (http://www.openqrm.com) was released on March 31, 2011 with OpenVZ and LXC support. Additional features in this release include remote VM console and support for ICING and automated VLAN management with OpenVSwitch. Enhanced high-availability using Pacemaker + Corosync is something very valueable for a mission-critical datacenter included in this release among others.

Sometimes you want to download something but don't want to wait until it finishes so you can shut down the computer. In this case you can use Sentinella.

Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal beta is already here and in a few days time, the final release will happen. We have already reviewed the latest Ubuntu 11.04 beta and we think it is ready for prime time, well, almost. We did encounter some amount of instability in the new Ubuntu Unity mostly because of Compiz, but overall we believe Ubuntu 11.04 is going to be a release to look forward for. Leaving all that aside for now, let's just concentrate on things you could do after installing Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal.

GNOME Shell is truly great and I especially like how easy it is to extend it through extensions like the new ThemeSelector extension. ThemeSelector GNOME Shell extension is a new, unofficial GNOME Shell extension that adds a new tab in the Activities overview where all the GNOME Shell themes (not GTK themes!) installed under ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/themes show up. To change a theme, all you have to do is click it and you don't even have to reload GNOME Shell.

How Nginx+Varnish compare to Nginx alone? Nginx: Is a Webserver with great performance when serving static files. Varnish: Is a HTTP accelarator, that can be put in front of any webserver, including Nginx, but how it can help Nginx? Here you will find some tests, that will give an idea about the answer of that question.

Inkscape is frequently mentioned, and lauded, as one of the best examples of open-source software available today. It is a mature, feature-full and flexible product, thanks to a very dedicated developer community. The latest version, 0.48, adds new tools, such as the Airbrush (which many have longed for), and advanced path editing, among many other additions and improvements.