Ubuntu Server Edition is a powerful and flexible operating system for delivering network and application services. A vast collection of open source server software is included, along with the tools to harness and manage them. With Ubuntu Server Edition you can quickly deploy common services such as web, email, file and database servers. It's easy to install, hardened by a strong security system and includes security updates throughout the life cycle.

Ubuntu Server Edition includes full virtualization helping you to create an energy-efficient server environment that is both agile and robust. It also delivers everything you need to serve your workgroup or enterprise.

Ubuntu Server Edition is community developed, commercially supported by Canonical and offers free maintenance updates after release. This version will receive updates for 18 months. When the next version is released, you can upgrade to it for free.

About 9.04 Ubuntu Server Edition

Ubuntu Server includes a range of new and updated features to boost efficiencies for system administrators running large systems in production environments.

New fully supported features:

• Extended hardware compatibility ensures easier deployment for users
• Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) can now pre-install their own default first-boot configuration of Ubuntu Server Edition and replicate it across all their Ubuntu servers
• Ubuntu Server on Amazon EC2 helps businesses to deploy services to external clouds
• Virtualization updates, including support for nested virtualization, further improve infrastructure management efficiencies
• New mail server features include shared user authentication and enhanced spam protection
• Samba 3.3 provides extended cluster support for file serving and integrates with the latest Microsoft systems
• Enhanced integration between OpenChange and Microsoft Exchange encourages interoperability
• Suspend-and-Resume features deliver power-management improvements
• Security enhancements with Apparmor offer greater peace of mind

Previews:

• The Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud uses an open source system known as Eucalyptus to enable a company to test, deploy and experiment with their own private, in-house cloud that matches the Amazon EC2 API
• Advanced Message Queue Protocol (AMQP) support brings the emerging standard for high-performance enterprise messaging to Ubuntu users through Rabbit MQ
• MySQL 5.1 is the latest release of the world's most popular Open Source database server. Upgrade from the fully-supported 5.0 to 5.1 is possible now