Ubuntu 10.04: Changes to the Firefox Browser and a Beginner's Manual

Article by George Norman (Cybersecurity Editor)

on 02 Feb 2010

The upcoming version of the Linux-based Ubuntu operating system is Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx, which will be released this April. When the operating system is released, it will feature a few changes to the browser that comes bundled with Ubuntu 10.04, Mozilla’s Firefox.

The first change is this, as detailed by Canonical’s Rick Spencer: “In Lucid, the default home page will respect the search provider settings that you have set in the "Chrome". (The "Chrome" is Mozilla's term for the little search box to the upper right, reachable by control-K, for instance). For Lucid, this will definitely work for switching between Google and Yahoo!, we don't yet know what other providers will be in scope for Lucid. If a user has Google set as their search provider, they will have exactly the experience they do today. If they switch to Yahoo!, the default home page will switch to using a Yahoo! search. If they switch back to Google, the default home page will switch back to using the Google search, exactly like today. Searching from Chrome will continue to work exactly as it does today.”

The second change refers to the default search provider used by Firefox. With Ubuntu 10.04 the default search provider, which at the current time is Google, will be replaced by Yahoo!. The user can still change the default search provider back to Google if he or she wants to. But by default, Yahoo! is the new search provider in Firefox, on Ubuntu 10.04.

This change has been implemented because Canonical and Yahoo! negotiated a revenue sharing deal. “This revenue will help Canonical to provide developers and resources to continue the open development of Ubuntu and the Ubuntu Platform. This change will help provide these resources as well as continuing to respect our user's default search across Firefox,” added Rick Spencer.

Speaking about deals, Yahoo! struck one with Microsoft this summer. The deal says that for the next 10 years Yahoo! Search will be powered by Microsoft’s Bing. So that basically means the default search provider for Firefox in Ubuntu 10.04 is Microsoft’s Bing.

Moving on, there is one other important thing about Ubuntu 10.04 hat you should be made aware of. A team of contributors and users got together to come up with a beginner’s manual for Ubuntu. This manual will be included in Ubuntu 10.04 by default.


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