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Shuttleworth Announces Karmic Koala

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Fri Feb 20, 2009 03:02 PM
from the make-the-bad-man-stop dept.
An anonymous reader writes to mention that Mark Shuttleworth has announced the next release in the horribly alliterative Ubuntu family, "Karmic Koala." The new version hopes to include a newer, shinier, faster startup, better small screen support, a spruced-up desktop look (no more brown), and many minor tweaks and updates. "A newborn Koala spends about six months in the family before it heads off into the wild alone. Sounds about perfect for an Ubuntu release plan! I'm looking forward to seeing many of you in Barcelona, and before that, at a Jaunty release party. Till then, cheers."
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  • Cool (Score:5, Funny)

    by pak9rabid (1011935) on Friday February 20 2009, @03:05PM (#26933857)
    I've always been fascinated how the Debian (and derivatives) releases have functioned. Each branch is like a chamber in a revolver; as it reaches 'stable', it aligns itself with the barrel ready to be fired off to the masses.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 20 2009, @03:09PM (#26933923)

    Am I the only one who likes the brown color scheme?

    I find that it's easy on the eyes without being outright drab, but maybe that's just me.

  • by wiredog (43288) on Friday February 20 2009, @03:10PM (#26933939) Journal

    It only looks cute and cuddly. Actually try to cuddle a koala and it'll bite you, claw you, and shit on you.

    Or so I've heard...

  • Damn (Score:4, Funny)

    by Alarindris (1253418) on Friday February 20 2009, @03:10PM (#26933951)
    I was hoping for King Krimson.
    • Re:Damn (Score:5, Funny)

      by rbanffy (584143) on Friday February 20 2009, @03:52PM (#26934523) Homepage

      Krusty Krab

    • by Anonymous Coward

      It's 2009. Over twenty years since the original Macintosh was released. Twenty years since the fundamentals of UI element spacing, text rendering, text kerning, verticle and horizontal text alignment, colour usage...

      And the latest Ubuntu, the 'gold standard' for Linux desktops, is a complete mess:

      * Text kerning problems all over the place

      * Alignment problems in almost every single text field or label

      * Almost random colour choice for UI elements

      * UI elements having no consistent alignment or spacing

      * UI elem

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        The text alignment and kerning problems are something I really can't understand. Every time I do my yearly 'let's give Linux a try again' it is depressing to see the same horrible font choices, text that is never properly aligned in text boxes, and kerning problems.

        It's like trying to put out a newspaper or magazine that doesn't have any real professional page layout people working on it. It is so jarring to read that it really doesn't matter what the actual content is.

        • by dotancohen (1015143) on Friday February 20 2009, @04:27PM (#26934989) Homepage

          Please, file bugs with specific examples. You are probably right: the people of that particular profession are not on the dev team and the devs that are working on Ubuntu probably don't even _know_ what they are doing wrong. Better yet, file it at Redhat or Novell, where the cashflow to hire the right people exists (Canonical won't do it).

          • by Radhruin (875377) on Friday February 20 2009, @08:33PM (#26937483)
            I've noticed a lot (A LOT) of problems along these lines, and it really gets to me (I suspect that the metrics for a lot of the fonts that are distributed with Ubuntu are completely off)... but how do I categorize and report the bug in such a way that it's useful? Take a screencap of a website that uses a specific font that looks terrible? Is that a bug in Firefox, Cairo, the font itself, Ubuntu, or what?
            • by dotancohen (1015143) on Friday February 20 2009, @09:15PM (#26937751) Homepage

              If you file it in Launchpad, then the devs will assign it to the proper component. Definitely include a screenshot. Is the problem only in websites? Link to the bug here and I'll triage it (I use Kubuntu, though, but I can install an Ubuntu virtual machine).

              The Ubuntu bug tracker is great for iffy bugs because the competency level of Ubuntu users is assumed to be rather low. However, sometimes (and I hope that this won't be the case with this bug) the devs cry "opinion" and don't work on the bug. But the whole fonts thing is well enough known that they may appreciate the input from someone who does know a bit on the subject.

              Thanks!

          • by viridari (1138635) on Saturday February 21 2009, @04:39AM (#26939533) Homepage
            Bugs filed with Ubuntu are routinely ignored. There is a huge drive for forward movement, new features, but almost no emphasis on cleaning up the myriad bugs. Why should I waste my time reporting bugs if Canonical isn't putting resources into resolving them?
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        This is mostly nonsense.

        Some of these issues are real some of the time, but nearly all of your post just sounds like you're complaining that things aren't exactly the same as what you're used to.

        The latest Ubuntu works beautifully for anyone who actually wants to get stuff done rather than complaining that the "open file" dialog doesn't automatically grow when you change your font size preference or whatever.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            I like Ubuntu better than Windows

            Then stop spreading the same boring anti-Linux nonsense.

            but for God's sake do we need 15 apps that do all the same thing?

            Not your call, not my call, not anyone's call. Programmers are free to work on what they're interested in doing. Distributions tend to pick sane defaults, and there's no need to complain about having other options.

            Can we please get rid of the nag message if you try to login as root?

            Who cares? If you're really an expert and know better, turn the message o

      • WTF? (Score:5, Informative)

        by theolein (316044) on Saturday February 21 2009, @07:00AM (#26939975) Journal

        ...Stupid package management with insane dependencies. ...

        And you say this as a Mac user, using an OS that doesn't even have a unified package management system (And no, .pkg files don't count, since they aren't unified and there's no built-in update of uninstall mechanism)?

        Your post should have been marked troll, flamebait or Macfanboi, and I say that as a Mac user myself who owns three Macs.

  • by Epsillon (608775) on Friday February 20 2009, @03:41PM (#26934383) Homepage Journal

    ...DropBear as the default SSH. Should have been called "Killer Koala."

  • by John Hasler (414242) on Friday February 20 2009, @05:49PM (#26936023)

    Shouldn't that read "the appallingly alliterative Ubuntu family"?

    • by bluefoxlucid (723572) on Friday February 20 2009, @03:11PM (#26933961) Journal
      I actually thought this was a joke when I first read it. Especially with the cloud computing bullshit.
    • by Ungrounded Lightning (62228) on Friday February 20 2009, @03:35PM (#26934299) Journal

      ... is that it scatters its seeds by explosion, into the remains of a forest fire (which it promotes via its extremely flammable sap and the tinder pile of leaves and shed bark it creates around itself - apparently "in the hope of" getting the fire started B-) ). A row of eucalyptus trees during a fire can become the equivalent of a walking artillery barrage targeting a fuel dump.

      So I certainly wouldn't want to compute on a eucalyptus cluster - even if it is a "cloud" floating far away (like over the Berkeley Hills - high enough to be visible from I5 north of Sacramento). I'd worry about it taking out the data center and my data with it and "distributing" it up to the tropopause and onward with the prevailing wind.

      As for my laptop, no WAY I'll install any eucalyptus package on that. It's got enough problem with those lithium batteries with the energy density of a hand grenade without adding something more with the energy density of napalm.

      = = = =

      And I thought Ubuntu had an unfortunate choice of names. Good grief!

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        Yes I had the thought that we should be using eucalyptus oil as biofuel. There certainly is a lot of the stuff around.
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by linhares (1241614)

      ...they're finally getting a new theme? Seriously, of all the things to mention in the summary, you focus on the not-brown? There's a page long rant about cloud computing, about the eucalyptus project, and why the release is named koala. And you mention that, like every release, there's talk of it possibly not being brown?

      You must be new to ubuntu.