Ubuntu 10.10 released(Maverick Meerkat)

Ubuntu 10.10, aka Maverick Meerkat, has been officially released and while we pause for a moment to think of the poor servers and mirrors getting hammered – as a if a million Ubuntu users cried out (in tears of joy) before being silenced (to the humdrum of download waiting) – you might be wondering what’s new.

Here’s a quick summary:

Speed
Canonical claims a more streamlined boot process (yes, improving on the already superfast Lucid boot speed) and, of course, a sparky new kernel based on 2.6.35 and bringing with it improved hardware support.

Style
There’s new themes, icons, and default wallpaper as expected, but there’s also the introduction of a new system font collection designed specifically for Ubuntu, called the The Ubuntu Font Family, that’s easy to read and easy on the eyes. It’s certainly clean, and reminiscent of the Ubuntu logo font introduced in 10.04. For the netbook edition, a new interface design called Unity aims to make using netbooks simpler and more stylish, too.

Features
The Software Center gets new sections for Features and What’s New (tones of App Store perhaps?), an improved look that’s more pleasant to browse, a new package installation history which is definitely welcome, and an interesting new trend: the ability to purchase commercial software. A test package is available, ‘Ricks Wallpapers’ which users can buy for $1. Proceeds are re-invested into Ubuntu development.

Applications
There’s nothing we love more than the latest version of, well, anything. Meerkat comes with Gnome 2.32, OpenOffice 3.2.1, Transmission 2.04, and the latest Firefox 3.6.10 among other updates. The photo-manager F-Spot is gone now, replaced by Shotwell. Photos can be directly published to Facebook, Flickr and others, and collections made with F-Spot can be imported.

Cloud
Canonical is pushing cloud computing hard with both the Desktop and Server editions of Ubuntu. For the desktop the free 2GB online storage on Ubuntu One for all Ubuntu users has been supplemented by a new, cheaper, pricing structure (upgrade to 20GB for $US2.99) and the addition of both a Windows client (for cross-OS syncing) and both iPhone and Android clients, along with a new streaming service to stream music from your cloud collection to your smartphone.

All up, it sounds like a worthy upgrade. Speaking of which, if you don’t want to do a clean install you can upgrade to 10.10 from within 10.04 itself via the Update Manager – but as 10.04 is an LTS (Long Term Support) release, you’ll first need to tell it you want to: click System –> Administration –> Software Sources, then under the Updates tab set ‘Check for new distribution releases’ to ‘Normal Releases’. See below for detailed instructions.

NOTE: ALWAYS backup your home directory and personal data first, of course, as when doing any operating system install or upgrade for your machine. I am not responsible for anything stupid that you might do to your machine.

Network Upgrade for Ubuntu Desktops (Recommended)

You can easily upgrade over the network with the following procedure.

Open the Software Sources application from the System -> Administration menu
Select the sub menu Updates from the Software Sources application
Change the Release Upgrade drop down to “Normal Releases” and close the application
Press Alt-F2 and type update-manager
Click the Check button to check for new updates.
If there are any updates to install, use the Install Updates button to install them, and press Check again after that is complete.
A message will appear informing you of the availability of the new release.
Click Upgrade.
Follow the on-screen instructions.

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Now, that was the easy way. Perhaps you’re too cool for the GUI, or you do not run the Desktop edition of Ubuntu. In this case, keep reading.

First, lets make sure your box is up to date prior to the upgrade (important).

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Then type ‘Y’ to accept and continue updating your system.

After that, type the command below to install update-manager-core if you don’t already have it:

sudo apt-get install update-manager-core

Then you need to change the upgrade prompt to Normal. To do that, type the commands below:

sudo nano /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades

Press I on your keyboard, then change the value of the Prompt to ‘normal’.

Next, type the commands below to begin the upgrade:

sudo do-release-upgrade -d

Type ‘Y’ to continue with the upgrade.

Wait for all packages to download and upgrade.

You may have to restart your computer.

Enjoy.

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