Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat Released, What’s Next?

The latest update to the Linux-based Ubuntu operating system – Ubuntu 10.10 – has been officially released at 10:10:10 GMT on October 10th, 2010. Ubuntu 10.10 with codename “Maverick Meerkat’”, come with a lot of new and updated applications and features.

What is new in Ubuntu 10.10 Maveric Meerkat:

1. Incredibly fast booting time.
2. Default e-mail application Evolution has been updated and optimized to run much faster compared to the version in Ubuntu 10.04.
3. Shotwell has replaced F-Spot as the default photo manager in Ubuntu.
4. Desktop social application Gwibber has been updated with support for Twitter’s new authentication service ‘OAuth’ resulting a more secure way to login.
5. The ‘Sound Menu’ applet has been greatly enhanced with music player controls and ‘now playing’ track meta data retrieved from Rhythmbox.
6. New look the Ubuntu software center
7. Lot of update with new fonts, Ubuntu cloud storage and new themes.
8. And a lot more minor updates.

But the Ubuntu 10.10 still not update the compatibility with Intel graphic. So the Laptop with Intel graphic card still have lack with video. This issue firstly report when Ubuntu Jaunty released. And until now there some couple fixes to optimize the Ubuntu to work with Intel graphic, but the still persist. I beleive Ubuntu team still working on it, but not in this released. I don’t know why.

So after Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat released, what’s next? Well, the next version of Ubuntu would be 11.04. And from some sources i got the codename is Natty Narwhal. It is still a blueprint. The blueprint suggests that GNOME Shell isn’t ready for the prime time for use in Ubuntu, and probably won’t be by April next year when 11.04 is scheduled for release. Rather than ship with GNOME Shell, the blueprint author Kenny Strawn has proposed that a “desktop-oriented form factor of Unity [should be used] instead of GNOME Shell in the Natty Narwhal.”. What makes this interesting is that the idea has been approved for active discussion at UDS by Mark Shuttleworth himself after he initially said that Unity was for netbooks only earlier this year.