This is a great month! Ubuntu 9.10 is the second major OS release in this month! First we got Windows 7…. and today we got its competitor! According to Canonical this is the “latest and greatest software the Open Source community has to offer”. Actually their statement seems to be right….The Karmic Koala seems to be very impressive!

“The Ubuntu team is happy to bring you the latest and greatest software the Open Source community has to offer. This is their latest result, the Ubuntu 9.10 Release Candidate, which brings a host of exciting new features.”

These days, Ubuntu is one of the most widely used Linux operating in the planet! And now its not far away from being the most widely used operating system! The main two reasons for  it to be that popular is its simplicity and being totally free. The new system brings many features, which were able to beat its competitors even before the release….(for example : watch this video) Innovation, user friendliness, speed, reliability…. everything is there in Karmic Koala! I think you can remmebr our post “A journey to the center of Ubuntu 9.10” which described the features of Karmic one by one…. lets recall them again, shall we?

The Great Fetures of Ubuntu 9.10 :

New Installation Process

In earlier versions after we set everything up and click on install…. there’s nothing to see except that lonely progress bar struggling to reach the end! But when you install Ubuntu 9.10 you don’t have to stare at the progress bar… while he does the installation, Ubuntu gives us some articles about him for us to read :

Boot Experience

“We’ve done some work on improving the overall look and feel of booting the system.” Yes they have…. The new boot screen is totally different from the earlier versions…. specially on earlier versions the boot-screen didn’t had any background, but the latest one have…. can’t explain more… better see for yourself :

Software Center

“Ubuntu 9.10 Beta includes the Ubuntu Software Center, replacing ‘Add/Remove’ in the Applications menu. We kindly request users to try it out, and report any bugs they find.” A new way to get the software you want!

Latest Firefox (3.5.3)

In earlier versions of Ubuntu we had problems with installing the latest Firefox, so we had to use the Shiretoko browser or Ubuntuzilla script. But the new Ubuntu comes with the latest Firefox already installed!

Empathy (No Pidgin!)

Bad news for Pidgin lovers! Ubuntu have removed Pidgin and replaced with Empathy! (No Sympathy) Is Empathy better than Pidign? The choice is yours!

New set of Wallpapers

As I can remember there all the previous versions of Ubuntu came with 3 or 4 wallpapers, but our Karmic Koala comes with about 19 wallpapers….

GNOME

“Ubuntu 9.10 Beta includes the latest GNOME 2.28 desktop environment with a number of great new features:

• Empathy has replaced Pidgin as the default instant messaging client, introducing the Telepathy framework.
• The gdm 2.28 login manager is a complete rewrite compared to the version in earlier Ubuntu releases, permitting a more integrated login experience.”

Ubuntu One file sharing

“Ubuntu 9.10 Beta ships the Ubuntu One file sharing service by default, providing tightly-integrated file synchronization of your computer with other computers and the Ubuntu One network storage service.” I think most of you know about Dropbox? Well this is just like that…..

Linux kernel 2.6.31

“Ubuntu 9.10 Beta includes the 2.6.31-11.36 kernel based on 2.6.31.1. The kernel ships with Kernel Mode Setting enabled for Intel graphics . Linux-restricted-modules is deprecated in favour of DKMS packages.”

New Intel video driver architecture available for testing

“The Intel video driver has switched from the “EXA” acceleration method to the new “UXA”, solving major performance problems of Ubuntu 9.04. Ubuntu 9.10 Beta also features kernel mode setting by default on Intel hardware, which reduces boot-time flickering and dramatically speeds up suspend/resume.”

ext4 by default

“The new “ext4″ file-system is used by default for new installations with Ubuntu 9.10 Beta; of course, other file-systems are still available via the manual partitioner. Existing file-systems will not be upgraded.”

“If you have full backups and are confident, you can upgrade an existing ext3 file-system to ext4 by following directions in the Ext4 How to. (Note that the comments on that page at the time of writing about Ubuntu’s use of vol_id vs. blkid are out of date and are not applicable to Ubuntu 9.10 Beta.) Maximum performance will typically only be achieved on new file-systems, not on file-systems that have been upgraded from ext3.”

GRUB 2 by default

“GRUB 2 is the default boot loader for new installations with Ubuntu 9.10 Beta, replacing the previous GRUB “Legacy” boot loader. Existing systems will not be upgraded to GRUB 2 at this time, as automatically reinstalling the boot loader is an inherently risky operation.

Some features are still missing relative to GRUB Legacy. Notable among these are lock/password support, an equivalent of grub-reboot, and Xen handling.”

Well… if you have Ubuntu 9.04 and still want to use GRUB 2 you can follow this tutorial : How To Install GRUB 2 On Ubuntu 9.04

iSCSI installation

“The iSCSI installation process has been improved, and no longer requires iscsi=true as a boot parameter; the installer will offer you the option of logging into iSCSI targets if there are no local disks, or you can select “Configure iSCSI” in the manual partitioner.

Putting the root file-system on iSCSI is now supported.”

AppArmor

“AppArmor in Ubuntu 9.10 Beta features an improved parser that uses cache files, greatly speeding up AppArmor initialisation on boot. AppArmor also now supports ‘pux’ which, when specified, means a process can transition to an existing profile if one exists or simply run unconfined if one does not.”

New profiles

“In addition to the above changes to AppArmor itself, several profiles were added. Enforcing profiles for ntpd, the GNOME document viewer (evince), and libvirt are enabled by default. Complain mode profiles for Dovecot are now available in the apparmor-profiles package. A new profile is provided for Firefox as well, though it is disabled by default. Users can enable AppArmor sandboxing of their browser by running:

$ sudo aa-enforce /etc/apparmor.d/usr.bin.firefox-3.5

Please see the SecurityTeam/KnowledgeBase for a full listing of readily available profiles in Ubuntu.”

Libvirt

“Libvirt now contains AppArmor integration when using KVM or QEMU. Libvirtd is configured to launch virtual machines that are confined by uniquely restrictive AppArmor profiles. This feature significantly improves virtualization in Ubuntu by providing user-space host protection as well as guest isolation.”

Uncomplicated Firewall

“The Uncomplicated Firewall now has support for filtering by interface and egress filtering when using the ufw command. Documentation for ufw is also improved to help users better utilise the ufw framework and take full advantage of Linux netfilter’s power and flexibility.”

Non-eXecutable Emulation

“Non-eXecutable (NX) memory protection, also known as eXecute-Disable (XD), has always been available in Ubuntu for any systems that had the hardware to support it and ran the 64-bit kernel or the 32-bit server kernel. The 32-bit PAE desktop kernel (Linux-image-generic-pae) now also provides the PAE mode needed for hardware with the NX CPU feature.

For systems that lack NX hardware, the 32-bit kernels now provide an approximation of the NX CPU feature via software emulation that can help block many exploits an attacker might run from stack or heap memory.”

Got the picture?… Great! Now don’t waist you time, go straight to the Ubuntu Download Page and start downloading! Not satisfied with a download? Then go to Ubuntu’s ShipIt Page and request a free CD!

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