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Ubuntu Karmic Koala Alpha 1 Makes Its Debut

The Ubuntu Project may have just unleashed a legion of Jackalopes upon the world, but is well aware that time waits for no animal, real or cryptozoological. This is why the first alpha version of Ubuntu 9.10, the Karmic Koala, is now available for brave testers everywhere.

Keep in mind that this is the first alpha, just opened for development. This means not only that it should be kept far, far away from production machines, but that many of the nifty new features that will be in the final Karmic release aren't there at all yet, never mind perfected. Currently, however, there is a new kernel based on the 2.6.30 release, and the latest development version (2.27.1) of the GNOME desktop environment. Applications are being updated (and added) quickly, and there's definitely a wild ride (and a lot of bug-squashing fun) ahead for interested testers.

The Ubuntu team has a few goals for Karmic queued up right now -- including the introduction of a new default compiler (GCC-4.4), an updated Intel video driver (switching from "EXA" acceleration to the "UXA" acceleration method, which should solve some of the problems seen in Jaunty), and the beginning of the phase out and deprecation of the hal daemon.

The known issues are especially important to note at this time. There are, at this point, no live desktop images on the CDs, because the kernel at this point lacks support for the "aufs" file system. Also, English language support is not installed by default (and other languages are also problematic) due to openoffice.org-l10n failing to build at this point.

It's an early release, but those wishing to give it a whirl are welcome to download Karmic in its various desktop iterations and architectures (including ARM) and report back with details and feedback on any bugs or unexpected surprises.

• open source
• ubuntu
• linux
• development
• Canonical
• Karmic Koala
• alpha test

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