To open the Software Center, click Applications -> Ubuntu Software Center. You can find close to 2,200 different pieces of software to install in 12 categories: Accessories, Education, Games, Graphics, and Other.

 

All you need to do is double click one of the categories and then double click an application in the list. You get a button labeled Install. When you click Install, you're asked for the root password (required to install software in Linux), and then the Software Center installs the package and any other software on which the application depends.

 

2. Ubuntu One Client

3. Updated software

version 2.6.31 of the Linux kernel. This is the latest version of the kernel, and offers more security, better startup and shutdown (more on that in a moment), better performance from graphics cards, and improved security. GNOME desktop as its graphical user interface, Ubuntu 9.10 includes version 2.28 and is more stable.

4. Faster booting and shutdown

 

Improving boot time has been a focus of Ubuntu developers in recent releases, with the goal of a ten-second startup set for Ubuntu 10.4.  To test progress thus far, I compared boot performance for Ubuntu 8.04, 9.04 and 9.10.  Below are the results, which demonstrate the impressive strides that have been made thus far towards a faster boot.

the boot times recorded below may be a bit faster than those that can be expected on normal desktops and laptops, since my KVM testing environment runs on server-class hardware, with multiple processor cores and high-speed disks powering the virtual machines.  Nonetheless, the tests provide a standardized basis for comparing boot performance between Ubuntu releases.

The numbers

The averages of several tests gave the following results for boot time, in seconds, between the three Ubuntu releases:

• 9.10 (Karmic) alpha: 12.94
• 9.04 (Jaunty): 17.06
• 8.04.2 (Hardy): 25.07

The numbers speak for themselves.  Ubuntu’s boot time has improved enormously since the release of 8.04 in April 2008, with the Karmic alpha build starting up almost twice as fast as Hardy.

This progress can be attributed in part to the use of the faster ext4 file system as the default in Karmic.  But since Jaunty, which uses the older ext3, also demonstrates significant improvement over Hardy, it’s clear that there’s more to the advancement than file systems alone.  Ubuntu developers’ focus on optimizing the boot progress, and the replacement of the ancient System V init daemon with upstart, have also been major contributors to the performance increases.

 

5. Encrypted home directory

Your home directory (for example, /home/sarvesh) is your own personal space in the Linux file system. That's where you store your files, etc. If you're installing Ubuntu 9.10 and not just upgrading, you can encrypt your home directory (and the home directories of any users you add during installation). This is done by slapping something called eCryptfs (a secure file system) on top of the home directory. You can now apply eCryptfs with a graphical interface during installation.

 

 

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