[News] Shuttleworth confirms 1 June for Dapper

[naveenchandran]

In an e-mail to the Ubuntu community last night, Mark Shuttleworth confirmed the release date for Ubuntu Dapper Drake desktop and server editions as 1 June.

According to Shuttleworth, the extra time will be devoted to quality assurance, Asian language support, and "polish" for the user interface. The XFCE desktop will also be integrated into the main repository for users wanting a fast and light desktop.

During the delay period, Shuttleworth also hopes to get Dapper certified for the Linux Standards Base (LSB) certification.

With the beta release expected on the original release date – 20 April – there will also be more time for testing both the server and the new live CD installer.

"The extra time will help ensure that Dapper is a robust and reliable platform for organisations with long-term and large-scale free software deployments. This is the first release of Ubuntu that will be supported for 5 years on the server and 3 years on the desktop, and we believe that this release will help expand the reach of the Ubuntu and Debian communities substantially," writes Shuttleworth.

While Shuttleworth initially proposed the delay, it was up to the Ubuntu Community Council and Technical Board to make the final decision. After two open on-line meetings, the Community Council and Technical Board approved the delay unanimously.

The next release of Ubuntu is expected to get back on the previous release schedule, in line with the Gnome releases. "While the release schedule of Dapper+1 is not finalised, the Technical Board feels that it will be best to plan for a short release schedule to return to our regular Gnome + 1 month cycle. This will likely result in Dapper+1 being released in October 2006," says Shuttleworth.

While the name for the next release has not been announced, Tectonic is betting on "Edgy Elephant" as the next alliteration.

The new release schedule is available on the Ubuntu wiki.

Sources:
http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=929
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/


Edit:
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Official Announcement

Change to release schedule for Ubuntu Dapper
Mark Shuttleworth mark.shuttleworth at ubuntu.com
Mon Mar 20 20:35:17 GMT 2006

Hi,

June 1st 2006 is the updated release date for Ubuntu Dapper, Desktop
and Server editions, a delay of 6 weeks over the previous release date
of April 20.

The Ubuntu Community Council and Technical Board discussed feedback on
the delay proposal received during two town hall meetings on the
#ubuntu-meeting public IRC channel. After conferring with an absent
colleague they have now unanimously approved the new release schedule,
published here:

* https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DapperReleaseSchedule

The additional time will be used to:

* devote an additional three weeks of bug-fix-only quality assurance
time to the release for the core development team

* integrate the work of the localisation sprint to ensure excellent
out-of-the-box support for Asian languages as well as other
languages for which we are receiving a stream of community
contributions

* devote additional developer time to UI polish that we believe will
make Dapper stand out as a high-quality desktop operating system
for large-scale deployment

* bring the XFCE desktop environment, which has received substantial
community-driven work during this cycle, into the main Ubuntu
repository to improve the usefulness of Ubuntu on lightweight
desktops

* ensure that Dapper will be LSB certified at the time of release

* provide for wider testing of the new Ubuntu server kernels and
server features

* ensure that the new graphical Live CD installer receives very
widespread testing

This is not a general relaxation of the freeze process. While there
are some new features that are being integrated, the general
stabilisation and bug fixing freeze remains in place, with some
specific exceptions.

Progress towards the set of goals identified for Dapper has been truly
excellent, with almost all feature goals already implemented or
available for wide testing 5 weeks ahead of our previous release
date. The current status of all 82 new Dapper features (not counting
new upstream features in this cycle) is listed here:

* https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/dapper/+specs

The extra time will help ensure that Dapper is a robust and reliable
platform for organisations with long-term and large-scale free
software deployments. This is the first release of Ubuntu that will
be supported for 5 years on the server and 3 years on the desktop, and
we believe that this release will help expand the reach of the Ubuntu
and Debian communities substantially.

While the release schedule of Dapper+1 is not finalised, the Technical
Board feels that it will be best to plan for a short release schedule
to return to our regular Gnome + 1 month cycle. This will likely
result in Dapper+1 being released in October 2006.

Thank you to all who participated in the discussion or sent in their
commentary directly to the Technical Board, Community Council and
SABDFL.

--
Mark

Source: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ub...ch/000058.html

[dIgItaL_BrAt]

It's gonna be well worth the wait.

[it_waaznt_me]

Good .. .. I'll be downloading Suse 10.1 on April 13 ... ..

[praka123]

whether dapper will get 2.6.16 kernel

[mehulved]

Well its worth the wait if they're gonna make it more robust and introduce more features.

[vignesh]

Yup....it is worth waiting..

[techno_funky]

yay!!! sweet news this one is now

[Satissh S]

Sure.. its better if they take thier time.. automatix needs some ironing out.
I think the human theme is also gonna change. May be we'll also have composite manager in gnome.
Let's wait n watch.