One of the main reasons why we, at QBurst, use Ubuntu on 75% of our computers is the stability it provides. Canonical, the Ubuntu company, has always made sure that their users get updates every six months with a lot of changes.

The latest release 11.10, which was just released yesterday, October 13, 2011, brings major updates to its Unity Shell. The improvements include better polish and a new transparency effect in addition to the little icons at the bottom called Unity Lenses (Apps, Files, a new Music lens and Gwibber). The Ubuntu button is now on the launcher and there is also a new minimize/maximize/close button for Unity dash.

With Ubuntu Unity Shell, it is very easy to search and open an installed program. It also replaces the old task bar that was in the Ubuntu Classic theme. Close, minimize and maximize buttons are hidden by default and will be visible only when the user moves the cursor over the window.

The latest version also includes an updated version of the Ubuntu Software Center from where the user can install additional software with just one click. Installing an app has never been easier.

One of the main attractions of Ubuntu 11.10 is the redesigned Alt-Tab view. Ubuntu developers have given extra care to redesign the Alt-Tab view, which looks very attractive now.

Other than these visible design changes, Ubuntu 11.10 certainly has some cool under-the-hood updates. Ubuntu 11.10 uses the Linux Kernel 3 and many components from Gnome 3. The good news for Mozilla Thunderbird fans is that Ubuntu 11.10 now ships with Thunderbird as the default email application. Empathy is replaced with Thunderbird which will increase the email client users Ubuntu has. The GNOME login manager has also been replaced with the more flexible and Unity style LightDM. They have also updated the front-end of the social networking client application Gwibber.

With the release of Ubuntu 11.10, Canonical developers are now going to start working towards the future release 12.04. Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth announced that the codename for 12.04 will be Precise Pangolin which will also be a long-term support (LTS) release. LTS means that it will be supported with updates for five years on servers and three years on desktops.

At QBurst, we always use the latest stable versions. We are very excited about the release of this Debian based operating system and have already started upgrading our Linux based systems to 11.10.

For existing Ubuntu users, the update is available through the Ubuntu Update Manager, and for new users download is available on Ubuntu website.

The giant has already made promises of a pure web based OS. Yes, I am talking about Google Chrome OS which is in development now. By studying the latest products from Google, it won’t be anything bigger than an Android in better shape. Android which is a purely web oriented OS for mobile phones may be tweaked to an extent where it can be used in low power portable computers, or precisely – Netbooks. But the key point to be noted here is that, Chrome will be a web ‘based’ OS, not an OS in the web. So what will be a pure web OS? And why should one need it?

Mobility is the first advantage of having a pure web OS. Resource sharing and low cost end user hardware is another one. Consider having an entire OS in web, which will handle all the heavy tasks for you and all you need is a cheap, low end, web enabled notebook or netbook which is powerful enough to just run a browser. In short, you can encode an HD video even with a mobile phone! Interesting, isn’t it? Of course it is but the concept is very old and yet to become a reality. A few attempts have been made towards this end and the result was web applications like Google docs and Adobe’s online Photoshop. The interoperability of these online applications is essential for a web OS. No one will like to process a file in one application, download it and upload it to another application. It will be a fair job if these applications can send files/data to each other. It will be much better if both applications have access to a common online storage just like we have hard disks in our PC. And finally, it has to be free and open source! Before someone creates a perfect web OS, let’s take a look at something close to it. The eyeOS – an OS in a browser window, which is the Project of the Month in Sourceforge.

eyeOS is an attempt towards the perfect Web OS. “Open Source Cloud Desktop” is what they call it. You will have all your essential applications, a storage system and a desktop to integrate it all. eyeOS doesn’t look like a web page even though it’s inside the browser window. eyeOS package can be installed in your own server and you can allow other users to sign up and use it. The process is straightforward and simple as installing a WordPress blog. The wizard driven installation won’t take much time and soon you will be provided with a login window as in normal OS. Once you pass this screen, you will take a couple of seconds to realize that what you are looking at is actually a web page inside a browser window. I was confused whether it was my Linux desktop; it has everything that a normal desktop should have. A task pane, notification area, desktop with changeable wallpapers and themes, games, application menu and everything that you won’t expect in a web page. It even has a browser and a task manager which lists the running processes like Windows Task Manager. The default installation comes with a handful of applications which can be further extended using a package manager like in most Linux distros. There is already a large pool of applications available for eyeOS. And all this is written in PHP and XML! Yes, eyeOS is a PHP application which runs on Apache server and doesn’t need a database. Instead of a database it relies on XML files. This is primarily for making the installation simple for the end user as all they would need to set up an eyeOS server is to enter account information for the first user. Flat files are used to avoid bottlenecks on data fetching. Core parts of eyeOS runs as independent applications and uses Javascript to send server commands. The UI is fast even on a 512kbps connection.

eyeOS is being developed by a company based in Barcelona and it’s currently in the 4th year of development. They also provide a tool kit with which we can develop cloud applications easily. A reasonably good wiki page, including a “Hello World application” is present to provide a walk-through towards eyeOS application development. Anyone fluent with PHP and Javascript can start writing applications for eyeOS without any further learning curve. You can try it out at their demo server : eyeos.info or get your copy of eyeOS package from here.

eyeOS may not be mature enough to host anything serious, but it is proof on how far a web application can go!

In its official blog, Google explains more about Chrome OS, which aims the Netbook market initially. Google Chrome OS is expected to hit the market by the second half of 2010.