The Ubuntu 12.10 Linux distribution from Canonical is set to include a feature that the Fedora distribution has included for a long time; full disk encryption and Logical Volume Management encryption. This brings the Canonical distribution in line with Fedora. The ability to encrypt the / folder and not just the /home folder is a boon to security as long as you do not forget the passphrase. But this would be invaluable on a laptop; if it is stolen the data will not be recoverable by the thief; protecting critical company and/or personal data. The distribution will also be moving to a unified disk image, the image will be bootable from either USB or a DVD disk. The image will be 800 Megabytes so only those with a DVD drive will be able to install Ubuntu 12.10 or 13.04. Another change that the distribution will bring is the move away from the Unity 2D desktop; in the case that the distribution is installed on a machine without the capabilities to run Unity 3D the Mesa 3D LLVMpipe driver will kick in and will use the CPU to process mathematical calculations to render 3D using the CPU, but this would not be as fast as a dedicated GPU which every recent machine has these days.
Obviously; if your machine can not run Unity properly you would use the Xfce or Lxde desktops instead of faffing about with a special driver. Why has it taken so long for the Ubuntu distribution to get these features when the Fedora distribution has been able to use proper disk encryption for a long time. But the Ubuntu distribution is playing catch up as it has not been around as long as Fedora which arose from the venerable Red Hat Linux distribution. An LVM setup allows the / partition to be encrypted; greatly enhancing security. On the desktop front it is a better idea to run the kubuntu-desktop distribution instead of putting up with the Unity desktop which is a ripoff of the Macintosh desktop. I am happy running Linux Mint 13; I tried the Windows 8 Enterprise operating system from Microsoft but it is a horrendous excuse for a desktop with seemingly no Digital television support and after installing the HyperV virtualization add-on and re-booting the machine it froze with no disk activity. What a heap of fail. Linux and Xen is a better solution. I am trying Windows Server 2012 at the moment in a Virtualbox instance and it works perfectly; but the Server Core installation does not have many Powershell commands available at all. Linux and UNIX rule on the server front for a reason.
Many websites use OpenBSD or FreeBSD to serve their websites; the IIS server is also used but the Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP solution is a far better option for security and reliability. This posting has a graphic demonstration of the complexity of IIS versus Apache. Too much complexity in software can breed security holes. Ever wonder why a kitchen sponge has more bugs than your toilet seat? Complexity. The enormous surface area and the moist environment breeds the bacteria like mad; the super-complex Internet Information Server is therefore not as secure as the UNIX/Linux equivalents. The Ubuntu distribution has some good security being a Linux distribution; but they need to get rid of the tablet interface and standardise with a better desktop that is actually worth using. They should go back to a separate touch distribution and make the desktop distribution actually use a desktop interface. That is why KDE is better; it can be themed to look like Windows 7 and that creates a more familiar desktop if you are coming to Linux from Windows.