Ubuntu Desktop 10.04 LTS will feature extensive design work, faster boot speed, social network integration, online services and the Ubuntu One Music Store.

There will also be a Ubuntu 10.04 Netbook Edition, which enables netbook users, in addition to benefiting from the improvements in the Desktop Edition, see even faster boot speeds on SSD-based devices and faster suspend/resume that will extend battery life. However, this 10.04 Netbook Edition will not be an LTS.

* Direct upgrade path for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS and Ubuntu 9.10 users
o No need to rip and replace, in-place upgrades
* Stability and security enhancements for LTS including:
o Five years of security and maintenance updates free to all users
o AppArmor security by default on key packages
o Kernel hardening (memory protection, module loading blocking, address space layout randomisation)
o Uncomplicated Firewall extended to all common services
o Encrypted Home and Private directories
* Multiple added or updated applications and packages since 8.04 LTS available as install options, including:
o CouchDB
o Puppet
o Eucalyptus
o Django 1.1
o OpenJDK6
o Tomcat 6
o MySQL 5.1
o ClamAv
o SpamAssassin
o Samba 3.4
o Python 2.6
o Nagios 3
o Ruby
o PowerNap
o PHP 5.3
o KVM 84
o Libvirt 0.7.5
o RabbitMQ 1.7
* Virtualisation enhancements, including:
o Building on Libvirt and KVM for simple deployment and management. KVM now supports:
o Kernel Samepage Merging (KSM) memory aggregation
o Live migration of virtual machines
o Automated and fast image creations with VMBuilder
o Ubuntu as Virtual Machine (VM) supported for VMWare, Xen, KVM, Virtualbox, EC2 and UEC
* Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) and Amazon EC2 enhancements, including:
o UEC as well as EC2 images are included in five years of free security and support updates
o Minimal installation profile for minimum footprint VMs optimised for EC2 and UEC
o Ubuntu EC2 images can be booted from EBS
o Multi-language AWS library support
o Easily customised and frequently refreshed images at boot time for super flexibility using cloud-init
o Puppet, a configuration management framework, can be used to mass control instances from their start
* Advanced storage capabilities built in, including
o RAID support from the installer
o iSCSI and multipath support and booting
* Simpler to mass deploy and manage
o Puppet integration in the cloud or as an add-on
o Version control configuration changes (integrated with Puppet), provides history and accountability
o Many new and improved installation profiles
o Built-in package mirroring and network installation tools
o Improved management from Canonical’s Landscape, including:
+ Mass registration
+ Managing both physical servers and VMs
+ Managing Cloud instances on both UEC and EC2, including:
# Security credentials and zones
# Elastic Block Storage (EBS) and Walrus storage elements
# Elastic IPs management
# Cloud topology monitoring
+ Scheduled maintenance (shutdowns and restarts, package updates and script execution)
+ Direct view into server configuration
+ Logical groupings of machines for ease of administration

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