The Linux Beacon--Ubuntu Puts Out Fifth Alpha of Future Linux

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Volume 4, Number 31 -- August 28, 2007

Ubuntu Puts Out Fifth Alpha of Future Linux

Published: August 28, 2007

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

The Ubuntu community that works in conjunction with commercial Linux distributor Canonical to create the Ubuntu variant of Linux has announced the fifth alpha release of the future Ubuntu 7.10, code-named 'Gutsy Gibbon.'

In Ubuntu parlance, the fifth alpha is called Tribe 5, and you can read the release notes here or you can just jump right in and get the code at this link.

Ubuntu is a widely liked variant of Linux, based on the Debian distribution and tamed for corporations and human beings to use, that is starting to catch on in corporate circles. Sun Microsystems has worked with Canonical and the Ubuntu community to get Ubuntu certified on its "Niagara" Sparc T1-based servers, and Dell recently announced that it would pre-install Ubuntu on PCs in Europe. The prior release of Ubuntu is 7.04, developed under the code name "Fiesty Fawn," which started shipping in April. Ubuntu release dates are based on the year and month they are expected to be available in, so expect the Gutsy Gibbon to come out in October of this year. End users are warned right from the get-go not to deploy this alpha software in production.

Gutsy Gibbon will not be available with what Canonical calls Long Term Support, meaning that Canonical guarantees that it will support the operating system on desktops for three years and on servers for five years. Despite this, Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical's founder, says that the goals for Ubuntu 7.10 are to make it much easier to install and use, to make server deployments smoother, and to get the various projects that seek to bring 3D interfaces to Linux to resolve and actually deliver something slick and useful--and in Ubuntu first, of course. Gutsy Gibbon went into code freeze two weeks ago, and new package additions will not be allowed after August 30. The current plan is to freeze beta code on September 20 and release the code to end users as the first beta at that time. The release candidate for Ubuntu 7.10 is expected on October 11, and the final release is set for October 18.

With this fifth alpha release, the Ubuntu project is showing off the test code of Gnome 2.19.90, which will eventually be called the Gnome 2.20 interface. (If you want to use the KDE interface, you have to go to the Kubuntu project.) Ubuntu purposefully follows behind Gnome releases in its own development, since the GUI is such a key feature of the operating system. The new interface does a better job allowing end users to adjust graphics card and monitor settings, and allows them to set up dual monitors on a single machine. The CUPS printer manager software has been replaced with a new printer manager program nicked from Red Hat's Fedora development project, and the printing system also includes a virtual PDF printer for software that doesn't have native PDF output, such as GIMP, Firefox, and other non-Gnome applications. The Ubuntu developers are also adding in some default profiles for the AppArmor security software that Novell let loose as open source software last year and which the Ubuntu community has been weaving into its software to provide better security through mandatory access controls.

AppArmor support first came out with Ubuntu 7.04 in April. That prior release had support for a new hypervisor technology called Kernel Virtual Machine, or KVM, which was in technical preview at the time. Neither the Xen or OpenVZ virtualization hypervisors are woven directly into Ubuntu yet, but are available as add-ons for Ubuntu 7.04. It is unclear if Ubuntu 7.10 will have this capability, but official and integrated Xen and OpenVZ support is probably slated for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, which as the name suggests is due in April 2008. The long-term commercially supported Ubuntu releases, which are what servers really need, should have as many hypervisors as the Ubuntu community can put into the code.