Ubuntu 10.10 Cozies Up to Android, iPhone and the Cloud

by Jason Brooks

Ubuntu 10.10 sports a new interface for its netbook-oriented edition, with a focus on making the most of displays with vertically challenged resolutions.

Ubuntu’s default e-mail application, Evolution, now comes in a slimmer edition for netbook displays as well.

It’d be good to see a netbook-friendly version of Firefox in the future—the bookmarks toolbar, for one, strikes me as a waste of space.

Canonical’s Ubuntu One service offers a few points of integration with Android—it’s possible to sync contacts to the device, as well as to stream music stored on the service.

The personal cloud service offers similar integration with Apple iOS devices, but as of press time, the client app was still waiting in Apple’s App Store approval queue. I was able to test the iOS contacts sync app, however.

The Maverick Meerkat release marks the debut of a new Ubuntu font—the addition seems like a rather minor enhancement, but I find myself growing attached to this new font.

Ubuntu 10.10 comes with a spruced-up Software Center, which serves as an App Store for the thousands of great, free apps that have long been available for Ubuntu, while also adding a framework for purchasing apps.

Ubuntu and Debian packages have long offered up suggestions for complementary add-on packages, but the Software Center version in 10.10 is the first to expose these suggestions to users.