First maintenance update for Ubuntu Dapper Drake takes flight

The Ubuntu team announced the release of Ubuntu 6.06.1 Long Term Support (LTS) today, the first maintenance release of “Dapper Drake.” The 6.06.1 release contains more than 300 updates since the first release of Dapper Drake.

Ubuntu, the popular desktop and server distribution based on Debian GNU/Linux, released Dapper Drake in June 2006 with an emphasis on the needs of large organizations. It is the first version to be offered under a longer support cycle, through June 2009 for the desktop, and through June 2011 for the server version.

Ubuntu 6.06.1 LTS includes a live CDs with a GUI installer, and CDs with a text-mode installer for Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and Edubuntu. Xubuntu is included as well, however commercial support is not available from its sponsor, Canonical.

According to Ubuntu release team member Colin Watson, Canonical’s support department focuses the bulk of its time supporting GNOME and KDE. Since the department is small but growing, he says not offering support for Xubuntu was “a pragmatic decision to make sure we can do a good job rather than a mediocre one.”

Today’s maintenance release includes fixes for several bugs in the installation system, as well as other “high impact” bugs such as a memory leak in the GNOME Desktop. Ubuntu 6.06.1 LTS also includes over 300 post-release updates which developers say will reduce the need to download a large number of pre-existing updates following installation of the new release.

“Many of the bug fixes were focused on the graphical installer, which was new for Dapper, and corrected several common problems people had there,” says Scott James Remnant, core developer and member of the Ubuntu Technical Board. “The new GNOME point release fixes several problems including the CUPS icon memory leak and others. There were some similar fixes for the KDE stack [and] some upgrade issues from breezy were also fixed.”

Ubuntu 6.06.1 LTS offers several security updates, including patches for vulnerabilities in Apache and the Linux kernel as well as the integrated Firefox and Thunderbird applications. Developers say they do not anticipate certifications against Ubuntu 6.06 will need to be updated as a result of this release.

Ubuntu community member Jeff Waugh says that rather than rest on its laurels following today’s release, the development team is already looking toward the future. “We added six weeks to the Dapper cycle to ensure that it was ready to [go] but we made a commitment to six month time-based releases, and have previously followed every GNOME release by one month so Edgy Eft is back on our regular schedule, and due in October.”