With the currently in development, Ubuntu 10.04, codenamed Lucid Lynx, the development road map is set to take huge advantage of the major social networks. Common social networking actions, such as updating your Facebook status, or sending a Tweet to your friends are set to be integrated directly into the operating system allowing users to keep their friends up-to-date and share information without the need to even open a web browser.

Take a look at the image below. This is a basic mock-up of the new social menu codenamed the ‘Me Menu’, which is aimed to become to a simple, centralised way to manage your social activities. It has options for a user avatar, multiple social networks, instant messaging and microblogging services and the setting and broadcast of custom and preset statuses and microblogs.

This clever menu will link into other social applications, like your instance messaging application. In others words, you set your status in the me menu, and the update is reflected automatically in all your social networks and configured social applications. Related to this, in the diagram above, ‘Chat Accounts…’ will refer to all forms of instant messaging and direct communications, while ‘Broadcast Accounts’ will refer to social networks which allow you to share a status update such as Twitter, Facebook and identi.ca.

The Ubuntu One service will also be integrated into the Me Menu and Ubuntu’s new social infrastructure. This will allow social network information to be synchronised and related to your Ubuntu One login, along with the existing file synchronisation, contact management and note synchronisation services already offered by Ubuntu One.

The Me Menu will be the overall representation of ‘you’ within Ubuntu. If you want more information regarding the Me Menu, which is to become the central social network integrations of Ubuntu, you can take a look at the design specification.

The Open Source Initiative, which works to promote open-source software and ideals

What is open-source software?

Open-source software is software which is under a special type of license in which the source code, which is usually copyrighted, is instead open to all. Specifically, this refers to code which meets the Open Source Definition for code licensing or is released to the public domain, and thus available without any licensing terms.

Why is this good?

Since the source code of open source software is available to all, this allows anyone to modify and adapt software to their needs. It also promotes innovation and reduces the need to ‘reinvent the wheel’ which is present in most proprietary software solutions simply due to the licensing and copyright issues involved.

It is good for businesses, enterprises and consumers as well. A report by the Standish Group states that the adoption of open source software models worldwide  has resulted in general savings of approximately $60 billion USD annually to consumers.

How does open source make money?

Since the source code of open source software is available for anyone to modify, people often wonder how businesses that utilise open source ideals can make money, since any theoretically distributed software could be legally copied based on the terms of most open source licenses.

For these reasons, a lot of companies which produce open source software offer priced high-level or enterprise level support for their open-source software. This enables them to charge for a service which keeping the software product free, open and able to adapt and innovate along with other open source software. Another example is consumer services, of which is good example is Ubuntu One, a new consumer level service, which allows Ubuntu users to share and synchronise files, contacts and notes using built into the Ubuntu operating system. This service is seamless and the file synchronisation, although only a small part of Ubuntu One, acts in a very similar manner to Dropbox.

Having been a tester of Ubuntu 9.10 during its development, I can tell you that Ubuntu 9.10 will feature the following upon its release.

• E-mail and Chat Features – Ubuntu 9.10 will feature a built-in instant messenging client, Empathy, which can connect to many of the most popular instant messaging services, including Yahoo, Gmail (Google Talk), MSN (Windows Live), Jabber, AOL, QQ and many more. In addition to instant messaging, the latest version of the e-mail and personal information management program, Evolution, is included. Evolution can manage your contacts, e-mail, schedule, tasks and memos – all for free.

• Internet – Ubuntu 9.10 ships will the very latest version of Mozilla Firefox, which is much faster and excellent for browsing modern websites and web applications which are heavy on dynamic client-side content, such as Javascript. Complex web pages such as Facebook, Google Maps and others will load and work lightning fast.

• Music and videos – Music and videos are managed with ease in Ubuntu 9.10. Simply plug in your iPod, PSP, MP3 or MP4 player and use the built-in media player, Rhytmbox, to download, store, buy and play your music collection. Ubuntu 9.10 can play many video formats with no problems and anything it can not play it will offer to download and install the required codecs automatically, and for free.

• Office and productivity – Word processing, spreadsheets or presentations can all be handled by the latest version of OpenOffice.org which is including in the latest version of Ubuntu. OpenOffice is compatible with all other office applications including, but not limited to, Microsoft Office.

• Store, share and synchronise – Ubuntu 9.10 features integrated ‘Ubuntu One’ service, which allows you to easily and seamlessly synchronise your contacts, notes, files and folders between all your Ubuntu computers. Even if you are on a computer running Mac or Windows you can still access all your files online, meaning you’ll never be at computer without your files.

• Software centre – The brand new software centre for this version of Ubuntu allows you to download and install thousands of free and open-source applications automatically with only 2 or 3 clicks.

• Gaming – Linux-based systems are generally not well known for their gaming prowess. However, Ubuntu 9.10 ships with the ability to download over 400 fun games directly from the built-in software centre. All these games are still completely free and installable with only a few clicks.

This latest version of Ubuntu provides advantages for both business workstations and home user desktops. Although not mentioned in this article so far, for enterprises and small home/offices, the server edition of Ubuntu 9.10 is also released tomorrow alongside the desktop edition.

For more information about Ubuntu, visit the official Ubuntu website.