If you have not heard of Wayland until today, it is because Wayland has not had any public release of their display protocol. Wayland has been available at its Git repository for anyone to try it out, though finally, it will get the public release of its first version 1.0, after four years of development.

Wayland has been of special interest for many Linux enthusiasts, as it is a perfect replacement for the X Window System. The Wikipedia article on Wayland explains it in simpler language.

Wayland provides a method for compositing window managers to communicate directly with applications and to communicate directly with video and input hardware. Applications render graphics to their own buffers, and the window manager becomes the display server, compositing those buffers to form the on-screen display of application windows. This is a simpler and more efficient approach than using a compositing window manager with the X Window System.

Wayland will provide an excellent alternative for those who loath the X Window System. Fedora and Ubuntu are the two major Linux distros, which have always been interested in Wayland, and they will replace X with Wayland at the first chance. The Tizen project is also looking forward to using Wayland.

Kristian Høgsberg is the founder of Wayland, which is released under the MIT license. You can read this interview of Kristian Høgsberg for this coming FOSDEM. Wayland will be announced and released at this FOSDEM 2012, to be held in a few days.

Over the last few years, Canonical and Mark Shuttleworth have become extremely innovative about User Experience (UX). Ubuntu really has some UX experts in its team, and the kind of things that have been coming out of Canonical for the last few months shout out loud that Canonical is putting them to good use. The recent UX change for Ubuntu is “Heads Up Display” or HUD, and it surely looks like a good feature.

Heads Up Display, or HUD is a new way of interacting with applications, where you do not go through multiple menu hierarchies to reach a menu item. Instead, you simply type it and HUD will search it for you, in live. Moreover, HUD remembers what you typed last and prioritizes those commands in search results, so is also very fast for common tasks. It bridges the gap between the command line interface and application menus, and does it wonderfully.

As mentioned by Olli Ries in a blog post, who was once the Principal Director of engineering at Novell, and is one of the Product Strategy Engineering Managers at Canonical presently, plans for HUD were underway even before the last Ubuntu Developer Summit.

Canonical has recently revealed a concept for a fully featured TV application, based on Ubuntu. It is known as the Ubuntu TV, and has been revealed at CES 2012. Ubuntu TV competes directly with Google TV in its attempt to redefine the entertainment experience on television. It has some amazing features and the first commercial appearance of the TV is expected by the end of this year.

From the CEO’s Desk

In an interview with PC Pro, Canonical CEO Jane Silber says,

It is a simple viewing experience for online video, both your own and routed over the internet. OEMs and ODMs are increasingly wary of the walled garden [approach] that certainly Apple takes – and increasingly Google, although it is much more open than Apple. We see a lot of demand for a neutral player.

Jane Silber knows Canonical is up against Google and Apple with this technology, and therefore, it are offering the software free of charge to gain a competitive edge. The source code for Ubuntu TV will be released later today, allowing developers to customize and modify it, as they want. Jane Silber takes pride in saying “Ubuntu TV will provide viewers with a neutral player”.

Overview

Ubuntu TV will let you stream media content like music, videos an photos from your PC to your TV. You can search, watch, record and play streaming videos. It will also allow media sharing with portable devices using Ubuntu One. You can also share your screen with tablets and smartphones. Like the Software Center in Ubuntu, Ubuntu TV will have an online store where developers can submit their apps for Ubuntu TV. Besides, the application will be controlled with a smartphone or with a TV remote.

Ubuntu TV for Content Providers and Hardware manufacturer

Canonical is calling the technology a Smart TV. Canonical will need to partner with OEMs to enter into production with this new product. This can be an excellent deal for TV manufacturers, now that global content distribution rules, OS development and software engineering  will be handled by Canonical completely.

Verdict

This is Canonical’s first attempt to move beyond the PC. However, this technology of  smart TV has only seen sluggish growth so far, and there is definitely something wrong with the feeble attempts that everyone is making at enriching our TV viewing experience. In spite of a strong marketing force, Google TV has not reached many houses yet.

Initial markets of interest for this product will be the US and China. Canonical plans to extend it to the UK later. However, these markets will prove to be profitable only when Canonical makes local-content deals.

A few days ago, several medium and low priority security-related bugs were handled for Firefox and many other Mozilla applications. These bugs affected all versions of Firefox from version 4, and all versions of Thunderbird from version 5. All patches for all these bugs were added to Launchpad.

While some of these attacks caused the application to crash, others would allow execution of arbitrary code through JavaScript. As Ubuntu’s LTS releases are supported for long periods, fixes for these bugs were released for Ubuntu 8.04, and also for Ubuntu 10.04, Ubuntu 10.10, Ubuntu 11.04 and Ubuntu 11.10.

The Ubuntu Security Notice on this page lists down all the vulnerabilities that were addressed with updated Launchpad patches.

Alexandre Poirot, Chris Blizzard, Kyle Huey, Scoobidiver, Christian Holler,
David Baron, Gary Kwong, Jim Blandy, Bob Clary, Jesse Ruderman, Marcia
Knous, and Rober Longson discovered several memory safety issues, which
could possibly be exploited to crash Firefox or execute arbitrary code as
the user that invoked Firefox. (CVE-2011-3660)

Aki Helin discovered a crash in the YARR regular expression library that
could be triggered by JavaScript in web content. (CVE-2011-3661)

It was discovered that a flaw in the Mozilla SVG implementation could
result in an out-of-bounds memory access if SVG elements were removed
during a DOMAttrModified event handler. An attacker could potentially
exploit this vulnerability to crash Firefox. (CVE-2011-3658)

Mario Heiderich discovered it was possible to use SVG animation accessKey
events to detect key strokes even when JavaScript was disabled. A malicious
web page could potentially exploit this to trick a user into interacting
with a prompt thinking it came from the browser in a context where the user
believed scripting was disabled. (CVE-2011-3663)

It was discovered that it was possible to crash Firefox when scaling an OGG
<video> element to extreme sizes. (CVE-2011-3665)

You can find more about these vulnerabilities in the Ubuntu CVE tracker with the numbers 3658, 3660, 3661, 3663 and 3665. For Ubuntu 11.10 users, a Firefox 9 patch is available at this link. Alternatively, you can update your system with the latest version of all packages. Once the update is done, do not forget to restart Firefox, to apply the patch.

For any software center or app marketplace, integrating a payment mechanism involves managing fraud recognition and geographical tax constrains. Once these hurdles are crossed, it is merely a matter of technical integration. Ubuntu Software Center showcases some non-free games like Braid, that are extremely popular on other platforms. However, payment for purchase of paid games and apps has been a long-standing issue, for Ubuntu, because it supported only credit cards.

Following a discussion on AskUbuntu, I arrived at a page  on Ubuntu Brainstorm  a few months ago. It was a discussion on possible payment methods for Ubuntu Software Center with an ongoing voting. After almost six months, during which a tough battle ensued, support for PayPal payments beat third-party payment solutions by a small margin. PayPal support grabbed 127 votes, with bank plugins lagging behind at 120 votes. The idea has finally been implemented, and this brings in support for PayPal Payments in the Ubuntu Software Center, beside the regular Credit Card payment method.

All payments for app purchase are directed through “Ubuntu Pay”, a feature in the Ubuntu Software Center. After Ubuntu integrates  PayPal into the Software Center fully, users will be allowed to choose between Credit Card and PayPal payments before they proceed with the actual payment.

Canonical announced the integration saying,

It’s been a long time in development, but we’re finally drawing close to releasing Paypal support in Ubuntu Pay, the payment service behind Ubuntu Software Centre.  We’re aiming to launch this new feature before Christmas.

Not everyone might welcome this move, give the fact that it brings Ubuntu closer to closed-source and proprietary software. Moreover, PayPal’s shady business practices and steep exchange rates are not  appreciable  either. However, this PayPal integration will let Ubuntu application developers earn from worldwide app-sales in a hassle free way, and will attract new talents and developers to the Ubuntu app ecosystem.

It’s official, Ubuntu has rolled out a Web Music addition to their Ubuntu One service.

An addition to the Ubuntu One “cloud service” now allows all users with a paid subscription to save, store and stream music directly from a web browser. After logging into your  UbuntuOne  control panel, there is a new tab showing off the features, which include offline listening, access to the vast Ubuntu One Music Store and 20GB of storage, with a monthly subscription. Of course there is also a 30 day free trial for the service should you want to try before you buy.

Previous to today, the service was only available from a mobile device running iOS or Android. A free app, available in both the Apple App Store and the Android Market, provided mobile users with a way to stream and access all the content stored in their cloud. Although users have access to the iTunes Cloud and Google Music on their respective handsets, many use alternatives that provide “personalized  radio” based on recommendations, tag matching and “crowdsourced” content such as Spotify and Pandora. Unfortunately UbuntuOne Web Music does not include this, but playlist creation, queue management and shuffle might be enough for you.

It really does seem as if Ubuntu is laying the framework and infrastructure for eventually providing a mobile operating system or partnering with an OEM for shipping U1 services directly on devices. They have a niche market with Ubuntu installations on many personal computers, they have cross-platform sync through a proven cloud service that allows file storage, contact and note sync, and now completely cross-platform music streaming.

Ubuntu says they will continue building out their One service and 2012 will be a big year. The mobile space has been heating up for a long time, and although there might not be any room for a new platform, providing tightly integrated services could be a real differentiating factor for many OEMs. Hopefully Canonical sees this opportunity and can seize it, truly bringing Ubuntu to the masses.

Ubuntu Linux turned seven recently, and so did an ideology that has brought Ubuntu Linux this far. The simple South-African word Ubuntu that started out as a philosophy is also an operating system today.

The credit for the name Ubuntu goes to Mark Shuttleworth, who is a South-African entrepreneur operating out of England. He started Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu. Today, Canonical is known for a multitude of products-Ubuntu,  Upstart,  Storm,  Bazaar  and  Quickly. Perhaps, it is best known for giving the world of Linux distros its Disney-queen.

After creating Ubuntu, he wanted to lay a strong foundation around the Ubuntu ecosystem. He wanted to make it sustainable and that is where, the Ubuntu operating system actually started following the Ubuntu philosophy. In October 2004, Mark Shuttleworth started a trust- The Ubuntu Foundation to ensure long-term support for the Linux distro Ubuntu. The trust went inactive after a few years, but it still exists today. In fact, Ubuntu has formed better wings to address the sustainability issue. However, what Ubuntu really means, was immortalized in this  interview of Nelson Mandella.

Ubuntu 11.10 was released a few days ago. It has vast improvements over the last version that was praised by people. The new Unity interface and behind-the-scene changes are remarkable. Moreover, when it comes to trying out Ubuntu, there are equally flexible options. You can  try it online, or as it has always been with Ubuntu, you can try it using a live CD.

Unetbootin  has been the  tool of choice for creating Ubuntu live CDs  all this long. This time, Canonical is going with a new tool call Universal USB Installer. Universal USB Installer has been around for a long time. However, it is good to see that Ubuntu allows new tools to gain from its own popularity. Unetbootin has earned its fame, and now, Universal USB Installer is on its way to fame.

To create a bootable Ubuntu USB drive installer, go to this download page for  Universal USB Installer  and download the software. It is sized at around 1 MB and it does not require any installation.

Select Ubuntu 11.10 from the drop-down list at the first screen. Subsequently, you can either download the ISO file from the application itself, or select a  downloaded Ubuntu 11.10 ISO file.

The persistent file-size allows us to have a portable functional operating system with user-files. This makes it a wonderful choice for portability. Clicking on Create’ will create your portable USB disk. Make sure you have secured all your important files on the removable disk.

Once you have a bootable disk with this software, you can install Ubuntu using it or use it as a portable Ubuntu installation.

Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot was released couple of hours ago and quite a few people would have already downloaded and installed or upgraded it. If you’re one of those wondering – “How does it look?” – here’s a brief screenshot tour.

Ubuntu greets you with a nice welcome/login screen. Your account is selected by default, but there’s an option for Guest login, as well as login as any user option.

You can set it to login automatically, if you wish. Accessibility option is provided for, via an onscreen keyboard, a high-contrast screen setting as well as a screen reader. The accessibility option is tucked away a little bit further away. A more prominent setting would have been much appreciated, though.

Once you login, you’re greeted with Ubuntu’s default user interface, Unity.

One of the complaints about Unity was that users didn’t know what to click on, besides the quick launcher icons – so Canonical has added a nice Ubuntu icon to ensure the launcher, Dash, gets more visibility. Clicking on Dash brings about a nice UI for actions which are most commonly used on a computer – Browser the Web, Listen to Music or View Photos.

The search bar is probably one that’s going to be used quite frequently, and is very well done. Not only the search results are very fast – it’s grouped according to the types of results. So typing a keyword will bring up the results grouped into apps, folders, files and so on. For example, clicking on More apps will bring up a list of all apps – both installed and that can be downloaded – again grouped into different types.

The categorization is not restricted to just apps – if you’re fanatical about, let’s say your music being well organized and tagged, Dash’s lenses feature will ensure that the music you want is available just by searching and then filtered as per the tags – for instance – by genre, release year and so on.

Clicking on View Photos brings up the photo viewer and manager, Shotwell. You’ll be prompted to import your photos and if required, categorize them into events.

Moving on, clicking on Listen to Music launches the music player, Banshee. Banshee can import your existing music collection – whether from a folder, a series of folders or even from iTunes.

Your music is always a click away – clicking on your user name brings a dropdown menu where you can select to play your music.

Due to legal restrictions, Ubuntu cannot play certain types of media (such as MP3 files) out of the box. Earlier, trying to get the codecs installed often resulted in a lot of frustration for the user. This has improved quite dramatically over the past few years and Oneiric Ocelot is no exception. If you try to play a media file which cannot be played, Banshee will prompt to check for available codecs & then proceed to install them.

As I had mentioned in my earlier post on Ubuntu Oneiric Ocelot beta, Ubuntu Software Center has been updated to include a top rated apps and featured apps view. This makes app discovery a lot easier.

Both free and paid apps are listed – with all the details about them.

The Unity Launcher is where you can configure your mostly frequently applications to be pinned so that you can launch them right away. Adding or removing an application is another click away.

Some of the launcher actions are context-senstive too – for instance, right-clicking on the Word Processor ( LibreOffice’s Writer is the default, in case you’re wondering) provides an option to create a new document. Right-clicking on the Screenshot application allows you to take a full-screen or partial window screenshot and this is just a (right) click away!

Wrapping up the tour, Workspaces( aka virtual desktops) are also available by default on the Launcher, and allows you to move all related apps to a workspace – I’ve used this feature since my early Linux days, and is a immense productivity booster.

I’ve been playing with Ubuntu 11.10 for a few hours now since launch ( and the beta as well) – and I’ve found it to be really nice, with no major bugs – except for small niggles.

If you’re itching to try out Ubuntu – you can always download the ISO and boot it off the DVD/CD drive. Also, Wubi allows you to try it out along with your Windows install with no partitioning required. There’s also a really nice web-based tour that you can try out, if you don’t want to bother with the download. Do drop in your comments about the new release!

Live CDs have always been an  USP  (Unique Selling Proposition) for Linux. Since live CDs appeared for the first time, there was a sharp increase in the number of users trying out different Linux flavors, just to get a taste of it. You did not need to install it anywhere on your hard disk and that was awesome.

Ubuntu has taken this flexibility to the next level. This time, the user-experience of Ubuntu 11.10 is available on the web and you can actually try it even before you download any CD or DVD image. The idea of having an online demo of Ubuntu was proposed  in a conversation  that said,

As a result of hearing a lot of my friends complain about their  experiences with Vista I have been pondering ways to make things easy  for them when it comes to test driving Ubuntu. Our live CD is  absolutely amazing, it is not only useful but it is a great test drive  experience. What if we could make things a little MORE easier though,  like provide a live demo of the desktop via the web. I am thinking of  something that can be accessed through a webpage (probably via a  plugin)  that allows the person to interact with the Ubuntu desktop without having to reboot their machine or burn something to a CD. My first question is do we have anything like that already out there that is not  commercial? Also it is important that it is locally run, I want to  customize it and tweak it.

The idea has come to fruition and we have a demo tour of Ubuntu 11.10 that can be  accessed at this page.

Are you impressed with the demo?

Head over to this post for a comprehensive list of Ubuntu downloads.