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Security

By default Ubuntu now installs the kernel-level security extension AppArmor, which imposes tight restrictions on applications. Profiles are used to specify what actions specific applications can perform – in particular which files they can read and write. AppArmor thus prevents an attacker from getting up to too much mischief on your system with captured processes after exploiting a security vulnerability.

By default, however, only a single profile is active (for the Cups print server). The apparmor-profiles package from the Universe repository adds further profiles, of which most are installed in /usr/share/doc/apparmor-profiles/extra. In order to activate one of these profiles, it is necessary to copy it to /etc/apparmor.d/ and then restart AppArmor using its init script. There is no graphical tool for generating new profiles or changing existing profiles. In this case the user is directed to the standard command line tool.

As before, Ubuntu does not set up a firewall, which isn't a security problem – no services which accept remote queries run by default. Users who liberally install server applications or use Ubuntu as a router should use a firewall. The Ubuntu team recommends the graphical tool Firestarter.

Support

The man behind Ubuntu – in addition to a large user and developer community and the robust Debian base – is Mark Shuttleworth, famous for being the second tourist in space, and his company Canonical. The South African company pays the core developers and offers commercial support for Ubuntu. Shuttleworth, who is a multi-millionaire, does not, however, earn any money from Ubuntu. He currently sinks millions of dollars into the distribution every year. This, however, is to change. Shuttleworth increasingly talks of Ubuntu, which to date has found popularity primarily among private users, as an alternative to Windows and commercial Linux distributions from Red Hat and Novell for business.

What distinguishes Ubuntu from these suppliers is that Ubuntu does not distinguish between free community versions and enterprise versions. Canonical sells support for exactly the same version of Ubuntu as Joe User downloads from the internet. While Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise require a support contract for each installation, Ubuntu users sign a contract with Canonical for as many installations as they like on machines of the same type, such as desktops.

But in many cases this is not necessary – the Ubuntu community is famous for its willingness to help. The community web pages include documentation, web and chat forums and a technical help system with numerous questions and answers, as well as the ability to ask questions – although naturally an answer is not guaranteed.

As with many other community distributions, such as OpenSuse and Fedora, a new version of Ubuntu is released every six months. For business use, however, the LTS (long term support) releases are recommended. These are released every two years. They are optimised for stability and offer guaranteed five year support and security updates.

Updates

Like Debian GNU/Linux, Ubuntu also provides a simple software update system. Updates can be fetched directly from the internet, the simplest way being to use update-manager. Called using the command:

sudo update-manager -c

The update manager reports when a new version of Ubuntu is released and offers to upgrade it from the internet. Users who have the CD or DVD can call the cdromupgrade upgrade script from the shell. In our test this worked perfectly with an almost virgin installation of Ubuntu 7.04 and with an older Ubuntu 6.06 based system.

Ubuntu 7.10 is nothing revolutionary, but it is a solid new edition of this popular distribution. Apart from the 3D desktop effects, there are few real sensations to report, but the evolutionary progress is tangible – this distribution seems more polished, more user-friendly and better thought out than its predecessor. For Ubuntu fans, this upgrade is a must. Users who have previously preferred a different distribution or are thinking about taking their first steps with Linux should try Ubuntu. (odi)

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