Of course just a few days after I wiped my Windows machine at home to put Ubuntu 6.0 on it, 6.1 ships.
Check out the new features (from their announcement):
* Tomboy, an easy-to-use and efficient note-taking tool
* F-Spot, a photo management tool that enables tagging, photo editing and automatic uploading to on-line web management sites such as Flickr
* GNOME 2.16, which in addition to new features such as enhanced power management, makes the GNOME desktop more secure, faster and more stable
* Substantially faster startup and shutdown with eye-catching high-resolution graphics
* The latest Firefox web browser, version 2.0, which offers inline spell check support in web forms, easy recovery of crashed sessions, built-in phishing detectors, enhanced search engine management with built in OpenSearch support, and better support for previewing and subscribing to web feeds
* Proactive security features, preventing many common security vulnerabilities even before they are discovered
* Evolution 2.8.0, which brings new features such as vertical message panes
I will have to say, this is shaping up to be a great digital divide killer if mixed with some good refurbished hardware... If you've not tried Ubunut's interface, you should download an ISO and use the Live CD.. very nice.
John Lorance
CompuMentor/TechSoup
Joined on 06-09-2003
Davenport, Iowa USA
Since 6.0 has touted LTS (Long Term Support). Will any of the 6.1 features come over on the on line updates?
Had a chance to look and it appears there is an on line update to 6.1 from 6.06
Users of Kubuntu 6.06 LTS can upgrade to 6.10 over the internet by following these instructions:
release notes
But I also found that if you want the stability of the LTS you may want to stay at 6.06.
One of the concerns I've had about Linux is the rapid change cycle, and that by the time you would want to deploy from a test, you start over as there is a new release out that may be better.
Dave
Joined on 10-26-2006
TechSoup Member
If what you are expecting is say something like GNOME 2.16 be a part of 6.06 LTS, it won't. That's called a backport and 6.06 won't backport unless needed (pretty much similar to the policy of RHEL with regards to software updates, but with Ubuntu, its free).
Of course, if its about security fixes, they are backported. I wouldn't concern much on the rapid phase of development, especially on a free software desktop. It just so happened that Ubuntu is frequently released, but the regular releases aren't usually supported more than 18 months, except 6.06 LTS, which is the first time a long term support version of Ubuntu was released.
As for the next version of LTS, we'll probably have it by Feisty+1, or Ubuntu 7.10.
Just for info, I'm pretty active in Edubuntu, the education-based version of Ubuntu and currently serve as a member of the community council.
On the subject of backporting: My experience has been that backports become available but usually from 3rd parties. Find a package repository that is well respected and use that to find backports.
I'm not a big Ubuntu supporter, I prefer SUSE, so I'm less familiar with the universe of Ubuntu sites. We needed some updated packages for a Ubuntu 5.10 server we have running and I found a repository via the dotdeb group of servers.
On the subject of quick turn around times. This is what the commercial enterprise versions are for. You can purchase a support contract forUbuntu from Canonical, or others that will help in that.
The 18-24 month support cycle is also pretty common for the community supported versions. I'm most familiar with SUSE's timetable which hasn't changed since becoming part of Novell. Basically the enterprise products have a 5 year support life, with new versions every 12-18 months. The standard versions, now OpenSUSE, have a 2 year support life with releases every 6 months. So if you want a tested, certified, long life span product you'll want to consider the enterprise versions.
Also if you are purchasing new hardware that you want to run Linux on consider purchasing from a vendor who will pre-install and support Linux on their hardware. In those cases it is in the hardware vendors best interest to keep things as upto date as possible.