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A year that started with radical and controversial changes to prepare Ubuntu for touch-based consumer computing is finishing up with a big push into the cloud on servers.
The Ubuntu community has released the first beta of Ubuntu 11.10, codenamed Oneiric Ocelot and expected as finished code for download in October. The beta bulks up on the deployment and management of clouds and cloud-based workloads running Ubuntu Linux on server hardware.
The beta of Ubuntu Server includes Orchestra – which allows you to provision, deploy, host, manage and orchestrate enterprise data centre infrastructure services.
According to one developer, OpenStack is Orchestra's "foremost (but not only) workload". Orchestra features separate servers for provisioning, management, monitoring and logging of applications, servers and workloads.
Orchestra, meanwhile, is tightly integrated with the Ocelot beta's other big push towards clustered servers running Ubuntu Linux as a cloud platform: Ubuntu Ensemble, which is designed to handle service deployment and orchestration for cloud and on "bare metal".
It's billed as something that will bring "devops" to clouds and datacentres running Ubuntu. Devops is the voguish term for trying to bridge the gap between the development and management of applications that was once called application lifecycle management by marketing types. Ensemble provides a set of best practices and formulas – we're told – to help ensure that apps running on a server will operate in the same way once in the cloud. In this case, the cloud in question would be an Amazon-compatible service.
Ubuntu 11.10 is due to hit a second beta on 22 September and final release on 13 October.
Whatever happens in this edition, however, it's a relative sideshow compared to the overhaul of the interface in April with Ubuntu 11.04 that demoted Gnome; and compared to next year's main event, Ubuntu 12.04, due on 26 April.
Ubuntu 12.04 will be a Long-Term-Support (LTS) edition meaning it sets the look, feel and technical direction of successive versions for the next two-year period. The last LTS was 10.04 in April 2010, which saw Canonical chief Mark Shuttleworth's Apple love manifest itself through Ubuntu's current OS-X-like interface and through the integration of the PC distro with online music and backup services provided for Ubuntu users by Canonical. ®
COMMENTS
Seems suspect
"Ubuntu 12.04 will be a Long-Term-Support (LTS) edition meaning it sets the look, feel and technical direction of successive versions for the next two-year period. "
Nonsense! Since the last LTS they've changed the interface entirely!
Unity/Gnomes...Ugh!
I was at the start of a website build project when the Ubuntu 11.04 update arrived.
I have been an Ubuntu devotee since 2004 and was a real fan!!.
So in early June I decide to upgrade to 11.04, despite thoughts I shouldn't, based on the comments flying around the Interweb!
BIG BIG Mistake! I suddenly found that certain essential plugins in Gimp would not work under the Unity UI.
That was enough of a boo-boo for me.
I had to reinstall my machine so I regressed/slid over to Debian 6.0.
At least, I have much more flexibility to choose my UI and avoid MS Widnows-type evolution of Ubuntu where Canonical are telling me what's good for me!
Don't fix what works....!!!!
Give the user a choice of GUI , IN BIG CAPITAL LETTERS, during the initial phases of installation!
Luckily I have enough TUX experience to customise Debian to my one requirements!
The only way Canonical will get me back is an all-expenses paid return trip to the ISS to celebrate the Shuttleworth visit.... (must be 8 years or so now!) on a Canonical-funded SpaceX Dragon Capsule! (not Soyuz...Roskosmos, after years of great service in the ballistic human field, seem to be going the way of Ubuntu!)
Gnome 3: ugh!
@DrXym: "I'm glad to see Ubuntu picking up GNOME 3"
That makes one of us. I just upgraded one of my computers, and unavoidably picked up Gnome 3. All the things about the UI that allowed me, a technical user, to work quickly and efficiently are gone. I may as well have an Etch-a-sketch. And the Gnome developer's standard attitude of "We Are The Gods Of User Interface Design What Are Not To Be Ignored and We have Decided this is Better For You" (Gnome 2 style interface will not be supported, the ability to switch back will be hidden under "Graphics Fallback" behind a "Beware of the Leopard" in the disused lavatory under the missing stairs in the dark) does not help.
I have converted some family members from Windows to Gnome 2 - a task made simpler by Gnome 2's general adherence to the same UI principles as Windows XP - and shudder to think what will happen when I can no longer shield them from the new changes.
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