Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal launch day

Codename for Ubuntu 13.04 revealed

October 18, 2012

South African entrepreneur and self-appointed benevolent dictator for life of the Ubuntu project, Mark Shuttleworth, has revealed that the next version of the Ubuntu operating system will be code-named Raring Ringtail.

This was just hours before the release of Ubuntu 12.10 “Quantal Quetzal” scheduled for today (18 October 2012).

Ubuntu uses the last two digits of the year and the month of release as its version number. With Ringtail’s release date set for April 2013 it will therefore be known as Ubuntu 13.04.

Following some confusion about which type of ringtail he was referring to, Shuttleworth posted an update on his blog:

For clarity, this ringtail is no laconic lemur, it’s a ringtail raccoon. However, for the sake of sanity, it’s not a raring ringtail raccoon, just a raring ringtail. There.

Ubuntu 12.10 preview
Image credit: WebUpd8

Ubuntu 12.10 Desktop

In the press statement announcing the launch of Ubuntu 12.10, Canonical said that the operating system brings together the desktop and the web.

The Ubuntu 12.10 Dash is one of the major points this integration is visible, offering the following features:

When searching for documents, users can see results from online services such as Google Drive in addition to files saved on their hard drives.
The Online Accounts feature allows authentication to online sites so that content such as photos from Flickr and contacts from Facebook can all be searched.
Both paid and free content, whether music, videos or any product be it digital or physical from Amazon and the Ubuntu One Music Store can be searched. The results are displayed in a separate section labelled, ‘More Suggestions’.
Previews give large, clear previews of content as it appears in the Dash search results (previewing an album found in the Ubuntu One Music Store reveals a track listing and the option to listen, for example).

Frequently-used web applications like Facebook, Twitter, Last.FM, eBay and Gmail can be made available without launching the browser with the new Web Apps feature.

Ubuntu One, a personal cloud service that offers 5GB of free online storage, is integrated and now available as a native app on Mac OS X as beta, as well as Windows, iOS and Android.

Similar to Dropbox, Ubuntu One also now has a referrals programme that lets users get more storage in return for recommending new users.

Ubuntu 12.10 album preview
Image credit: WebUpd8

Ubuntu 12.10 Server

On the server side, Ubuntu 12.10 includes the Folsom release of OpenStack, alongside deployment and management tools.

Canonical said that Ubuntu Server 12.10 is the fifth Ubuntu release to feature OpenStack in the form of Ubuntu Cloud Infrastructure.

Ubuntu Server 12.10 is also the first OS to support Intel’s new Open Attestation (OAT) in an OpenStack environment, according to Canonical.

Juju, Ubuntu’s service orchestration tool, is now natively supported on OpenStack clouds running on Ubuntu. Canonical said that this means it can also be used on public clouds powered by Ubuntu, such as HP.

Enterprises that have built infrastructure on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS can now remain on that long-term support release, but deploy compatible versions of the latest OpenStack releases, directly from Canonical’s Ubuntu Cloud Archive.

Canonical explained that the archive is a growing repository of backported versions of OpenStack that gives enterprise Ubuntu users access the latest open cloud software on a fully supported and certified platform.