Ubuntu 14.10 desktop delivers latest applications and developer support

Over 30 million computers preinstalled with Ubuntu have shipped globally in two years and OEM sales of Ubuntu machines are growing in EMEA and South East Asia, while Ubuntu Kylin experiences continued growth.

London, 23rd October 2014: Ubuntu 14.10, the latest desktop release is today available for download from Canonical. This release focuses on the developer experience, overall quality, and brings a number of important features and security enhancements. The Ubuntu desktop continues to be intuitive, easy to use and reliable for users all over the world.

Ubuntu is a popular choice for developers targeting the cloud, mobile or devices because it is easy to use, fast and secure. Ubuntu 14.10 introduces the first iteration of the Ubuntu Developer Tools Centre, which makes it even easier to develop on Ubuntu. It downloads all the Android toolkits and their dependencies and integrates them with the launcher in a single command. This is first available for Android and will soon extend to other platforms such as Go and Dart.

The workhorse applications on Ubuntu, including LibreOffice, Firefox, Chromium and Rhythmbox, have all been updated ensuring the latest versions and features are available on 14.10. A new addition to Ubuntu is the ability to watch Netflix with Chrome, so viewers can stream TV shows and movies directly to their Ubuntu desktop. The very latest printers will also benefit from 14.10’s new IPP Everywhere™ support, which means Ubuntu will automatically identify and connect to networked and USB printers without any configuration or special software.

Ubuntu 14.10 runs the 3.16 kernel which offers better support for Power8 and ARM 64 architectures and graphics support for NVIDIA and AMD graphics as well as Intel’s Haswell, Broadwell, Merrifield and upcoming Cherryview chips. The kernel gives an improved audio experience with support for the Radeon H.264 video encoder. This release also brings performance improvements in suspend/resume times.

Jane Silber, CEO of Canonical comments; “The continued development and quality of Ubuntu on the desktop is creating more demand from government, education, business, developers and consumers alike. Downloads of Ubuntu are consistently strong and we are experiencing rapid growth of our OEM business.”

Industry analysts are recognising better than expected global PC shipments and reports from both IDC and Gartner indicate a general stabilisation of the PC market. Canonical’s PC OEM businesses echoes this trend with major OEM partners seeing solid growth in many markets. South East Asia has seen particularly strong growth with OEM partners in the consumer market; EMEA has also seen strong steady volumes driven by wider adoption across public sector and education users.

Ubuntu Kylin, the Chinese specific desktop operating system has also seen huge traction with over seven million copies downloaded since 2012 and four million copies of the last release, 14.04 LTS. In the last cycle, Ubuntu Kylin was added to the Government Centralised Procurement Program, a procurement list of approved technologies for government use. To co-incide with the global 14.10 release, Ubuntu Kylin is released today. See the Ubuntu Kylin press release here: http://www.ubuntukylin.com/news/

Availability

Ubuntu 14.10 desktop is available for download at www.ubuntu.com/download from Thursday 23rd October 2014.