Canonical announced a few minutes ago in a press release that the Ubuntu project, with Google's help, released today the amazing Ubuntu Font Family to the world. The font is available to any web designer from the Google Font Directory.

The Ubuntu Font Family was especially designed by Canonical for the Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) operating system. Starting with today, any web developer can add the Ubuntu font on their websites. This means that visitors will be able to see the text on the respective webpages as it was intended, even if they don't have the font installed on their computers!

"Our focus on design and usability in Ubuntu led us to create a font which is at once beautiful and readable. We're delighted to share the Ubuntu Font Family with web designers around the world who want their websites to be stylish and readable in as manylanguages and browsers as possible."

With Fedora 10 finally entering the world earlier this week, we have performed benchmarks comparing the performance of Ubuntu 8.10 and Fedora 10. In our testing we used both the 32-bit and 64-bit builds of each distribution and then ran a series of automated tests through the Phoronix Test Suite.Our test system consisted of an Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 clocked at 4.00GHz, an ASUS P5E64 WS Professional motherboard, MSI 9800GT 512MB graphics card, 2GB of OCZ DDR3-1333MHz RAM, and Western Digital WD1600JS-00MHB0 160GB SATA HDD. With each distribution we had manually installed the NVIDIA 180.08 driver and Phoronix Test Suite 1.4.2. Per our standard testing protocol, each distribution was left in its stock configuration (though as part of that, SELinux is disabled on Fedora). The final i686 and x86_64 builds of Ubuntu 8.10 and Fedora 10 were each tested.Ubuntu 8.10 ships with the Linux 2.6.27 kernel, X Server 1.5.2, GCC 4.3.2, and GNOME 2.24. Fedora 10 ships with the Linux 2.6.27.5 kernel, X Server 1.5.3, GCC 4.3.2, and GNOME 2.24. The tests we used to compare the Ubuntu and Fedora performance was Nexuiz, OpenArena, World of Padman, Lightsmark, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Tremulous, timed Gzip compression, LAME MP3 encoding, Ogg encoding, BYTE Unix Benchmark, SciMark 2, GnuPG, and OpenSSL.

Earlier this year we shared that Valve's Source Engine is coming to Linux after receiving some information that pointed in this direction. In addition, a year ago Valve Software was publicly looking for a senior software engineer to port Windows-based games to Linux platform. There have long been rumors and hopes among Linux users that Steam games would become natively available for Linux, but we have additional confirmation that Valve Software has ported their Steam game client to Linux. In Valve's most recent title, Left 4 Dead, there are shared Linux libraries shipping alongside this Windows game client.We were tipped off this morning by an attentive Phoronix reader that in the demo copy of Left 4 Dead there were several Linux library files worth investigating. In particular, one of these files was even named steamclient_linux.so. This is in the Windows demo client -- we're not referring to the Linux dedicated server-only version. Left 4 Dead is a first person shooter developed by Turtle Rock Studios and then acquired by Valve and is written around the Source Engine. Left 4 Dead brings several new features to the Source Engine such as post-processing effects, rendering and AI improvements, and dynamic lighting and shadowing improvements. The Windows client was released earlier this month and a playable demo a few days before the release. The retail game is distributed via Valve's Steam client, but the demo is no longer available through the Steam network.

With the demo version, there were shared libraries for Linux with the game client on Windows. The Left 4 Dead playable demo has twenty Linux library files shipping with the client (not simply the dedicated server version) and among them were steamclient_linux.so, studiorender_i486.so, vstdlib_i486.so, libsteam_api_linux.so, and engine_i486.so. We had bought the Left 4 Dead Windows game through Steam to continue our investigation, but the shared libraries were not to be found in that build at this time. The Linux files are obviously also present in the latest dedicated Linux server for Left 4 Dead through the HLDS utility.

We had explored the various shared libraries using the strings command. Among the many strings within steamclient_linux.so that caught our attention were k_EMsgClientRequestForgottenPasswordEmailResponse, k_EMsgClientGetLobbyMetadataResponse, k_EMsgClientPurchaseWithMachineID, k_EMsgClientGamesPlayed, k_EMsgAMSetCommunityState, SetOverlayNotificationPosition hates linux, Average %.2f fps, %.2f ms per frame, Steam_GSSendSteam3UserConnect, GetBillingAddress. These strings plus hundreds of other technically shouldn't be needed if this were simply for Linux server usage -- even though no Linux server binary ships with the Windows game on Steam.

ARM and Canonical Ltd, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, have announced that it will bring the Ubuntu Desktop operating system to the ARMv7 processor architecture.

The deal will produce a version of the operating system for small net-browsing computers known as netbooks.

The new operating system for Arm-powered machines looks set to be available in April 2009.

"This is a natural development for Ubuntu, driven by the demand from manufacturers for an ARM technology-based version,"said Jane Silber, COO of Canonical. "Joining the considerable community of free software developers working on the ARM platform ensures that a fully-functional, optimized Ubuntu distribution is available to the ARM ecosystem, providing wider choice for consumers looking for the best operating system for their digital lifestyles."This version of the Ubuntu Desktop operating system will target the ARMv7 architecture including ARM Cortex-A8 and Cortex-A9 processor-based systems.

ARM produces chip designs that firms such as TI, Qualcomm and many others turn into processors that power 70-80% of the world's mobiles.

ARM-designed chips also drive many smartphones such as the G1 - the first phone powered by Google's Android software.

Mark Shuttelworth, the father of the Ubuntu distribution, has announced the next major update (9.04) to be christened Jaunty Jackalope. Expected to arrive in April next year, the development of the same will start from November of 2008, with notes on what needs to go in the new version gathered together come December, at the Ubuntu Developer Summit.

Ubuntu follows of cycle of a new release every six months; bundled with the latest version of key open-source applications.Named after lightening fast Jackalope, this version's major goal would be to reduce the boot-time and also tighten web integration with the desktop. Shuttleworth claims that Ubuntu 9.04 will be fast and will create a new experience through desktop applications that seamlessly integrate web technologies. Eventually, Ubuntu 9.04 will blur the lines between desktop applications and web services.

The Ubuntu development community is currently gearing up for Interpid Ibex -- Ubuntu 8.10 release scheduled next month. With improved support for netbooks and Mobile Internet Devices, Ubuntu 8.10 will serve as an incremental bump.

Shuttelworth claims that Ubuntu is ready to provide an experience comparable to operating systems from Microsoft and Apple. Ubuntu version for MIDs and netbooks is already in the works and expected soon.

One of the things that Apple has always prided itself over and promoted in no uncertain terms, has been the so-called 'robust security' offered by its OSX operating system. However this supposition of Apple's took a huge beating on Thursday when a team of researchers from Independent Security Evaluators (ISE) managed to hack a MacBook Air in just two minutes using a previously unknown security vulnerability in Apple’s own safari browser.
The people who did the 'hack' were ISE security researchers - Charlie Miller, Jake Honoroff, and Mark Daniel – who were participating in the "PWN to OWN" competition at the CanSecWest security conference, in Vancouver, British Columbia.In this competition there were 3 laptops, with different OS’s offered for being hacked into. These included an Apple Macbook Air running OS X 10.5.2, a Sony Vaio VGN-TZ37CN running Ubuntu 7.10 and a Fujitsu U810 running Vista Ultimate SP1. Anyone who could successfully hack or exploit these machines would win a $10,000 price from famous security company Tipping Point.

The first to go was of course the Macbook, followed by Windows Vista. Ubuntu stood strong despite repeated attempts.

For further details on this hack, check out this post here on Tipping Point.