Go Go Geekboy

That’s right! Karmic Koala will be coming on October 29th! I’m using the current beta right now and let me tell you good things are coming!

From the new graphical load to the other extra stuff that is added from the previous release. This is going to be the best release ever!

Here’s a little review on my thoughts on this upcoming release.

Now I recently had made a mistake with trying to convert my HD from the ext3 format to the new ext4. So I had to redo everything and the only CD I had was the Jaunty release.

Karmic formats to the ext4 on a clean install, however with people using Jaunty, I hope they come up with a user friendly utility to migrate to ext4 because by default Jaunty installs under ext3. In order to install jaunty on the ext4 format you need to use the Advanced partition option on the install. I know it’s a little tedious to do it but it is well worth it.

But I digress.

Karmic by default installs Empathy instead of the familiar Pidgin that we have been used to in previous releases. Personally I loved pidgin and some folks may find Empathy a little less powerful and odd to configure their personal settings for instant messaging. I deal with a lot of people on other OS’s and with file transfer it doesn’t always work well. So if you want Pidgin back, you can install it through the repositories.

Speaking of installing software, you can install things using the new Ubuntu Software center. This breaks down free software by category and installs what you need. However I am finding some things are not in the Software Center that are in the Synaptic installer app. So I am using both not just for some little packages, but some of the software that doesn’t get installed though the Software center (Super Maryo Chronicles install missed the music package for example. That should be a dependency in my opinion).

As I mentioned the boot up process is now more graphical because it’s using XSplash for the boot up screen. Very nice, but I can’t wait to find out how to customize that. Muwahaha.

As far as some other features coming soon, check out this article on OMGUbuntu.