Rikki Kite at Linux Magazine is organizing a ChipIn for anyone interested in tossing in a few bucks to help Amber and her family to get back on their feet and help pay for necessities like food and clothes.

Amber is held in high regard within the Ubuntu community. She’s only been involved with the community for a little over a year now, but what she’s been able to accomplish in that time frame is quite impressive.

I attended her presentation at this year’s Ohio Linux Fest during the Friday’s Ubucon and her personality seemed impenetrable. It’s hard for me to imagine that something so tragic would happen to someone as upbeat and cheerful as she is.

You can get a copy in one of many ways. If you’re not sure what you need, you can visit Ubuntu’s get-ubuntu page which has every available option and some simple directions to get you started.

If all you want is to download a specific version without having to use get-ubuntu’s layout, you can visit Ubuntu’s releases page which lists all of the CD ISOs and their accompanying files (torrent, md5sums, sha1sums, etc).

There are also DVD sized ISOs which contain more common packages than can usually fit onto the CDs including all of the available language packs. You can find links to a mirror near you at get-ubuntu or you can also visit Ubuntu’s cdimage page as well.

There is also Kubuntu, Ubuntu’s KDE spin, Xubuntu with XFCE, Ubuntu-Studio, and Edubuntu.

As always, it’s encouraged to use BitTorrent technology to download the releases. It relieves the load on Ubuntu’s servers and mirrors for those that truly need them while providing the ability to share the releases with others.

Getting back on topic, we were given a brief welcome by Joe Buckley from Ubuntu Ohio team loco. Beth Lynn Eicher of What Will We Use kicked off the day with a discussion on tackling Bug #1 (Microsoft has a majority market share) and what we can do as a community to close it. And finally before the break, Canonical’s own Jorge Castro spoke about how anyone and everyone can help with the development process by tackling the “low hanging fruit”.

It’s been informative already so I can’t wait for the rest of it. For now, I’m getting back to my food so we don’t miss the start of the afternoon.

Anyone currently using Lucid Lynx will automatically reach this same level of point release through the regular use of the update system. You can check the installed distribution’s description at the command line with lsb_release.

adam@dauntless:~$ lsb_release -d
Description: Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS

Subsequent point releases are scheduled for:

• 10.04.2 on January 27, 2011
• 10.04.3 on July 29, 2011
• 10.04.4 on January 22, 2012.

You can download the newly updated ISOs from the Lucid Lynx release page. Hop on a torrent and grab yours today.

“So the Narwhal, as the closest thing to a real live unicorn, is an auspicious figurehead as we lay down the fabric from which dreams will be woven.”

Intrepid was the first release to include the Ubuntu Live USB creator. Guest sessions were also introduced to provide a temporary user account with restricted privileges with the idea that one could lend a computer to a friend or colleague for simple tasks like a quick email check. Encrypted private directories with the use of the ecryptfs package provided users with an alternative to the drawbacks inherit to the optional full-partition encryption using LVM and LUKS.

Intrepid did all of this and more using Gnome 2.24 and the Linux 2.6.27 kernel. As much as Intrepid forged ahead, it has finally reached the end of its 18 month life cycle. Users will be encouraged to upgrade their Intrepid installations to at least 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope to continue receiving security updates and critical bug fixes.

I am currently in the process of downloading all of the CD isos through the use of the torrents. Those will be seeded out over the next few months, probably until the first point release, 10.04.1, which we should see in July. I also have 5-packs of Ubuntu Desktop, Server, and Kubuntu Desktop CDs on order through Canonical that I hope to have in a week or so.

You can visit the “How to get Ubuntu” section of Ubuntu’s website which lists all of the available ways to get a copy of your own. The fastest way of course is to download a copy which can be burned to a CD or made into a bootable USB drive. You can also order your own CDs like I have. If all else fails, you can request a CD to be sent to you which can take up to six weeks to arrive.

Another option that is not so well known is to get in contact with one of Ubuntu’s many LoCo teams scattered around the globe and request a CD from them. They usually get a number of CDs to help spread the news about Ubuntu. The United States has plenty of state/region based teams to cover almost every state. Europe, Asia, South America, Africa, Australia (sorry, no Antarctica, yet) all have country based teams. The Loco Team List provides all of the contact information for each team and whether or not they provide any local support.

Video courtesy of Paolo Sammicheli & Leo Iannacone

• A revamp of the Ubuntu Netbook Edition user interface.
• Focusing on hybrid could computing with Ubuntu Server.
• Integrating the social networks within the Ubuntu Desktop and making it easier to sync and shared our contact lists.

Ubuntu has made a habit of using the interim releases between LTS editions as testbeds for branching out in new directions. With the first release of Gnome 3.0 due out this year, Maverick Meerkat looks to be no exception.