The latest version of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, 10.10 will be released tomorrow (if all goes to plan). Otherwise known as the Maverick Meerkat, this release focuses on improving the desktop experience and stability rather than radically updating it.
As usual, the kernel has been updated along with the Gnome desktop and there has been one change to the default apps (Shotwell for F-Spot in photo management) but apart from that, it’s pretty much upgrades and improvements. Allegedly boot times have been improved as well, but 10.04 already booted pretty quickly.
If you haven’t figured out from the post title, Ubuntu releases aren’t numbered by simply incrementing versions. The numbers are the year and month that software was released in thus October 2010 is 10.10. The last release, Lucid Lynx, came out in April of this year so is 10.04.
As a further joke, this release is coming out on 10/10/10 which in binary is 42, homage to Douglas Adams’ answer to the meaning of life, the universe and everything.
I’ll report back on how my upgrade goes.