karmic koala

(I will update this post as more info becomes available)

Here’s a list of expected new features and changes in Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic Koala”:

1. Linux 2.6.31 and X.Org 7.5 (to be confirmed), including KMS and UXA for the i915, and DKMS replacing restricted-modules
2. Even faster boot speeds (10-12 seconds from Grub to full desktop with n0 I/O on a Dell Mini 9)
3. Grub2 will allow for an ext4 root/boot partition, as well as a restart menu that is aware of other installed OSes
4. Gcc 4.4, which is a little more strict than 4.3 (which we’ve had for 2 releases now, since Intrepid)
5. hal deprecation for power management, keyboard hotkeys and removable storage (replaced by devicekit and udev)
6. GNOME 2.28, Mozilla Firefox 3.5, OpenOffice.org 3.1
7. Empathy is replacing Pidgin+Ekiga, Banshee will replace Rhythmbox
8. Epiphany might move from xulrunner to webkit (to be confirmed)
9. A new theme (the brown colour will be dropped) (to be confirmed)
10. Updates on shutdown
11. Scim replaced by iBus
12. A tmpfs /tmp partition and a move from a swap partition to a swap file
13. Focus on cloud computing (Eucalyptus) and the Netbook Remix
14. UbuntuOne
15. Power savings improvements, a social desktop, replacing xsane with gnomescan, lots of other stuff all around

Overall, they’re being pretty aggressive on new technologies, since Karmic+1 is expected to be an LTS release.

References:

• http://mrooney.blogspot.com/2009/05/karmic-desktop-uds-run-down.html
• https://blueprints.launchpad.net/sprints/uds-karmic
• https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KarmicKoala/TechnicalOverview
• https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/karmic
• http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/karmic/alpha4

(to be confirmed)

~ by azimout on June 3, 2009.