Ubuntu for Android Demo’ed by Canonical

Ubuntu for Android. I mentioned it before, and now, it is here!

Canonical reveals Ubuntu for Android

“Canonical is making good on its promise to bring its popular Ubuntu flavor of Linux to a broader range of devices by announcing Ubuntu for Android, a release that will enable a full desktop computing experience on a docked Android smartphone. More than just a virtualized app that behaves like Ubuntu, the developers have melded together the Ubuntu architecture with the Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) AOSP build at the kernel level. The result is, from what we’ve seen, a harmony between the two platforms that could make a lot of sense for demanding mobile users.

To begin the introduction to Ubuntu for Android, let’s start with what Ubuntu for Android isn’t: it’s not a new mobile OS. Rather than try to enter the arena to take on Apple, Microsoft, and Google, Canonical instead chose to build a package that leverages the popularity of Android. This means Canonical is building on top of the world’s fastest growing mobile platform as a value-add. It’s a move that allows Ubuntu to augment the Android experience as opposed to attempt to replace it. This new release is best understood as a convergence between your mobile and desktop computing environments.

In an interview with Canonical CEO Jane Silber, I was able to grasp the driving idea behind Ubuntu for Android in the scheme of Canonical’s overarching vision for Ubuntu. Right now, you most likely carry a smartphone, laptop, and perhaps a tablet device of some kind. Each has a specific purpose in your day, but adds an amount of weight and time to your mobile computing. With the release of this software distribution, Canonical has unveiled that its goal is to narrow down the amount of devices that you carry to just one that will provide the same functionality of all three items mentioned above.”

After Six Years, a New Version of Apache Web Server!

ApacheOur old buddy, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, at ZDnet has a great article on the announcement about Apache’s new version.

Apache releases first major new version of popular Web server in six years

“The Apache Software Foundation has just announced the release version 2.4 of its award-winning Apache HTTP Server. This is the first major release of the Apache Web server in more than six years. Long before the release of Apache 2.2 in December 1st, 2005 though, Apache was already the most popular Web server in the world. Today Apache powers almost 400 million Web sites.

‘It is with great pleasure that we announce the availability of Apache HTTP Server 2.4′, said Eric Covener, Vice President of the Apache HTTP Server Project in a statement. “This release delivers a host of evolutionary enhancements throughout the server that our users, administrators, and developers will welcome. We’ve added many new modules in this release, as well as broadened the capability and flexibility of existing features.’

The Foundation claims that numerous enhancements make Apache HTTP Server v2.4 ideally suited for Cloud environments. These include:

• Improved performance (lower resource utilization and better concurrency)
• Reduced memory usage
• Asyncronous I/O support
• Dynamic reverse proxy configuration
• Performance on par, or better, than pure event-driven Web servers
• More granular timeout and rate/resource limiting capability
• More finely-tuned caching support, tailored for high traffic servers and proxies.
Additional Apache 2.4 features include easier problem analysis, improved configuration flexibility, more powerful authentication and authorization, and documentation overhaul.

It’s that first point, improved performance, that most users have been waiting for. While Apache has remained very popular, many users have wanted a faster Web server.

This update has been long expected, but it couldn’t come at a better time for Apache. In recent months NGINX, a low-latency, high-performance Web server, has flown by Microsoft’s Internet Information Server (IIS) to become the world’s number two Web server. While it seems unlikely that NGINX could overcome Apache’s commanding lead, NGINX has recently started to offer commercial support and is growing in popularity compared to both Apache and IIS in recent months.”