DapperGoals

The Dapper Drake (targeted for 2006/06) release of Ubuntu will be supported for 5 years on servers, and 3 years on desktops. This page gives a high-level overview of the goals of this release.

The actual bug tracking, translation, feature tracking and archive management of Dapper will be done on Launchpad.net, the infrastructure we have created for Ubuntu and its derivatives as well as for upstream projects. Launchpad is under active development, see #launchpad on IRC.freenode.net to speak with developers.

Feature Goals

  • Substantial polish and integration of the existing desktop environment is the primary desktop goal, for both Ubuntu (GNOME) and Kubuntu (KDE).

    • Dapper should come pre-configured to do the Right Thing, without asking questions, with all forms of content that the standard install is configured to handle. Double-click on a PDF, and you should see it in Evince (Ubuntu). Double click on a PNG, and you should see it in the Gnome image viewer.
    • The sound theme should be professional, and muted by default (other than startup and shutdown sounds).
    • Artwork will be an evolution of the Breezy artwork, with substantial work done to make an excellent overall visual impression on Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Edubuntu.
    • High priority will be given to specifications that require relatively little new code but improve the "smoothness" or polished feel of the final product.

  • Software discovery and installation will be a target of focused work. It should be even easier to find software that is either part of Ubuntu main, or universe/multiverse (recognising the issues of support and supportability involved), and even 3rd party software that is built and packaged for Ubuntu.

  • We will work hard to make network-wide enterprise updates easy to manage. So people who are deploying Dapper across a corporate network can ensure that they retain control over the distribution of updates to those desktops.

  • We will consider LSB and related certification standards. We have not yet determined the feasibility of aiming for compliance with such standards, but will take the decision at UBZ.

  • We will support the server administrators who want to deploy Dapper on mission-critical servers, with a flavour of kernel specifically tuned to meet their needs.

The actual detailed specifications for Ubuntu are being tracked at https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+specs and the set of specs targeted at Dapper will be linked separately after our developer conference.

Specific Feature Goals

Confirmed

Under Consideration

DapperGoals (last edited 2008-08-06 16:33:28 by localhost)