Ubuntu 15.04 Released, Debian 8.0 Coming
The big story today, almost seemed like the only story today, was the release of Ubuntu 15.04. In the early announcement "a converged future" was touted as the 15.04 Desktop, Kylin, Snappy Core, and the Phone was introduced. Today José Antonio Rey said, "15.04 continues Ubuntu's proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution." In other news, Debian 8 is on track for its April 25 release date.
Rey continued to say that this release brings a switch from Upstart to systemd, a change back to local menus, and a new plum wallpaper. Otherwise, it's basically updates. This is exactly what desktop users have been told to expect all along as Canonical concentrates more on its commercial ventures. One might wonder why Canonical even bothers with a desktop version at all anymore, but Christine Hall said today it's because, "It separates Ubuntu from the crowd in the server market. It allows it to offer workstations with a quality, easy to use and learn interface that can be tightly integrated with its server offerings."
Of the server, today's announcement said:
Ubuntu Server 15.04 includes the Kilo release of OpenStack, alongside deployment and management tools that save devops teams time when deploying distributed applications – whether on private clouds, public clouds, x86 or ARM servers, or on developer laptops. Several key server technologies, from MAAS to Ceph, have been updated to new upstream versions with a variety of new features.
The first review is already in at PC Pro. After taking a closer look under the hood reviewer Darien Graham-Smith concluded:
If you're looking for a free, friendly and powerful OS for desktops and servers, Ubuntu is still an easy Linux distribution to recommend. But even for established Ubuntu users this update is neither practically nor emotionally compelling. If Canonical seriously wants Ubuntu to make more of a mainstream impact, Ubuntu 15.04 – a barely necessary update rolled out to serve a timetable rather than a strategy – is precisely the sort of thing it needs to stop releasing.
Ubuntu 15.04 Desktop
In other news, Steve McIntyre today posted that Debian 8 Jessie is on track for their Saturday release. McIntyre wrote the installer is almost ready and will be "better in a number of ways than what we've had before." This includes "big EFI enhancements." In addition, new architectures were highlighted, specifically for "arm64 and ppc64el." Most significantly, he concluded, "We're planning to release Jessie as Debian 8 this coming Saturday (25th April)." Checking the latest bug count numbers reveals 38 still unaddressed, up a few from last we looked.
Elsewhere:
* Interview: Matt Lee from The List powered by Creative Commons
* Build Your Own Ubuntu