The Ubuntu developers are moving quickly to bring you the absolute latest and greatest software the Open Source community has to offer. The Maverick Meerkat Beta is the beta release of Ubuntu 10.10, bringing with it new features for the next version of Ubuntu.

This is a beta release. Do not install it on production machines. The final stable version will be released on October 10, 2010.

Upgrading from Ubuntu 10.04 LTS
To upgrade from Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on a desktop system, press Alt+F2 and type in “update-manager -d” (without the quotes) into the command box. Update Manager should open up and tell you: New distribution release ’10.10′ is available. Click Upgrade and follow the on-screen instructions.

To upgrade from Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on a server system: install the update-manager-core package if it is not already installed; edit /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades and set Prompt=normal; launch the upgrade tool with the command sudo do-release-upgrade -d; and follow the on-screen instructions.

Download Beta

Get it while it’s hot. ISOs and torrents are available at:

http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/download (Ubuntu Desktop, Server, and Netbook)

Want it pre-installed and complete compatibility configured on a brand new Dell laptop?

Please test and report any bugs you find:
http://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs

Updated Packages
As with every new release, packages–applications and software of all kinds–are being updated at a rapid pace. Many of these packages came from an automatic sync from Debian’s Unstable branch. The period of automatic syncs has stopped now, so from now on there will be fewer changes.

Ubuntu Desktop Edition
The GNOME base platform has been updated to the current 2.31 versions. This particularly includes the new dconf and gsettings API.

Evolution was updated to the 2.30 version, which operates much faster compared to the version in Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.

Shotwell has replaced F-Spot as the default photo manager.

Gwibber has been updated to support the recent change in Twitter’s authentication system, as well as changing the back end storage to improve performance.

The Sound Indicator has been enhanced to include music player controls.

The Ubuntu Software Center has an updated look and feel, including the new “Featured” and “What’s New” views for showcasing applications, an improved package description view, and a “For Purchase” software category has been added. You can also now easily access your package installation history too.

Ubuntu One: Polished desktop integration with new sign up and sign in process. Tighter integration with Ubuntu SSO. Nautilus enhancements for managing folder sync preferences. Faster file sync speed. Share links to music within the Ubuntu One Music Store.

Ubuntu Netbook Edition
The new Unity interface is now the default in Ubuntu Netbook Edition. This includes the global menu bar as part of the default interface. The date/time indicator now has a real calendar widget.

The standard photo management application has been switched to Shotwell. Evolution express is also available in the default launcher. This interface is more suited to netbook interfaces.

Installation
The new btrfs file system may now be used during installation via manual partitioning, as long as /boot is on some other file system.

Linux kernel 2.6.35
Beta includes the 2.6.35-19.28 kernel which is based on the 2.6.35.3 upstream stable kernel.

This kernel also includes input subsystem patches for improved multitouch capability, ALSA device patches to resolve audio and microphone issues, miscellaneous driver updates for intel_ips, lirc, iscsitarget and rtl8192se, general security updates(CVE-2010-2240,CVE-2010-2803,CVE-2010-2959), and security enhancements for ARM.

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Yes folks, Ubuntu 10.04 is here. It’s suppose to be noticeably faster than 9.10, on any system. I’ve tested it on almost every device I have, from netbooks, to notebooks, to desktops, and high end servers. Two words: It’s awesome. Along with many new features, including a “Me Menu” and Ubuntu Software Center 2.0. Also included is a music store, “Ubuntu One Music Store”. It also marks the first time GIMP does not come preinstalled. Three versions are available, Desktop, Netbook, and LTS(Long Term Support). You may want to torrent the ISO, as Ubuntu’s servers have been stressed with the overwhelming demand over the last 48 hours!

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Compare to earlier ubuntu versions karmic is much better in speed but if you still want to reduce your boot times even more, you can use ubuntu boot packages containing instrumentation to aid in boot performance work, and packages proposed to improve performance.

Note:- Install these packages with your own risk and this might break your system

At the moment this packages are available to only ubuntu 9.10 (karmic) users

First you need to run the following command from your terminal to add sources list

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-boot/ppa

Now update the source list

sudo apt-get update

Install using the following command

sudo apt-dist upgrade

This will install all the remaining required packages. After installing this your boot times should be much faster.

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Ubuntu 9.10 codenamed Karmic Koala has been released! Canonical and Ubuntu developers have done their best to give as a better than the previous Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope Linux distribution. Features I’ve tested so far include a new installer, new artwork (themes, icons, wallpapers, login screen), ext4 filesystem, grub2, new software versions (Gnome 2.28.1, Firefox 3.5.3), and the much anticipated Software Center (instant access to thousands of free and open-source applications). This beats the hell out of any package manager I’ve seen before. There’s also many many other improvements, including some much needed bug fixes in Ubuntu 9.10.

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The Ubuntu Restricted Extras will install Adobe Flash Player, Java Runtime Environment (JRE) (sun-java-jre) with Firefox plug-ins (icedtea), a set of Microsoft Fonts (msttcorefonts), multimedia codecs (w32codecs or w64codecs), mp3-compatible encoding (lame), FFMpeg, extra Gstreamer codecs, the package for DVD decoding (libdvdread4, but see below for info on libdvdcss2), the unrar archiver, odbc, and cabextract. It also installs multiple “stripped” codecs and avutils (libavcodec-unstripped-52 and libavutil-unstripped-49). This is a single command approach.

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

Note: Installation only works completely and properly when done from the command-line Terminal. The entire package will not usually install completely from within a Package Manager.

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Compiz Fusion allows you to use advanced desktop effects such as the rotating cube desktop and some other pretty appealing eye candy.

sudo apt-get install compiz compizconfig-settings-manager compiz-fusion-plugins-main compiz-fusion-plugins-extra emerald librsvg2-common fusion-icon

Then run Applications -> System Tools -> Compiz Fusion Icon. A blue icon will appear to the tray. From here you can configure Compiz-Fusion.

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Playing a Video (XVid, DivX etc.) or Audio (MP3) file has become pretty easy. Just double click the file you want and allow Totem to automatically download the needed codecs. But you could also do this by yourself very easily by installing a package which contains all the needed codecs and more. Just look above at Ubuntu Restricted Extras.

To play encrypted DVDs you must install libdvdcss2. In Ubuntu 9.10, just like Ubuntu 9.04, there is no need to manually configure the Medibuntu repository. If you have previously installed Ubuntu Restricted Extras skip the following command. If you haven’t open a terminal and type:

sudo apt-get install libdvdread4

Next type:

sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

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As we all know Google Earth lets you fly anywhere on Earth to view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, 3D buildings, from galaxies in outer space to the canyons of the ocean. Now, it’s been made available to us Linux junkies. To install it type:

sudo apt-get install googleearth-package
make-googleearth-package –force
sudo dpkg -i googleearth*.deb

Afterwards you will find Google Earth under Applications -> Internet -> Google Earth

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