Ubuntu "Karmic Koala" RC Hits the Streets With Windows 7

oranghutan writes "Computerworld is reporting Canonical has made available the Release Candidate of its latest Linux-based operating system, Ubuntu 9.10, on the same day Microsoft launched the long-awaited Windows 7. 'The upcoming Canonical release, which is code-named Karmic Koala, is the latest version of the popular flavor of the Linux OS. The development release on Thursday pushed the OS one step closer to final release, which is due on Oct. 29, according to the company's release schedule Web page. An image of the OS is available for download on Ubuntu's Web site. Test versions of Karmic Koala RC available for download include the server, desktop and netbook versions.'"

Comments

Shitty Summary and Article

[sexconker]

News would entail what's new in this version.

Non news is a "hey guys Ubuntu has something new too" cry for attention amidst the Win 7 release.

Ubuntu is great and all, but this article is crap.

It barely gets around to mentioning:
"Built on the latest Linux 2.6.31.1 kernel, Ubuntu 9.10 offers faster boot times, an improved user interface and programming tools for easier software development, according to Canonical."

transparent system tray in awn

[jeffstar]

I've got hardy on my thinkpad at the moment. I'm considering upgrading just because the new gtk in karmic enables a transparent system tray so AWN will finally look right.

I never liked having two horizontal bars or panels on my screen, especially on a 14" widescreen. too much wasted real estate. especially when applications have a title bar. then add fire fox book mark bar, menus and address bar and that doesn't leave a lot of real estate!

AWN with google chrome makes the most of it.

Re:Causality is wrong

[lattyware]

They'd be certifiably insane not to. In business, you look at any possible threats. Be it near or far. Like it or not, Linux is a viable threat to Microsoft, one of these distros could some day start to drag users away, and Microsoft would be fools not to keep any eye on them. Also, I don't know what experience you had with Linux, but it's very different to mine. I have less trouble setting up and running Linux distros than I do with Windows.

Re:CentOS 5.4 is out, too.

[MBGMorden]

As someone with a real job who uses Linux there (not as much as we used to unfortunately), I switched most of my servers to Ubuntu from CentOS a while back.

I'll admit that lots of people are still using CentOS (and I'll never mock a distro's users - though I'm on Linux Mint now, I used to use Gentoo at home, and before that I was on Slackware - 'nuff said), but even in the corporate world it seems like the push is towards Ubuntu.

Re:Causality is wrong

[Kjella]

Here's my take on Linux support: Not that long ago, I'd have to chase high and low to find any Linux compatible hardware and certain things like wireless cards was near impossible. These days I have no problems finding Linux-compatible hardware, even though not all or even most hardware is compatible with Linux. There's usually some well-supported official drivers in most categories instead of the "best of the reverse engneered" there used to be. I don't remember this machine having a kernel panic ever, though X did have an oops a month ago because I've upgraded to a beta KDE/X release.

If I was to say my biggest greatest annoyance with Linux, it's media plugins and flash in particular. If only Firefox would stop being so patent-freaky and decode H.264 when it is available then we could kill flash and live happily ever after. *buntu seem perfectly capable of shipping a video player that'll use the x264 codec if installed, so should Firefox.