By Rebecca Sobol
September 10, 2008
Ubuntu's current development release is called the
Intrepid Ibex, which is soon to
become v8.10. The Alpha5 release was
announced
this week, which is pretty close to on
schedule. One
more alpha release is planned, followed by a single beta, and the final
release should be available by October 30, 2008.
Looking at the blueprints for
Intrepid we see a number of high priority items such as 3G
networking, which will be integrated into NetworkManager.
Another high priority item is an improved
flash experience, which is
aimed at improving the plugin finder wizard, better interaction with
sites that use the flash detection kit, and an improved user-experience for
selecting available alternatives. Internally there are the Package
Status Pages, which are meant to provide a web page for each of the top
20-30
packages in Ubuntu showing bug counts and other vital signs and
statistics.
What else is new in Intrepid? GNOME 2.23.91, X.Org server
7.4, Linux kernel 2.6.27, and Network Manager 0.7 are all being included.
An encrypted private
directory will also be added to each home directory. In addition, there's a
Guest session available from the User Switcher panel applet to give
temporary access with restricted privileges.
Dynamic Kernel Module Support (DKMS) is also available in Intrepid. It
allows kernel drivers to be automatically
rebuilt when new kernels are released. This makes it possible for kernel
package updates to be made available immediately without waiting for
rebuilds of driver packages, and without third-party driver packages
becoming out of date. Finally, the
"Last successful boot" recovery entry retains a copy of your running kernel
and makes it available from the boot loader. This makes it possible for
old kernel packages to be safely auto-removed by the package manager,
instead of being kept indefinitely.
Kubuntu will be using KDE4, with no plans to support KDE3. The Kubuntu wiki for
Intrepid says, "KDE 3 is obsolete and largely unmaintained. Keeping
with KDE 3 would offer no advantage over giving users Hardy."
Bug squashing has been ongoing, with a number of focused Hug Days. The latest of
these will be held September 11 to focus on bugs
that don't have a package assigned to them.
There are still a few known
issues in the Alpha5 release, but overall the development is
progressing nicely. Of course, if wild mountain goats are not
your thing (however intrepid they might be), you can always wait for the
more mythological Jaunty Jackalope, which
will be in the planning stages at a Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS) in
Mountain View,
California next December.
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