[dba-Tech] The new Ubuntu

[Jim Lawrence]

On the 21st of April and new version of Ubuntu will be released, 16.4.

It is supposed to be one of the best desktops ever released. The beta is already available for early download:

http://bit.ly/1S6QUOf

This new version is one of the very fastest, as it uses the hardware directly. It also has a totally new layout: (http://bit.ly/1oEWJGI and http://bit.ly/1QlH6v1)...that is similar to the new flat Windows designs or in Ubuntu's case, it is called the Charmander design concept. The new graphics core uses a product called Valkan. "...Vulkan is a portable low-level graphics API that is built to work across many GPU vendors and operating systems, which means that in theory it should become much more efficient than the existing OpenGL or DirectX solutions....". Its kernel has been fully upgraded to support ZFS without any addition effort or third tier products. A full ZFS management system is built in. Properly deployed, across a network, data lose, due to hardware failure may very well become a thing of the past.

http://bit.ly/1KQLRQx

Aside: Ubuntu adoption has been growing rapidly and it now accounts for roughly 50 percent of the entire internet...and that is not counting the many other flavours of Linux. On Azure, last year the percentage of Linux installations was around 40 to 50 percent, this year Ubuntu and Redhat make up 60 percent of all systems supported and next year what will the percentage be? I am sure that having the option of being easy to select ZFS, as one of the file systems, will be a big selling feature. As said by one of the Microsoft pundits; "Welcome to the new hybrid world"...where the differences between Microsoft Windows and Linux functionality and products will become almost indistinguishable.
 
Jim