Unigine Corp has made their Oil Rush game available in the Ubuntu Software Center for pre-order. Oil Rush is a Naval Strategy game and is currently in beta.

According to the press release from Unigine, Oil Rush is a real-time naval strategy game based on group control. In Oil Rush players build up defenses and upgrade oil platforms. Players progress through the game by capturing enemy platforms and oil rigs.

Oil Rush is powered by Unigine Engine, a multi-platform real-time 3D engine which unleashes the ultimate power for creating interactive virtual worlds.

Unigine Corp is a international company focused on top-notch real-time 3D technologies with its development studio located in Tomsk, Russia. For more than 6 years, the company delivers Unigine engine, a real-time 3D solution, that allows software developers to create not only games, but also interactive visualization, simulation and virtual reality systems.

Pick up your copy of Oil Rush from the Ubuntu Software Center today!

If you want your game or application included in the Ubuntu Software Center, visit the Ubuntu Developer Portal and submit your application today!

Remember when Windows was the best desktop OS for business users?

Seems like a while ago. The rise of browser-based apps, an increasingly mobile workforce and the ever-present threat of malware mean few CIOs would choose Windows if it was launched today.

Yet many believe there’s no viable alternative.

We, of course, think there is. Ubuntu is an elegant, feature-rich OS already running on millions of workplace desktops around the world, with more organisations switching every day.

So we’ve looked into the subject and written a new e-book: Crunch time on the Enterprise Desktop. It’s a great, short introduction to why there’s never been a better time to include Ubuntu in your desktop strategy.

Download it now to discover:

* Seven trends changing your desktop strategy
* Eight reasons why Ubuntu is a great business choice
* The Canonical customers and what they’ve achieved
* How to get started with Ubuntu in your organisation

Migrating to Ubuntu already helps enterprises save millions – read the ebook to learn how.

And don’t be shy to share your views on the subject and the ebook: leave a comment below and let us know if it was useful for you or if you have more questions.

Great news that Ubuntu 11.10 will include Cloud Foundry, an open source Platform as a Service (PaaS) that enables developers to build, deploy and run Cloud applications. Other PaaS offerings have typically locked you into using specific frameworks and services defined by the PaaS vendor as well as proprietary host platforms. This has made migrating applications between different providers as well as moving applications back into your own data center difficult if not impossible.

Cloud Foundry is the world’s first Open PaaS with your choice of frameworks, application services and Cloud deployment platforms. Cloud Foundry is made to be extensible so that while Spring, Rails, Sinatra and Node.js apps are supported today more frameworks can be added in the future as they gain in popularity. Even more exciting is that you will be able to run your PaaS in any cloud or behind your own firewall if you choose. No lock-in to a single development framework or Cloud vendor!

In Ubuntu 11.10 we’ve added client and server deployment tools using Ensemble that allow you to easily deploy a single node server in minutes as well as a distributed, multi node environment quickly and easily to create a production quality PaaS. You can deploy applications in AWS, Openstack or on your own internal servers.

Stay tuned as we’ll be doing more exciting work with Cloud Foundry. We encourage you to check out Cloud Foundry in Ubuntu 11.10 and learn more about the project at www.cloudfoundry.org

Fitting more computing capacity into a limited power envelope is one of the key challenges facing data centre designers today. It impacts companies whether they are building a £500 million data centre or simply working how much compute that can fit into a couple of racks at a shared facility.

One of the emerging approaches to solving this problem is to look at the technologies in low power-consumption appliances like phones and applying them to dense clusters in server-like configurations. Whether it is in smartphones, tablets or other embedded systems, the processor at the heart of these low power devices is generally ARM-based.

With Ubuntu Server becoming the de-facto standard for cloud infrastructure and big data solutions, we recognise that power consumption is key to efficient scaling. Building on four years of working with ARM, we are now taking the step of supporting Ubuntu Server on ARM.  We expect these processors to be used in a variety of use cases including microservers.

This is a first step and there will be many revisions of processors, hardware designs and of software as the performance and supported server workloads optimised for ARM grow over the next four years. It is, however, a first crucial step towards a new technology and one where yet again open-source innovation leads.

The new addition to the Ubuntu family | First release in October 2011

In October, the Ubuntu Server 11.10 release will be simultaneously available for x86, x86-64 and ARM-based architectures. The base image of the releases will be the same across architectures with a common kernel baseline. The ARM architecture will also be part of the long-term support (LTS) version of Ubuntu Server in 12.04 and other future releases.

Initial development focus and optimisation will be around the most popular Ubuntu workloads of web/network infrastructure and distributed data processing via NoSQL or big data applications where workloads typically use hundreds or thousands of systems.

Get involved

The Ubuntu Server on ARM initiative is a multi-year initiative gathering broad participation. More project information can be found on the Ubuntu wiki

Hardware partners, ISVs and open-source application developers keen to join existing partners around Ubuntu Server on ARM should contact us via our partner enquiry form.

What do Chianti wines, Organic foods, and Spanish Ham have in common with Ubuntu Certified? The simple answer is that they all stand for quality.

Chianti is an Italian standard (DOCG) for Tuscany wines that requires using defined methods, satisfying set quality standards.

Organic Foods are foods free of artificial components such as synthetic pesticides and chemical fertilizers. These need to comply with standards set by national governments and international organizations.

Jamon de Huelva is a Spanish Protected Designation of Origin introduced to avoid “misleading of consumers by non-genuine products,which may be of inferior quality or of different flavour.”
Ubuntu Certified is granted to computer systems (desktop, laptop, netbook, server,..) that satisfy set quality standards for an Ubuntu release by using defined production methods.

“Ubuntu Certified” Quality Standards
Great user experience is not a one-off, it is an ongoing affair. The Ubuntu Certification program is committed to sustained quality. We test the certified machines at the start of the program and we continue to test in order to stop problems from being introduced via software updates or new releases.

Manufacturers such as Dell and Lenovo engage Canonical OEM Services to enable Ubuntu for their systems. Through this work, we have developed an in-depth knowledge of the most complex areas for hardware compatibility. Certification testing pays special attention to these areas.

“Ubuntu Certified” Production Methods
Certification is only issued if the quality standards are met on:

• An unmodified image available from Ubuntu.com. Only modifications accepted as exceptions are those than can be done through a user interface option or tool. This exclude command line changes.
• A Manufacturer Pre-installed Ubuntu image, as part of a Canonical engagement. This ensures any modifications done by the manufacturer are compatible with future Ubuntu updates.

Canonical works with manufacturers participating in the program to maintain labs with representative hardware located around the world. This allow us to find possible regressions earlier on.

We hope that you continue to enjoy your “Ubuntu Certified” system. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to contact us via Launchpad Answers.

We’ve recently added a few titles to the Ubuntu Software Center and have been hard at work on getting more diverse applications landed there. BEEP! by Big Fat Alien and Heileen from Hanako Games have recently landed in the Software Center.

BEEP!

BEEP! by Big Fat Alien allows the player to take control of a “precision robot vehicle” to explore a diverse system of planets and uncover their terrible fate. BEEP! has been a rather popular download since it hit the Ubuntu Software Center.

Kiaran of Big Fat Alien wrote up a stellar blog post about the Software Center and his experience in submitting an application using the MyApps portal currently in beta.

Check out the trailer.

Now fire up the Ubuntu Software Center and buy it today!

Heileen

The Ubuntu Software Center’s newest addition is Heileen from Hanako Games. This is a anime adventure game where you guide a young woman through her adventures in exploring the New World. You must solve puzzles and explore the surroundings in order to proceed through the game.

This game does not have a trailer, but you can view screenshots at the Hanako Games website.

Now fire up the Ubuntu Software Center and buy it today!

As always…if you want to list your paid application in the Software Center please contact John Pugh at john dot pugh at canonical dot com!