14 DAY TRIAL // Canonical has announced that the next version of its operating system, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr), has been officially released and is now available for download.
Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) is one of the most anticipated Ubuntu releases of all time, mainly because it's an LTS and because it packs a lot of new features.
It's difficult to enumerate all the novelties that you will find in the new Ubuntu version, and most of them are actually small improvements under the hood. Others will make quite an impact on all users.
“As with every new release, packages--applications and software of all kinds--are being updated at a rapid pace. Many of these packages came from an automatic sync from Debian's unstable branch; others have been explicitly pulled in for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS,” said the developers in the announcement.
For example, Canonical has decided that it's the time to do something about the menu. On very large monitors with high resolutions, users needed to move the mouse quite a lot between the open window of an application and the menus in the top bar.
With the addition of Locally Integrated Menu, users are now able to move the menus from the top bar to the window frame, making it easier to activate the options of the application. With some intelligent heuristics, the new menus won't get in the way of moving the actual window.
Other major features include a new lock screen, live window resizing, smaller Unity icons, a new windows decorator that allows antialised corners, a new Linux kernel, and more.
“Ubuntu 14.04 includes the 3.13.0-24.46 Ubuntu Linux kernel which is based on the v3.13.9 upstream stable Linux kernel,” reads the official announcement. The developers didn't have enough time to get Linux kernel 3.14 into place, but the 3.13 branch should be more than enough.
Ubuntu 14.04 LTS will be supported for 5 years for Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Core, Kubuntu, Edubuntu, and Ubuntu Kylin. All other flavors will be supported for 3 years.
Users will be able to upgrade to the new version of Ubuntu very quickly. Just open Software Sources and Press Alt+F2 and type in “update-manager -d” (without the quotes) into the command box.
This should trigger the update and the rest is a piece of cake. Just follow the instructions and you will have Ubuntu 14.04 installed in no time.
If you want a fresh install, just download Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) right now from Softpedia.