Canonical plans on Thursday to release "Gutsy Gibbon," the Ubuntu Linux version 7.10 that the company hopes will lay the foundation for a serious push into the server and other markets six months from now.

That's when Gutsy Gibbon's sequel, "Hardy Heron," is scheduled to arrive. Gutsy Gibbon will have the usual Ubuntu support life span--18 months--but Hardy Heron will be the company's second version to feature long-term support, which lasts three years for the desktop product and five years for the server.

It has been over four months since Dell started shipping computers preloaded with Ubuntu GNU/Linux to home consumers in the United States. Lets take a moment to look at the progress that has been made so far. John Hull, manager of the Linux Engineering team in Austin was kind enough to let me interview him by e-mail. Besides commenting on the current state of affairs with Ubuntu on Dell machines, he also offers some insight in how the Linux team at Dell works and opens a small window into the future of Linux at Dell.

rr -- short for retain and recall -- is a small utility that's both simple and useful. When you need to work on a config file buried deep in the bowels of your system and don't want to type its full path name to do so, rr is just the thing.

Google Desktop is Google’s desktop search application. In June 2007 Google released the first version for Linux. October 12’s update adds more indexable image formats, better thumbnails, hotkey customization, and indexing of MS Office documents. Google Desktop for Linux can be easily set up and used in Ubuntu.

Two weeks ago, I wrote a review about Desktop effects by default in Gutsy - how Compiz Fusion enhances Ubuntu's desktop of version 7.10. I published it by the time the beta was still fresh. We have passed the release candidate by now, so this is pretty much the actual state of affairs. Time to see what has been fixed (and what not) or generally improved.

If you are joining us now, here is a bit of a refresher: as we close in on the 7.10 (also known as Gutsy Gibbon) release, we are taking a look at the various cool features that we are going to get as part of this new Ubuntu. We have already looked at Deskbar and Tracker, Bulletproof X and Graphical X configuration, sharing your computer with Fast User Switching, Desktop Effects with Compiz, Better Firefox plugins and Gnash and Better hardware support. Today we turn to AppArmor, the application security framework.

First off, I'm by and large a full-time Ubuntu user. However, I'm also one of their most vocal critics for becoming so detached from their core market as well. In response, I have used both operating systems and it has been interesting to see how each deals with the issue of usability for the casual user.

Translating a command line tool to a graphical interface usually means a loss of functionality. However, in the case of the newly released trowser text browser, while I wouldn't swear that the transition has retained all the functionality of the less command that it is intended to replace, I doubt that anyone short of an expert is likely to notice the difference.

If OpenOffice.org's own bibliography feature doesn't really cut it for you, you have several choices. One popular bibliography solution is Bibus, a cross-platform tool that integrates nicely with OpenOffice.org. It is, however, not the only bibliographical tool out there. In fact, there is another nifty tool called Zotero that turns Firefox into a powerful research tool. More importantly, it comes with an OpenOffice.org extension that allows you to use Zotero as a bibliography database. Zotero also sports a few clever features that make the process of creating and managing bibliographies much more efficient.

The BBC has an article saying all Russian schools will be running Linux by 2009. Many schools were using illegal copies of Windows and schools were being prosecuted since Russia joined the WTO. Schools will slowly be moved to Linux over a period of 3 years.

Yesterday we took a look at the new Firefox plugin work. Today we turn to one of the most vexing of questions for many Linux users: hardware support and all that it means.

Why is hardware so vexing?

Basically, there is a lot of hardware and each requires a driver. People keep making new pieces and types of hardware and people keep buying it. All this means keeping up to date is a constant struggle, although projects like the Linux Driver Project are helping change that.

I have recently started expanding my research based from previous tutorials on network based installations and PXE booting + network based installations to include automated Ubuntu installations.  I will mention that I do not consider myself an expert at this by any means, but I wanted to give some of you a preview of what will end up being a much more mature tool.

I cannot tell you how many times I have found myself looking at that ugly and rather useless Xorg reconfigure screen that has never worked on Ubuntu for me. Generally, I would see something like this (not the exact image, but close) and then ask you to diagnose the problem from the x server output. This is fine for an advanced distro, but not for Ubuntu or its derivatives.

A small review of my usage of Ubuntu on my laptop for the past 3 months and a few improvements that I'd like to see in the OS to make it more user friendly for a normal desktop user.

Let me  know your thoughts...

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #60 for the week for the week October 7th - October 13th, 2007 is now available. In this issue we cover the release candidate of Ubuntu 7.10, learning more about Ubuntu at Ubuntu Open Week, Gutsy release parties, another Ubuntu Forums interview, new MOTU team member Laurent Bigonville, and, as always, much much more!

I was just over at the OpenOffice site browsing through some of their marketing materials to see if there was anything interesting. I came across a presentation that was given on September 19th at the OpenOffice 2007 Conference. The presentation was called “OpenOffice.org 3.0 and Beyond,” and it walked through some of the most notable features that are expected to be released in the next big OpenOffice milestone.

Although Linux is frequently referred to by the names of various distributions, what can properly be called “Linux” is really the management part of the operating system known as the kernel which interacts with the computer’s hardware. Here’s how the kernel works in Ubuntu, and how to rebuild it.

As the release of the next version of Xubuntu, 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon”, is set to arrive soon, I took a test drive with the release candidate, looking for bugs to be solved just before the final release, and to find out what’s new. This release will bring you many improvements inherited from Ubuntu but also tons of Xubuntu-specific improvements. Prepare for a long read.

Ubuntu 7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon" is due out in just a few days and shipping with it is the Linux 2.6.22 kernel. One of the interesting additions to the Linux kernel since the 2.6.20-based Ubuntu 7.04 "Feisty Fawn" release has been the tickless kernel feature. If you hadn't read out tickless kernel article from earlier this year, the tickless kernel feature (CONFIG_NO_HZ) is designed to improve the power efficiency especially on servers and portable devices.

One of the less-touted changes for Ubuntu 7.10 is the merge of the Ubuntu Studio repositories into the main ones (hosted by Canonical). This means you'll be able to install entire categories of multimedia software (audio, video, graphics) with a single command (or via Synaptic, as usual). You don't care, right?

Aren’t you tired of those audio players with billions of useless features that clutter up their graphical interface? I am. Most of the time, the player looks good on paper, but when I’m faced with the interface, I don’t even know where to start in order to play my music. There are a lot of buttons, lists, combo boxes a bit everywhere and their usage is not so intuitive.

Yesterday we took a look at Desktop Effects with Compiz. Today we turn to all the improvements for Firefox including the a better way to install plugins and the arrival of Gnash, a Free flash player.

Kubuntu 7.10 RC was announced as available several days ago. I installed it immediately, and I have to say, I’m very impressed! Although it’s still just a release candidate, it has all of the necessary ingredients: stability, responsiveness, innovation and coherency.

People seem to have quite high expectations of Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy), and to be honest, I don’t think they’ll be disappointed. Gutsy seems to be shaping up to be the best Ubuntu release ever, and it’s due for release next Thursday (18 October).There’s one particular aspect of Gutsy that I think is more important than most, and that is that it allows you to choose your level of freedom. I’d even go as far to say that this is an historic Linux distribution release, because of that.

It's always been my impression that, appearances to the contrary, Linux aficionados are no different than the rest of us. So I wasn't surprised when I saw a post on the Ubuntu Women forum, from a guy, who's wondering if there are "any good places online to meet like-minded free software women." (The "free," of course, refers to the software.)