This is it. In a few hours, Canonical would “unleash” the power of free open source software. Atleast, it now looks like “Apple Mac Os” surpassing Windows way ahead. I have included the video for those who are coming in from the Windows world. For those upgrading from Koala version, it ought to be more of an incremental update.

Definitely, there is a lot of buzz around it. This being a Long Term Stable release would be supported for 3 years in the long run. There have been stories about 10 million active users of Ubuntu and it is slowly catching up and displacing the hegemony of Windows.

I believe that the next boost is going to come from mobile platform. We need better chips and a longer battery life to support all the fancy applications. Even then I realise that I am quite happy with my E63 running an old tired version of Symbian that has got gone open source. There are no easy answers to the choice of platform but I must admit that Apple iphone remains top of wish list of most of people.

It is because of the radical design factor and the fact that is well integrated with the applications. Ubuntu is going in right direction to update and step up investment in design and integrating social networks in the much talked about “me menu”. With release of Gnome 3 and Gnone “shell”, it would definitely rev up the acceptance specifically from the Mac users…or atleast I hope that it would get a “positive buzz” from those people who sit back on their ivory towers.

All the best Ubuntu. You guys rock!