Lucid Lynx - Ubuntu 10.04

One of our generous customers donated an aging P4 machine with keyboard and 17" monitor on the condition we scrub the hard disk and make sure none of his data escape into the wild. After trashing the Windows XP installation by wiping the hard disk we grabbed the daily release of Lucid Lynx Alpha 3 and in minutes, logged in with all drivers installed and Internet connection configured. Ubuntu is much easier than Windows in this regard, most stuff just works.

One of the two DVD drives is dead and the desktop was sluggish until we installed 512MB of DDR266 memory to bring the total to one gigabyte. Performance is downright acceptable for a 6 year old machine.

In addtion to the usual assortment of Linux software including OpenOffice this edition pays special attention to social media and interoperation with various handheld devices.

• Access to DRM free media. Once you buy it, it's yours. Burn it to CD, play it on your IPod.
• Desktop support for Twitter, Identi.ca, Facebook, FriendFeed, Flickr, Digg, and Qaiku.
• Support for Ipod, Iphone, Touch and other Apple devices.

The first beta is due next Thursday and the final release on April 28th. If you want a preview, you can pick up a live CD at our office in Galax.