Ubuntu previews Jaunty

Mark Shuttleworth previews plans for 2009 Ubuntu release

Ubuntu founder and Canonical chief, Mark Shuttleworth, yesterday announced his ambitions for Ubuntu 9.04, now called 'Jaunty Jackalope'.

In an email to developers last night, Shuttleworth said that the bar for Ubuntu 9.04 was set very high. "We move into a year where we can reasonably expect Ubuntu to ship on several million devices, to consumers who can reasonably expect the software experience to be comparable to those of the traditional big OSs - Microsoft and Apple."

Dell last week announced its new Inspiron Mini 9 netbook which ships with Ubuntu pre-installed. Shuttleworth obviously is obviously expecting more of those types of deals in the coming year.

Shuttleworth said that one of the priorities for Jaunty was to reduce the amount of time it took to boot the system. "We want Ubuntu to boot as fast as possible - both in the standard case, and especially when it is being tailored to a specific device."

Shuttleworth also emphasised the need for Jaunty to blur the line between web services and desktop applications.

Ubuntu 8.10, Intrepid Ibex, is due for release in October this year. Ubuntu 9.04 will be released in April next year.

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