Karmic Koala Ubuntu makes first appearance

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 15 May 2009 at 10:05

Canonical has released the first alpha of Karmic Koala, the operating system destined to become Ubuntu 9.10.

The alpha was introduced by Canonical in typically ebullient fashion as "the absolute latest and greatest software the Open-Source Community has to offer," though this was somewhat undermined by the developer notes which claim "Karmic is not encouraged for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even
frequent breakage."

Anybody still ready to take the plunge will find early stage changes are few, with the headline-grabbing user-interface overhaul destined to come much later in development.

In the meantime, users can play with the latest Gnome 2.27.1 development release, which has greater support for webcams and new options for adjusting brightness, contrast, saturation, and hue. There's also a startling list of bug fixes.

Alpha 1 also bundles the Linux 2.6.30 kernel, bringing the usual host of compatibility improvements and performance tweaks. It also remerges the latest changes from the unstable Debian release.

Canonical is also touting changes to the Intel video driver architecture, which should address some of the performance problems reported in Ubuntu 9.04, released last month.

Ubuntu 9.10 will switch from the current EXA acceleration method to UXA. It's faster, though not as stable, explaining the reluctance to use it as the default. The changes should also "dramatically" speed up the suspend and resume time.

The Alpha 1 release is available in Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu versions. The stable version of Karmic Koala is scheduled for release 29 October.