"The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the first beta release of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Long-Term Support) Desktop, Server, and Netbook editions and of Ubuntu 10.04 Server for Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) and Amazon's EC2. Codenamed "Lucid Lynx", 10.04 LTS continues Ubuntu's proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution.

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Desktop and Netbook Editions continue the trend of ever-faster boot speeds, with improved startup times and a streamlined, smoother boot experience.

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Server Edition provides even better integration of the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud, with its install-time cloud setup.

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Server for UEC and EC2 brings the power and stability of the Ubuntu Server Edition to cloud computing, whether you're using Amazon EC2 or your own Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud.

The Ubuntu 10.04 family of variants, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, Ubuntu Studio, and Mythbuntu, also reach beta status today.

Desktop features
----------------

Social from the start: We now feature built-in integration with Twitter, identi.ca, Facebook, and other social networks with the MeMenu in the panel.

New Design: Cleaner and faster boot, new notification area, new themes, new icons, and new wallpaper bring a dramatically updated look and feel to Ubuntu.

Ubuntu One: Choose any folder in your home directory to sync, choose from millions of songs for purchase in the Ubuntu One Music store.

Please see http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/lucid/beta1 for details."

"What's new in this release (see below for details):
- A wide range of Direct3D improvements.
- Support for SHA-256, SHA-384, and SHA-512 algorithms.
- A number of MSHTML fixes.
- Support for mp3 decoding on Mac OS X.
- Various widl improvements.
- More typelib fixes.
- OLE storage improvements.
- Various bug fixes.

The source is available from the following locations:

http://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/system/emulators/wine/wine-1.1.41.tar.bz2
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wine/wine-1.1.41.tar.bz2

Binary packages for various distributions will be available from:

http://www.winehq.org/site/download

You will find documentation on http://www.winehq.org/site/documentation

You can also get the current source directly from the git repository. Check http://www.winehq.org/site/git for details."

"The third of seven scheduled milestone releases for 11.3 was completed and released on schedule. Milestone 3 focuses on using GCC 4.5 as the default compiler, leaving a great deal of the work in the hands of the openSUSE Build Service after a few issues (such as kernel panics) were resolved.

Here’s what you may find interesting in the new release:
A bug in Milestone 2 prevented mounting of encrypted home folders. This has been resolved.
zypper can now interrupt PackageKit, via dbus, eliminating a major annoyance during updates and additional installs.
A Milestone 1 issue with starting xorg on i915 hardware has finally been resolved.
Pam mount has been updated to the current version, as the version used prior is “unsupported”. There are, apparently, some config file changes to be aware of.

Gnome/GTK desktop users:
Qt has been removed from the Gnome Live CD, clearing room to potentially add some more apps. Sax2 was removed in the process, because it has been mostly deprecated by xorg’s much-improved auto detection.
epdfview, a pdf viewer akin to evince but without any gnome-lib dependencies, is now included.

KDE desktop users:
The network-manager applet has gotten a usability update, in the form of an updated icon set.

Kernel hackers:
Crash, the core dump analyzer, is now at version 5.0.1.

Perl developers:
Dozens of libraries have been incrementally updated along with the core update to 5.10.1.

Distribution/Appliance builders:
Kiwi no longer has mandatory dependencies on openSUSE-branded packages.

Grub2 is now included, although there are currently no plans to use it by default."

"This article shows how you can build your own video community using lighttpd with its mod_flv_streaming module (for streaming .flv videos, the format used by most major video communities such as YouTube) and its mod_secdownload module (for preventing hotlinking of the videos) on Ubuntu 9.10. I will use FlowPlayer as the video player, a free Flash video player with support for lighttpd's mod_flv_streaming module. I will also show how you can encode videos (.mp4 .mov .mpg .3gp .mpeg .wmv .avi) to the FLV format supported by Adobe Flash."