Ubuntu 12.10 named Quantal Quetzal, 12.04 comes 26th April

The Linux movement is primarily driven on the desktop by Ubuntu and its many variations, primarily Mint Linux. There are still many who use Ubuntu Linux and there’s a new version coming this Thursday, the 26th of April. It’s been called Precise Pangolin and it follows the tradition of Ubuntu versions being named after animals. Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux has put up a blog post talking about the naming of the next major update - 12.10, slated to launch in October this year. It’s just been named Quantal Quetzal, after the Quetzal, a bird found in Mexico. The Quantal part of the name most likely comes from the inclusion of the Quantum networking virtualization package in the 12.10 release.

Ubuntu 12.04, just a few days away

The nearest release, 12.04 has been in beta for a while now and the final build is expected to hit the web the day after tomorrow. Precise Pangolin is going be released as a Long Term Support release, which should offer an extended support period - this is particularly useful for organizations who don’t want to update their operating system every few months, instead only want critical and security updates as they come. The last LTS Ubuntu build was 10.04, back in 2010. Support for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS will end sometime next year, while support for 12.10 LTS is expected to last till somewhere around 2017.

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For those of you who haven’t tried Ubuntu, you can give it a shot using the LiveCD release. Canonical even has a web-based version setup to get you accustomed to the interface. Ubuntu 12.04 will bring along a whole bunch of improvements over its older version. There is better support for trackpads, especially those which have physical buttons integrated into them. Accessing applications should be simpler now as well using a feature called HUD - users would be able to able to access menus and applications by typing a few keywords. The new build will also switch to Rhythmbox as the default media player. Updates to GNOME and LibreOffice are also present. An all new Linux kernel - version 3.2.14 will be plugged into the OS.