Open source operating system Ubuntu 10.10 is available to download today for desktop, notebook, and server editions. Hooray for well-timed 10.10’s.
All these versions are emphasizing Canonical’s embracing of the cloud, whether in terms of a “personal cloud” for desktop and notebook users or the deployment in virtual environment of the server edition.
Ubuntu One Basic is available fo desktop and notebook users free of charge. The service provides a personal cloud for sharing and syncing files, contacts, bookmarks and notes. It comes with 2GB of free storage, which can be upgraded in additional 20GB blocks. Ubuntu 10.10 also marks an upgrade to the music store, as well as the addition of streaming of your personal music collection onto your Android or iPhone.
While the desktop and notebook versions emphasize the personal cloud, the server edition of Ubuntu 10.10 touts it as “the default open-source choice for cloud computing.” The server edition serves both the public cloud and local server environments, and offers new features that enhance its Amazon EC2 offering, including the ability to run the AMI offline on a KVM-virtualized machine. This feature is meant to give users the ability to develop on local servers before pushing to the public cloud.
You can take the server edition for a spin thanks to Canonical’s Ubuntu Server on Cloud 10 – one free hour of Ubuntu 10.10 on Amazon EC2. sere. From the launch on 10.10.10, anyone will be able to try out Ubuntu 10.10 Server Edition on Amazon EC2 for free for one hour. Visitors to the download pages will now be able to choose to experience the ease and speed of public cloud computing and Ubuntu.