In today's open source roundup: Ubuntu 14.10 is available for download and upgrade. Plus: Ars Technica looks at ten years of Ubuntu, and is the 64-bit version of Ubuntu 14.10 better than the 32-bit version? Ubuntu is one of the biggest Linux distributions around, and it’s usually a major event when a new version is released. This time around it’s Ubuntu 14.10 that is now available for download. Like all versions of Ubuntu, Ubuntu 14.10 comes with a cute codename. This version has been dubbed “Utopic Unicorn.” According to Ubuntu: These release notes for Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn) provide an overview of the release and document the known issues with Ubuntu 14.10 and its flavors. Ubuntu 14.10 will be supported for 9 months for Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Core, Kubuntu, Edubuntu, Ubuntu Kylin along with all other flavours. More at Ubuntu One of the big knocks about Ubuntu 14.10 is that it doesn’t have any significant new desktop features. But there are reasons for that and PC World explains that there’s more than meets the eye in Ubuntu 14.10. If you need to upgrade, here are some instructions: To upgrade on a desktop system: 1. Press Alt+F2 and type in “update-manager” (without the quotes) into the command box. 2. Update Manager should open up and tell you: New distribution release ‘14.10’ is available. 3. Click Upgrade and follow the on-screen instructions. Ars Technica looks back at ten years of Ubuntu Ars has an interesting retrospective about the last ten years of Ubuntu. According to Ars Technica: It’s hasn’t been a perfect ten years, but it’s difficult to imagine where Linux would be today without Ubuntu. When it debuted in 2004, the most popular desktop was KDE 3.5, the default theme of which looked like a sad clone of Windows 95. Ten years later, Linux is everywhere you look, and most often it’s Ubuntu Linux that you see. For better or worse, Ubuntu has become the friendly public face of Linux. But as Shuttleworth wrote on his blog several years ago, “free software is bigger than any one project. It’s bigger than the Linux kernel, it’s bigger than GNU, it’s bigger than GNOME and KDE, it’s bigger than Ubuntu and Fedora and Debian. Each of those projects plays a role, but it is the whole which is really changing the world.” More at Ars Technica Ars Technica There’s no doubt that it’s been a very controversial journey for Ubuntu. It’s come a long, long way from where it started, and it has endured despite the many critics who have lambasted it over the years. It will be fun to look back in another ten years and see what has happened between now and its twentieth birthday. Ubuntu 14.10 32-bit versus 64-bit Phoronix compares 32-bit and 64-bit performance in Ubuntu 14.10. According to Phoronix: Given yesterday’s story about Ubuntu 16.04 LTS potentially being the last 32-bit release if that proposal goes through, and given the number of people still running 32-bit Linux distributions on Intel/AMD hardware that is 64-bit capable, here’s some fresh x86 vs. x86_64 benchmarks using Ubuntu 14.10. Using Ubuntu 14.10 with the latest daily development ISOs today — just ahead of this week’s official Utopic Unicorn debut — I did clean installs of both x86 and x86_64 flavors and carried out the same benchmarks with the same settings. Using the open-source Phoronix Test Suite automated benchmark framework made all testing easy and effortless. More at Phoronix Phoronix You can read a reaction thread on Reddit, and the Ubuntu 14.10 downloads page has 32-bit and 64-bit versions available for download. What’s your take on all this? Tell me in the comments below. Open Source