9 Great Features To Expect From Ubuntu 10.04

Boot Time

With Ubuntu 10.04, the development community has worked hard toward achieving "instant on" status of 10 second-boot time. We've been looking at this since the early alpha software was available, and through Beta 2 it's now down to 14.1 seconds by our stopwatch. (Mileage may vary). Not instant-on, but great nonetheless.

Cloud Integration

Though it's just a start, it's an important start. Through Ubuntu One, Canonical is making free cloud-based file storage available to the masses with 2 GB of capacity for no charge and 50 GB for $10 per month. By adding built-in, end-user access to the cloud, Ubuntu surpasses Windows 7 on this front.

Social Networking Integration

Gwibber, a multi-service social networking client, has been around for a while but now Ubuntu bakes it right in as a pre-integrated feature on the desktop. It's an elegant way to deliver what's now a must for tens of millions of PCs -- quick access to social networking accounts and communication. Again: building it into the desktop is a hat-tip to users that Microsoft doesn't provide.

Application Support

Generally speaking, application support on Linux has been improving by leaps and bounds.

Driver Support

We've loaded the beta versions of Ubuntu 10.04 onto a variety of PCs and found the driver support actually exceeds that of Windows 7. Even without comparing it to another OS, we've found that everything just works on Ubuntu the way it's supposed to work. No opening the hood to futz with command lines.

Security

By virtue of the fact that it's not Windows, Ubuntu has long been considered to be more secure because of it's less of a target for hackers. That could change over time. For now, Ubuntu has built in improvements to its firewall management that, among other things, provides a nice improvement over previous versions of Ubuntu.

Look And Feel

This is simply an inviting desktop, with more of a Mac OSX feel to it than a Windows feel. Support for widgets and Google Gadgets, (left), put it on a level playing field with any other OS now when it comes to out-of-the-box look and feel.

Music

Ubuntu has launched the beta of Ubuntu One Music -- an online music store that integrates with Ubuntu One cloud service and the desktop itself. Installation is a little quirky. We needed to use some command lines to get it up and running in Rhythm Box. But it shows great potential as an alternative to iTunes or Amazon.com. (Can an Ubuntu One App Store be far behind?)

Virtualization

Ubuntu continues to integrate VirtualBox -- now maintained by Oracle -- nicely into the desktop. In about 15 minutes, we were able to install a virtual Windows 7 on a Ubuntu desktop. (VirtualBox is included as an optional download in the Ubuntu Software Center.)