The Major Happenings From The Ubuntu 11.04 Summit

Last week was the Ubuntu 11.04 Developer Summit in Orlando, Florida of the United States where a variety of topics were discussed. Aside from the very surprising announcement that Ubuntu 11.04 will use the Unity Desktop rather than GNOME's interface, most of the coverage on Phoronix was focused around the X.Org / graphics side of things, such as the xorg-server and Mesa to be used by Ubuntu 11.04 and the other discussions. Of course, other things were discussed too at this Ubuntu Developer Summit, and here's some of the other major happenings from the event.

Allison Randal, the Technical Architect of Ubuntu as of a few months ago, has written an email entitled short summary of UDS-N where she shares some of these other highlights to look forward to with Ubuntu 11.04, which lives under the Natty Narwhal codename.

Besides Canonical's Unity providing the default desktop experience rather than GNOME (on supported systems), Ubuntu Netbook will be merged into the Ubuntu desktop spin with the 11.04 release so that both editions are available via a single CD. With Ubuntu 11.04, the Mono-powered Banshee will become the default music player, LibreOffice will replace OpenOffice.org, and there will be a technology preview of OpenStack, which is a cloud computing project led by Rackspace and NASA.

The Ubuntu 11.04 development cycle is also expected to encounter greater automated testing of packages/ISOs/hardware (somewhat similar to what we already do on a daily basis at ubuntu-tracker.phoromatic.com, improved back-ports support, and a push for greater community involvement with accessibility and accessibility testing for the Unity interface. When it comes to hardware support with Ubuntu 11.04, there will continue to be great focus on ARM hardware support, continued Linaro advancements, greater multi-monitor capabilities, and support for more touch-pad/touch-screen devices.

UDS Natty also resulted in discussions for better helping free software developers in their contributions to Ubuntu to make them easier and for advancing work in areas like multi-touch and gestures. There's also work planned on tools and resources for game developers. Lastly, with the Ubuntu Software Center they will begin working on a feature for adding support to donate money to free software projects through this "Ubuntu app store."

Ubuntu 11.04 should definitely be one interesting release when it arrives in April of 2011.