Note: Ubuntu versions follow a Year.Month scheme and are released every six months. Something like 4.10 would have been released in October of 2004. Six months later in April 2005 comes version 5.04.

4.10 Warty Warthog

Warty was the the release that started it all, and turned this strangely named newcomer distro into something people were talking about. There was little from a technical standpoint that was particularly impressive, but even this first release was uncommonly user-friendly compared to many other Linux distributions at the time.

5.04 Hoary Hedgehog

This was the first release to use X.org instead of XFree86, which is now all but forgotten among modern distributions. A lot of new features came with Hoary, notably power options such as suspend, hibernate and standby support. This was also the first time Ubuntu had a built-in update manager and notifier.

Hoary also included some additional Live CD tools like Kickstart, which allows for multiple identical installs, and unified the hardware detection on the Live CD and installed system. This meant that the Live CD could be a much more accurate gauge of how well the installed system would work with your hardware.

5.10 Breezy Badger

With language support greatly increased, Breezy was the most accessible release to date. This release also included improved Bluetooth support, laptop functionality, logical volume management and printer/scanner detection. Usplash was introduced in Breezy, allowing for more graphical startups.

Additionally, Breezy came with an improved installer that included a special OEM install so that equipment manufacturers would have a better way to deploy Ubuntu. The ability to dual boot with other operating systems was improved as well, along with better partitioning.

6.06 Dapper Drake

This was the first LTS (Long Term Support) release. Originally planned as 6.04, release was delayed for 2 months so that the final release could be solid enough to warrant the LTS name. Beginning with Dapper, it starts to look more like the Ubuntu we know today. Dapper included an all new graphical installer, network manager, and support for USB installations.

6.10 Edgy Eft

Coming so close behind Dapper, Edgy was a somewhat minor release. The most notable change was probably the switch to Upstart instead of the traditional init system. Upstart was designed to handle not just the order of scripts in system startup, but also events that took place after startup was complete (like plugging in a USB drive). Details on exactly why they wanted to replace init and how they came up with Upstart can be found here.

7.04 Feisty Fawn

Arguably the biggest usability improvement found in Feisty was the assistance Ubuntu provided in acquiring proprietary content (Flash, Java, binary video drivers, etc) once the system was installed. Prior to that, getting Flash or Nvidia drivers working properly could prove to be a major headache, and turned off a lot of prospective users. This also marked the first time Compiz, the 3D desktop effects layer, was included with Ubuntu.

7.10 Gutsy Gibbon

Gutsy, while not a particularly innovative release, still included a fair batch of useful changes. For many, a valuable new feature was the inclusion of NTFS-3G which allowed for full read and write capability to NTFS formatted partitions. Also notable was the support for AppArmor, a application security framework for Linux.

8.04 Hardy Heron

This was Ubuntu’s second Long Term Support release, and came with a large number of improvements. Hardy was the first version to include Wubi, the Windows-based Ubuntu installer, as well as the now standard packages PulseAudio, Brasero, and Totem. Finally, this was the first Ubuntu release to support KVM virtualization.

8.10 Intrepid Ibex

Intrepid was the first to include the popular Live USB Creator, which is one of the many tools that can make remixing Ubuntu surprisingly easy. Another of the more interesting things about Intrepid was the option to easily set up encrypted directories within your home using ecryptfs-utils. This was also the first release to enable a Guest account, stated as being “sufficiently safe to lend your laptop to someone else for a quick email check.”

9.04 Jaunty Jackalope

Ext4, the long awaited filesystem, had its Ubuntu debut in Jaunty, though not yet as default. Bootup speed an other performance tweaks were introduced, and Wacom tablets and multiple monitor setups became much simpler to use. Jaunty also included a newly designed notification system coming out of the desktop panel.

9.10 Karmic Koala

The current stable release, as of this writing, and soon to be replaced by Lucid Lynx. Karmic brought us ext4 as the default filesystem, the first look at the Ubuntu Software Center, and the somewhat controversial GRUB2. Not to be left out of the cloud computing craze, Karmic shipped with Ubuntu One personal cloud service, and the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud Images.

10.04 Lucid Lynx

We’ll be checking out Lucid in more detail as the release date (April 29, 2010). The development versions can be found here. So far, Lucid plans to completely remove the hardware handler hal, set Nouveau as the default Nvidia driver, add social network integration, and in a that move many will find surprising, change Firefox’s default search to Yahoo!

For Ubuntu Karmic users who are using Empathy rather than Pidgin, some of you might have difficulties connecting to the FB Chat network. The most common seen problem is the Authentication Failed message. Here’s the fix:

Open your Empathy. Go to Edit -> Accounts.

In the new window, click Add.

Select Jabber in the dropdown field and check the box “Reuse an existing account“. (Do not select “Create a new account”. You will have authentication error later on)

Enter your Facebook login name and append @chat.facebook.com at the back as the Login ID. For example: damienoh@chat.facebook.com

Enter your Facebook login password.

Click Connect.

That’s it. You should be able to connect to Facebook Chat from Empathy now.

Note: If you have just created your Facebook username, you will need to log out and login again to your Facebook account before you can connect with Empathy.

For those who are connecting from other IM applications, you can easily add your Facebook chat with the following configuration:

Protocol: XMPP or Jabber
Username: your facebook username
Domain: chat.facebook.com
Jabber ID: your-facebook-username@chat.facebook.com
Password: your Facebook password

Advanced Settings

Port: 5222
Server: chat.facebook.com
Use SSL/TLS: no
Allow Plaintext Authentication: no

Getting Grub2

Currently, if you want to use Grub2, your best bet is to run Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala). If you just want to toy around and see what it can do without risking your system, I’d suggest running it inside a virtual machine as described here, but of course with Ubuntu 9.10.

menu.lst/grub.cfg

If you’ve messed with the original Grub (now called Grub legacy), you doubtless know all about menu.lst. That was the file where Grub legacy stored pretty much everything. In Grub2, the closest equivalent is grub.cfg, also located in /boot/grub. One of the most important differences, however, is that you should not edit the grub.cfg file directly. Some of you may be thinking “Ha! Warnings like that are for n00bs!”. Well the reason for this rule is not because the developers don’t think you’re l33t enough, it’s because that file is auto-generated by Grub2 and will be overwritten without warning as a result of things like kernel upgrades.

Any time the update-grub command is run, Grub2 will read its various config files and use their contents to generate grub.cfg. These files are dealt with individually below.

/etc/default/grub

Many of Grub’s options that used to be in menu.lst are now here. This includes things like whether or not to display the Grub menu, and how long to wait before timeout. This screenshot is the default config in Ubuntu 9.10, and is set to hide the Grub menu, disable “recovery mode” options, and instruct the kernel to include a splash screen.

By the way, to force Grub 2 to show the menu on boot just hold down the Shift key while Grub is starting.

/etc/grub.d/

This is where things really begin to differ from Grub legacy. Where you’d normally enter all your boot options in the menu.lst file, Grub 2 takes a very different approach. The /etc/grub.d/ directory contains individual files, each representing a option for the boot menu. The following shows the files contained in the default install.

While it’s certainly a lot different than Grub legacy, you may notice something familiar about that folder. It’s set up in a way very similar to the standard Linux startup system, SysV Init. Each of the files shown is a shell script that executes in order. Order is determined by the numbers at the start of each filename, so the script in 00_header will always run before, say, 05_debian_theme.

/etc/grub.d/40_custom

Chances are, if you need to edit your boot menu, this is the file you’re looking for. This is where you add your custom entries to the menu. Since this is the last numbered file in the grub.d directory (as explained in the section above), any entries you place in this file will show up at the end of the boot menu.

By default, the 40_custom file is mostly empty. In this example, I’ve added a new menu entry.

Splash Images

You can easily download the Grub 2 splash pack in Ubuntu with:

sudo apt-get install grub2-splashimages

When it’s done, all the images will be stores as TGA files in /usr/share/images/grub/.

The file that specifies what splash image to use on boot is the 05_debian_theme file we saw earlier. So to set our new custom splash, we want to open /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme as root in whatever text editor you prefer. Look for a line similar to the highlighted one in the example below,

And change the filename to whichever splash image you prefer. Make certain the path points to the /usr/share/images/grub/ directory. Some older versions default to /usr/share/images/desktop-base/ and that’s not what we want.

Applying changes

As you may remember from the beginning of this guide, the grub.cfg file is auto-generated from the other config files we’ve covered. When you’ve made changes to those files, you’ve got to tell Grub to read them and pull together a new config file. To do that, simply run the following command as root:

update-grub

Once it’s complete, reboot your computer (or virtual machine) to see the results. Don’t forget to hold Shift while booting, if your menu is still set to Hidden.

Installation

As with previous Kubuntu versions, you can install it from the desktop of the running live CD. The interface for the installation now follows KDE 4′s Oxygen Air theme and has new graphical representations of several options.

Booting and Login

Booting is faster than ever, and the new KDE Air theme login window is the default.

KDE 4.3

If you have been following my weekly posts, you already know about many of the features new in KDE 4.3. While it has been available in the 9.04 Jaunty backport repositories for some time, it will now be the default KDE version with 9.10.  Just to recap, here are some of the features new with KDE 4.3:

New Krunner features and layout

• New desktop effects, including the slide back feature
• New KDE games, including an Egyptian mummy theme
• New system tray that includes an improved notification system
• Several new plasma widgets, including one for Google Calendar

OpenOffice.org Integration

In previous versions, OpenOffice integrated with KDE 3 themes or not at all. Now, with OpenOffice.org 3.1, it is well-integrated with KDE 4 widgets and themes.

K3b

One of KDE’s most universally loved applications was one of the last to be ported to KDE 4. Kubuntu includes an early version of K3b that is fully KDE4-based. K3b is a CD and DVD burning program. It is not clear how stable this version is, and I did not have any CDs to test it.

Amarok and Codecs

Kubuntu has long suffered from the codec discrimination that nearly all Linux distributions have endured.  Proprietary codecs that cannot be packaged with a free operating system have often left users disgruntled, sometimes even blaming the distribution developers. It has always been relatively easy to install codecs with Kubuntu, but now, starting Amarok will give you a notice that you may want to install certain additional software packages. Check the ones you want and then click “Install Selected“. This is all processed through the new update notifier, which is integrated with Kpackagekit.

Kpackagekit

This is the application installation and management software for Kubuntu. Like its predecessor Adept and the GTK version Synaptic, Kpackagekit relies on apt-get as a backend and uses the repositories listed in Apt’s sources. In Karmic, installation is even easier, and it is fully integrated with the update system and KDE’s notification system.

USB Startup Disk

Kubuntu provides an easy-to-us KDE-based program to create a Kubuntu startup disk.

Web Browser

Kubuntu has always been about options. In fact, the very existence of Kubuntu could be considered an Ubuntu option for a KDE-based distribution. Konqueror is still the default web browser for the latest Kubuntu, but the developers have added some options. For those that want a slim, lightweight, Webkit-based browser, Arora is now in the official repositories. For those die-hard Firefox fans, Kubuntu now includes a handy installation program.  When you click “Firefox installation” in the “Internet” menu, you are presented with an installation screen.

Overall, Karmic Koala looks more polished than any previous Kubuntu version and probably any other KDE-based distribution to date. Nevertheless, it is still in Beta at least for another week, and an honest review will have to wait.  With this preview, however, you have a glimpse of what is on the horizon.