Great news from the Likewise development pipeline in conjunction with one of our great partners:  Likewise Open 5.4 bits are in the newest Ubuntu 10.4 Alpha release.  Likewise Open has been included in Ubuntu since the Hardy Heron (8.04 LTS) release in April of ‘08.

This marks the first time that Likewise 5.4 bits will be included with the Ubuntu release.  The 5.4 build is currently not considered a stable release, and so is not recommended for production use at this point.  For the latest stable Likewise Open bits, please go here.

Here’s what the Ubuntu community page has to say:

Major new version of likewise-open
The likewise-open package, which provides Active Directory authentication and server support for Linux, has been updated to version 5.4. The package supports upgrades from both the officially supported versions 4.0 (Ubuntu 8.04 LTS) and 4.1 (Ubuntu 9.10), as well as the likewise-open5 packages from universe. Since this upgrade involves a lot of configuration file changes and in-place database upgrades, testing and feedback is appreciated.

Some thoughts from Likewise senior developer Jerry Carter:

“We are all very excited about the inclusion of the Likewise Open 5.4 features in the Ubuntu 10.04 release.  The success of Likewise Open 4.x and 5.0 in past Ubuntu releases has been very encouraging.  With 5.4 we are including a new service manager interface for managing the set of likewise daemons, a new centralized configuration store which helps make future upgrades much simpler, and a rewritten client and server network I/O stack.  And as always, the Ubuntu server and desktop teams have been very helpful when navigating the packaging specific issues that cropped up.”

Finally, here are some thoughts from Gerry Carr, head of Platform Marketing at Canonical:

“Likewise Open allows organizations to manage mixed environments of Windows, Apple and Ubuntu users – enabling increased adoption of Ubuntu into the enterprise. Previous versions have proven to be very popular with the Ubuntu Server user base and we are delighted to be able to bring 5.4 to current 10.04 Alpha.”

You can get the latest Ubuntu Alpha 2 release bits here: http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/lucid/alpha2