Ubuntu, Kubuntu Projects Put Out 'Dapper Drake' Betas

Published: April 25, 2006

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

The Ubuntu and Kubuntu projects that seems to commercialize the Debian variant of the Linux operating system, have put out the latest beta releases of their Linuxes, based on the so-called "Dapper Drake" code base. Ubuntu is a version of Debian that uses the Gnome interface, while Kubuntu uses the KDE interface.

Ubuntu has been growing in popularity over the past several years because it makes Debian a little easier for normal people to use. Debian is a well-regarded Linux implementation, but it requires a little more technical savvy to use than the distributions from Red Hat and Novell. Ubuntu was created by a British company called Canonical, which is headed up by a chap called Mark Shuttleworth. The Ubuntu principle of Linux distribution is simple: you put out a commercial release every six months, like clockwork; you don't charge for the software; and you provide security updates for each release for 18 months. After that time, you cut off the release and compel people to keep current. While Canonical developed Ubuntu using Gnome, Jonathan Riddell, who has been hired by Canonical, has created a variant of Ubuntu with the KDE interface, which is logically called Kubuntu.

Last July, Canonical spun the control of Ubuntu out to the Ubuntu Foundation, and the company seeded this foundation with a $10 million endowment to keep the development work going strong. Canonical wanted to separate its commercial open source development and Ubuntu support business from the work of developing Ubuntu itself, which is why it created the foundation. Red Hat set up the Fedora Foundation, in part, for the same reason, but couldn't make this scenario work.

After setting up the foundation, the members said that with the "Dapper Drake" release of Ubuntu, due in April 2006, the company would extend support of Ubuntu beyond 18 months, giving the desktop release support for three years and the server version support and patches for five years. This is exactly what people and companies want in a Linux distribution--longevity and predictability. Every time you upgrade an operating system, it messes with your life. That's why the Ubuntu and Kubuntu 6.06 betas carry the name extension "LTS," which is short for Long Term Support.

Ubuntu and Kubuntu 6.06 LTS, which are the beta releases put out late last week, run on 32-bit X86, 64-bit X64, and 32-bit and 64-bit PowerPC processors; Apple Macs using G3, G4, and G5 processors have been certified to run Ubuntu and Kubuntu. Ubuntu made some headlines earlier this year when there was a lot of talk about Google taking its internal variant of Ubuntu, called Goobuntu, to the commercial market, possibly upsetting the Linux bandwagon. Chris DiBona, Google's open source program manager, quashed this rumor back in February, saying that the internal Ubuntu variant that Google uses to run its network is going to stay just that: internal.

In terms of servers, the interesting piece of the Dapper Drake update is that it includes two new kernel modifications tuned for servers, a generic "server" kernel for servers with one, two, or four cores or sockets and a "big iron" kernel that is aimed at servers with eight cores or sockets. The latter is aimed at Unisys ES7000, IBM xSeries 440 and related "Summit" servers, and other X86 and X64 servers that have such scalability. The 6.06 beta also includes turnkey installation of the LAMP stack--Apache, MySQL, and the Python, Perl, PHP development tools--and integrated support for Linux clusters and storage area networks. The 6.06 release is based on the Linux 2.6.15.6 kernel.

You can see the Ubuntu 6.06 LTS beta release notes here, and you can read the Kubuntu 6.06 LTS beta release notes here.

The final, production release of Ubuntu and Kubuntu are expected in June.