prisoninmate writes: To celebrate the launch of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, due for release later this month, on April 21, Canonical put together an interesting infographic, showing the world how popular Ubuntu is. From the infographic, it looks like there are over 60 million Ubuntu images launched by Docker users, 14 million Vagrant images of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS from HashiCorp, 20 million launches of Ubuntu instances during 2015 in public and private clouds, as well as bare metal, and 2 million new Ubuntu Cloud instances launched in November 2015. Ubuntu is used on the International Space Station, on the servers of popular online services like Netflix, Snapchat, Pinterest, Reddit, Dropbox, PayPal, Wikipedia, and Instagram, in Google, Tesla, George Hotz, and Uber cars. It is also employed at Bloomberg, Weta Digital and Walmart, at the Brigham Young University to control the Mars Rover, and it is even behind the largest supercomputer in the world.

An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft has released a new Windows 10 preview for PCs. The preview, dubbed build 14316, comes with a range of features including support for Bash, which Microsoft had announced at its developer conference Build last week. Users interested in it can enable the feature by turning on Developer Mode (detailed instructions here), searching for "Windows Features," choosing "Turn Windows features on or off," and enable Windows Subsystem for Linux (Beta). To get Bash installed, open Command Prompt and type in "bash" (without the quotes.) Other features included in the new build include low battery notification, find my phone (ring my phone), and the ability to share map directions across devices. Additionally, the company has also released a new universal Skype app.

prisoninmate writes: Budgie-Remix maintainer David Mohammed informs Softpedia about the progress made with the upcoming operating system, whose ultimate goal is to become an official Ubuntu Linux flavor, possibly under the name of Ubuntu Budgie. Even Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth said in a Google+ comment last month that it will definitely support if there is a community around the packaging. Since their initial report, it looks like the developer managed to get in contact with the Ubuntu MATE project leader Martin Wimpress, who urged him to target Ubuntu 16.10 for an official status of his soon-to-be-named Ubuntu flavor built on top of the Budgie desktop environment created by the team of developers from Solus Project.

An anonymous reader writes: Wim Coekaerts, formerly Oracle's Senior VP of Linux and Virtualization Engineering, has left Oracle for Microsoft. Many of you may know of Coekaerts as "Mr. Linux" as he delivered the first Linux products, transitioned Oracle's programming staff from Windows to Linux desktops, and turned Oracle into a Linux distributor with the launch of its Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) clone, Oracle Linux. Mike Neil, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President of the Enterprise Cloud, told ZDNet, "Wim Coekaerts has joined Microsoft as Corp VP of Open Source in our Enterprise Cloud Group. As we continue to deepen our commitment to open source, Wim will focus on deepening our engagement, contributions and innovation to the open-source community."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: On top of the slew of news coming out of Microsoft's Build 2016 developer conference, a story broke yesterday that Microsoft was building an ad blocker into its Microsoft Edge browser. While this would be a big deal, it apparently isn't true. "We have no plans to build a native ad blocker into Microsoft Edge," a Microsoft spokesperson told VentureBeat. Microsoft was originally referencing the extension support it is building into Edge, which would allow ad blocking to work exactly like any other desktop browser. For those hoping for an Edge browser with built-in ad blocking, well, you're stuck with 'niche browsers' like Brave from Mozilla cofounder Brendan Eich and Adblock Browser.

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols reports for ZDNet: According to sources at Canonical, Ubuntu Linux's parent company, and Microsoft, you'll soon be able to run Ubuntu on Windows 10. This will be more than just running the Bash shell on Windows 10. After all, thanks to programs such as Cygwin or MSYS utilities, hardcore Unix users have long been able to run the popular Bash command line interface (CLI) on Windows. With this new addition, Ubuntu users will be able to run Ubuntu simultaneously with Windows. This will not be in a virtual machine, but as an integrated part of Windows 10. [...] Microsoft and Canonical will not, however, sources say, be integrating Linux per se into Windows. Instead, Ubuntu will primarily run on a foundation of native Windows libraries. Update: 03/30 16:16 GMT by M : At its developer conference Build 2016, Microsoft on Wednesday confirmed that it is bringing native support for Bash on Windows 10. Scott Hanselman writes: This isn't Bash or Ubuntu running in a VM. This is a real native Bash Linux binary running on Windows itself. It's fast and lightweight and it's the real binaries. This is a genuine Ubuntu image on top of Windows with all the Linux tools I use like awk, sed, grep, vi, etc. It's fast and it's lightweight. The binaries are downloaded by you - using apt-get - just as on Linux, because it is Linux. You can apt-get and download other tools like Ruby, Redis, emacs, and on and on. This is brilliant for developers that use a diverse set of tools like me.

prisoninmate writes: During last month's MWC 2016 event, Canonical had the BQ Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Edition tablet on display at their huge booth, along with the superb Meizu PRO 5 Ubuntu Edition smartphone, and the Sony Xperia Z1 and OnePlus One Ubuntu Phones. The company teased users last week with the availability for pre-order of the first ever Ubuntu tablet for March 28, and that day has arrived. Probably the most important aspect of the BQ Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Edition tablet, which interested many users, was the price, and we can tell you now that it costs €289.90 for the Full HD version, and €249.90 for the HD model. It can be pre-ordered now from BQ's online store.

prisoninmate writes: Canonical pushed the first-ever public Beta ISO images of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus), which the company calls "Final Beta" builds, and it looks like they ship with Linux kernel 4.4.6 LTS, the ability to move the Unity Launcher to the bottom of the screen, though, the option remains hidden, for now, the LibreOffice 5.1.1 office suite, GNOME Software as the default package manager, and GNOME Calendar as default calendar app, which supports Google Calendars as well. Official flavors like Ubuntu Studio, Kubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu GNOME, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, and Unbuntu Kylin had also participate in the Beta 2 release. Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and its official flavors are currently scheduled for release on April 21, 2016. (Xenial is kind of a cool word, too.)

prisoninmate writes: What's ubuntuBSD? Well, it's not that hard to figure out yourself, but just in case you're not sure, we can tell you that ubuntuBSD promises to bring the power of the FreeBSD kernel to Ubuntu Linux. The best part of using the FreeBSD kernel is that you'll end up using the famous Z File System, or ZFS. Xfce is also included along with the popular Firefox, LibreOffice, and Ubuntu Software Center apps. ubuntuBSD is inspired by the Debian GNU/kFreeBSD project, it is hosted on SourceForge, and has been created by Jon Boden.

prisoninmate writes from an article on Softpedia: It is official, the packages needed to move the Unity Launcher of Ubuntu Linux to the bottom of the screen have finally landed in the main repositories of the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system, due for release on April 21, 2016. Softpedia reported that Ubuntu users might be able to move the Unity7 Launcher at the bottom edge as a rumor in February -- but now they confirm it finally landed for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. It is not known if Canonical will implement a visual setting in the Apperance/Behaviour panel for users to easily switch between having the Unity Launcher on the left of at the bottom of the screen for the final release of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, but you can do it by running a simple command.

Esther Schindler writes: They're trying, honest they are. In 2016 alone, writes Steven Vaughan-Nichols, Microsoft announced SQL Server on Linux; integrated Eclipse and Visual Studio, launched an open-source network stack on Debian Linux; and it's adding Ubuntu Linux to its Azure Stack hybrid-cloud offering. That's all well and good, he says, but it's not enough. There's one thing Microsoft could do to gain real open-source trust: Stop forcing companies to pay for its bogus Android patents. But, there's too much money at stake, writes sjvn, for this to ever happen. For instance, in its last quarter, volume licensing and patents, accounted for approximately 9% of Microsoft's total revenue.

MojoKid writes: Also known as "Project Sputnik," Dell came up with the idea of offering developers a variant of their XPS 13 notebook running Linux and launched its first models over three years ago. Now in its 5th generation, Project Sputnik is still going strong today with the latest models combining Ubuntu 14.04 with Intel's Skylake processors. To kick off its newest generation of Developer Edition laptops, Dell is offering three Core i7 XPS 13 configurations, including two that feature 16GB of RAM. Dell said it also plans to add a Core i5 option to the Developer Edition lineup sometime down the line. Dell is seeing increased interest from customers and in addition to the XPS Developer Edition, Dell offers Ubuntu on its Precision 5510, 3510, 7510, and 7710 mobile workstations, as well as its Precision M3800. Cost of entry into Developer Edition territory runs $1,550. What that gets you is a 13.3-inch QHD+ (3200x1800) InfinityEdge touch display powered by an Intel Core i5-6560U processor, 8GB of LPDDR3 1866 RAM, and Intel Iris Graphics 540.

An anonymous reader writes: Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and newer will no longer be supporting AMD's widely-used Catalyst Linux (fglrx) driver. AMD has dropped support for this proprietary AMD driver in favor of encouraging users to use the open-source AMDGPU/Radeon drivers. While the fglrx/Catalyst driver is notorious among Linux gamers, this will represent a regression for many AMD Linux users due to the open-source driver only having OpenGL 4.1 support compared to OpenGL 4.5 in Catalyst, lower performance in common gaming workloads, incomplete OpenCL compute support, no CrossFire multi-GPU support, and other missing features. Much of the missing functionality will end up being implemented by AMD's new AMDGPU driver stack but that is still months away from being truly ready and will only benefit the very latest Radeon GPUs while the fglrx-free Ubuntu 16.04 is set to ship in April.

Freshly Exhumed writes: A series of posts on the Project Sputnik developers' forum at Dell indicate that hardware on a soon to be released XPS 13 Developer Edition laptop will support Thunderbolt 3 USB Type C, which has been tested on the device with video and USB 3.1 on non-dock devices, although Dell's Type C docks are not yet supported. Intel has already implemented Thunderbolt 3 drivers in the Linux kernel, so this Dell initiative represents a first for a physical implementation on a consumer platform.

prisoninmate writes: On Monday, February 22, 2016, Softpedia reported on the availability of new kernel updates for several of Canonical's supported Ubuntu Linux operating systems, including Ubuntu 15.10, for which five kernel vulnerabilities have been patched at that point in time. And from the looks of it, the respective kernel updates introduced a regression, which Canonical patched four days later, on February 26, 2016, saying that the issue was introduced along with the fixed vulnerabilities for Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) and it broke graphics displays for those running the OS in VMWare VMs.

LichtSpektren writes: Phoronix reports that Bradley M. Kuhn and Karen M. Sandler at the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFS) have posted a blog post today arguing that Canonical's plan to distribute Ubuntu 16.04 LTS "Xenial Xerus" with support for the ZFS file system violates the Linux kernel's GPLv2 license.

On February 18, Dustin Kirkland at Canonical wrote on his blog: "We at Canonical have conducted a legal review, including discussion with the industry's leading software freedom legal counsel, of the licenses that apply to the Linux kernel and to ZFS. And in doing so, we have concluded that we are acting within the rights granted and in compliance with their terms of both of those licenses...The CDDL cannot apply to the Linux kernel because zfs.ko is a self-contained file system module — the kernel itself is quite obviously not a derivative work of this new file system. And zfs.ko, as a self-contained file system module, is clearly not a derivative work of the Linux kernel but rather quite obviously a derivative work of OpenZFS and OpenSolaris. Equivalent exceptions have existed for many years, for various other stand alone, self-contained, non-GPL kernel modules. Our conclusion is good for Ubuntu users, good for Linux, and good for all of free and open source software."

The SFS's blog post of today states: "We are sympathetic to Canonical's frustration in this desire to easily support more features for their users. However, as set out below, we have concluded that their distribution of zfs.ko violates the GPL."

An anonymous reader writes: On February 20th, a hacker working under the handle 'Peace' took control of the website of Linux Mint, a popular Linux distribution derived from Ubuntu (and Debian) targeted toward non-technical users and power users unhappy with modern desktop environments. While these attacks are regrettable, and part of an infrastructure problem rather than a problem with the distribution itself, it increasingly appears that the Linux Mint team is spread too thin when it comes to security. The distribution itself blacklists updates that work perfectly in Ubuntu and Debian, and the graphical utilities don't update the kernel. Because the value added by Linux Mint is in Cinnamon, why do the developers need to distribute a broken version of Ubuntu when the Cinnamon DE could be distributed as an Ubuntu spin?

prisoninmate writes: Ubuntu 14.04.4 LTS (Long-Term Support) builds are available for download in the form of Live and Installable ISO images for Desktop, Server, Cloud, and Core products, on both 64-bit and 32-bit platforms, and that existing Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS users can now update their systems. But not only Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) users can update, as all the official flavors have been updated as well, so users of Kubuntu 14.04 LTS, Edubuntu 14.04 LTS, Xubuntu 14.04 LTS, Lubuntu 14.04 LTS, Ubuntu Studio 14.04 LTS, Mythbuntu 14.04 LTS, Ubuntu GNOME 14.04 LTS, and Ubuntu Kylin 14.04 LTS can also update their systems today or grab the new ISOs.

LichtSpektren writes: Ubuntu developer Dustin Kirkland has posted on his blog that Canonical plans to officially support the ZFS file system for the next Ubuntu LTS release, 16.04 "Xenial Xerus." The file system, which originates in Solaris UNIX, is renowned for its feature set (Kirkland touts "snapshots, copy-on-write cloning, continuous integrity checking against data corruption, automatic repair, efficient data compression") and its stability. "You'll find zfs.ko automatically built and installed on your Ubuntu systems. No more DKMS-built modules!" N.B. ext4 will still be the default file system due to the unresolved licensing conflict between Linux's GPLv2 and ZFS's CDDL.

Last week you asked questions of Ubuntu Unleashed author Matthew Helmke, about everything from system D to the future of Ubuntu and Canonical; he's responded, at length. Read on for Matthew's answers.