10 Things New About Ubuntu Karmic Koala Worth Taking Note Of

Yet another major Ubuntu release is on the anvil. It is called Ubuntu 9.10 codenamed Karmic Koala. There is nothing really to get excited about this new release to be frank. And probably no major changes to the user interface. Canonical had promised major changes to the UI for Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron, but even after two more major releases now, no upgrades have shown up yet. Lets take a look at the list of changes with this new Karmic release.
Ubuntu One File Sharing Service

• Ubuntu Karmic Koala comes with Ubuntu one file sharing service as default. Ubuntu one is a file synchronisation service and also a network storage service.

New Community Contributed Themes

• A bunch of new community contributed thems are also on the way and hopefully will make its cut into new Ubuntu Karmic. They include four really good themes and two icon sets.

Grub 2 by Default

• Grub 2 is completely rewritten from scratch, includes a lot of improvements like cross-platform installation which allows for installing Grub from a different architecture, portability for various architectures etc.

• Grub 2 is the default boot loader for new installations of Karmic, 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.

New GNOME

• Gnome 2.28 will come as default and you could even get a chance to test Gnome 3 in Ubuntu Karmic. Here is a quick preview on what actually Gnome 3 would be like. (pretty nice). [ Video Courtesy: Gotbletu ]

New Login Window

• New 'not that bad' login window. It may not look exactly like this, but this will give you an abstract idea. You may also want to check out 20 other exceptional looking GDM themes available out there. 

 [screen shot courtesy: OMGUbuntu ]

New Splash Screen

• A lot improved splash screen.

Better Looking Networking Manager

• Small changes like these does matter. What do you think.   

Empathy as the default IM Client

• IM Client Empathy is going to replace Pidgin as the default IM Client for Ubuntu 9.10. There is a lot of discussion going around on this change, but i think it is not a bad decision after all. 

New Linux Kernel

• The newest Linux Kernel 2.6.31 will be included in which even constitutes USB 3.0 support (WOW!) and a whole lot of other improvements. 

Faster Boot Times

• New Ubuntu Karmic comes with still faster boot times. That is a welcome development and lets hope, sooner than later, boot time will reach sub 10 second levels. In my case boot up time is an atrocious 40-45 seconds now.