First Beta Ulteo Application System Has Released

For who don't know, Ulteo is an Debian/Ubuntu-based Linux distribution created by Gaël Duval, the original founder of Mandrake Linux (now Mandriva Linux) and co-founder of MandrakeSoft (now Mandriva). Currently in early stages of development. Ulteo promises to bring new concepts designed to help individuals with limited knowledge to accomplish many common computing tasks.

Ulteo is a new innovative project aimed at simplifying the use of computers for both individual and corporate users by bypassing installation of applications, and bringing mobility features.

It's an hybrid, network-oriented, computing system. It's using network services intensively.

As said the development team of Ulteo: "After the recent success we had at providing OpenOffice.org in a web browser, we're proud to deliver the first beta of nearly two years of work: Ulteo Application System 'Sirius' is now ready for download on several mirrors. It was the needed 'client' brick to the Ulteo framework that is made of several online services, and provides, among others, automatic personal data (and forthcoming user environment) synchronising. In this release, you will also be able to test the first version of the 'My Digital Life' panel which is a new way to organise your documents and applications, and manage your system installations."

Currently, Ulteo consists of:

• Ulteo Online Desktop (version 1): it lets users store their documents online, and open them with a choice of applications that run within their web-browser (Firefox, IE and others).
• Ulteo Application System (Ulteo AS): is an installable version of Ulteo, for the local PC, that ships with hundreds applications and innovative features.

The basic version of the Ulteo AS provides a choice of applications for the daily userlife such as Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org..., but can be easily extended with an extended set of applications, from the Ulteo panel. It also provide by default document and panel content synchronization capabilities betwen the local installation of Ulteo and Ulteo Online Desktop.

Btw, you can download Ulteo at Here.