Ubuntu 11.04 'Natty Narwhal' Washes Ashore

Posted 04/28/2011 at 11:13am | by Paul Lilly

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Don't worry about the cold and rainy weather sweeping through parts of the country, it's okay to bust out your open source swimming trunks anyway. Canonical today invites you to dive into Linux with the release of Ubuntu 11.04, otherwise known as Natty Narwhal. This latest Linux distro, which has been in beta form for about the past month, supports laptops, desktops, and netbooks, and supersedes Ubuntu Netbook Edition for all PC netbooks, Canonical says.

"11.04 continues Ubuntu's proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality easy-to-use Linux distribution," Canonical said in a press release announcing the new build.

New to this latest release is a Unity-based desktop that's a bit different from a Windows-based desktop. There's an embedded global menu that sits on the top of the screen, and a task dock attached to the left-hand side. Unfortunately, the task dock placement can't be customized, Arstechnica notes, though users who aren't feeling the new design can opt for the "Classic" desktop in the system login interface.

Read more of what's new here, and when/if you're ready, you can download a copy of Ubuntu 11.04 here.

Image Credit: webupd8.org