Ubuntu 9.04: Modest Desktop Improvements And New Server Apps

In addition to support for Microsoft’s MAPI Exchange protocol, the GNOME 2.26 release with which Ubuntu 9.04 ships includes a new volume control applet with a horizontal slider and an integrated interface for switching among sound themes (or silencing them), an overhauled disc burning application, and a handful of other enhancements laid out here.

While I was able to opt for Ext4 from Ubuntu’s LiveCD-based installer, this installer still lacks support for building an Ubuntu system with encrypted partitions. To install a system with encrypted partitions, it’s necessary to use Ubuntu’s text-based alternative installer. Considering that even the conservative Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 now includes an option for encrypting hard drives in its regular graphical installer, there isn’t any reason why Ubuntu’s default installer shouldn’t offer users this important security option.

Ubuntu 9.04 is also available in a netbook remix edition, which sports a set of user interface components that have been designed to work well on 10-inch and smaller displays.

I used a utility available in Ubuntu’s repositories, called usb-imagewriter, to turn a 1GB USB memory stick, into an installer and live test environment, for Jaunty’s netbook remix edition.

I tried out the stick on an MSI Wind U100 with a 10-inch display, and I found that the remixed Jaunty release did indeed make the most of the small screen. The system did away with the familiar desktop, window and menu structure, and offered me instead an interface more akin to a smartphone.

When I followed one of the application or location links laid out on my home screen, the application or file manager window would fill the whole screen. A small bar atop the display contained links I could use to bring other open applications to the front or to push everything to the back and expose the home screen again.

Server Roles

Ubuntu is also a solid option for server implementations, but in the past Canonical hasn’t done as much to set Ubuntu apart from other Linux server options as it has to distinguish its distribution on the desktop.

This appears to be changing, as Version 9.04 comes with what’s meant to be a ready-out-of-the-box mail server role, based on two pieces of software, the Dovecot IMAP server and the Postfix mail transport agent. These two, which respectively, handle mail receiving and mail sending are developed separately, and typically distributed separately as well. In the server flavour of Ubuntu 9.04, the two components are bundled together to streamline configuration.

However, at this point, the mail server configuration is far from ready out of the box, and I couldn’t find any official documentation available for the Dovecot-Postfix bundle. In the community-provided portion of the Ubuntu documentation wiki, I found several help items related to these mail components, but a polished mail server role for Ubuntu remains a work in progress.

Along similar lines, I would like to see the project come up with a ready-to-install directory server implementation, based on LDAP, Fedora Directory Server or perhaps Red Hat’s identity, policy and audit, (FreeIPA) project. As Microsoft has demonstrated with Active Directory, well-integrated directory services can be a powerful addition to a server operating system and can make life easier when implementing other server roles, such as mail services.

Ubuntu 9.04 also includes a string of updates to the distribution’s virtualisation hosting stack. Like Red Hat, the Ubuntu project has trained the bulk of its virtualisation focus on its kernal based virtual machine (KVM), the hypervisor that’s built directly into the Linux kernel.

As with most other Linux distributions, Ubuntu 9.04 also comes with virt-manger, a graphical virtualisation management tool that comes out of Red Hat’s Emerging Technology group. This tool is flagged as experimental, but it works well for basic creation and monitoring of virtual machines running atop either KVM or Xen. The tool also includes functionality for connecting to like-managed virtualisation hosts on your network. During tests, I was able to see another host I’d set up on my network, but I wasn’t able to connect to it.

Conclusion

Despite certain drawbacks with software enhancements, in graphics compatibility, and mail server software that doesn’t do what it says on the tin, the Jaunty Jackalope delivers the latest in open-source software and will serve well in both desktop and server roles.  Ubuntu 9.04 also comes with a preview version of Eucalyptus, which allows organisations to build their own Amazon EC2-style compute clouds, as well as a remix version for running Jaunty Jackalope on netbooks.