Christy Speaks

Its been 1 1/2 months since Ubuntu 9.10 aka Karmic Koala 's release. Since then I have been using it at my work place. The default theme is now a bit darker. Some other notable changes is Add/Remove Application being replaced by Ubuntu Software Center . The Software Center is aimed at newbie users who are migrating from Windows. It has the s/ w's divided into categories, which can be installed on click. The major difference is here is the installation happening in background. The image below shows the Software Center interface. The system boot time in Karmic is fast similar to its predecessor. ext4 is now the default filesystem . Ubuntu One is another new feature which gives users 2 GB of free online storage. Overall Karmic shows progress but the focus was more towards new users.

Jaunty Jackalope the latest version of Ubuntu 9.04 is out. The looks are almost as of 8.10, with an additional package called Computer Janitor which is similar to autoclean in apt-get. This time around there are 3 ubuntu editions instead of the regular 2 editions namely Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop Edition Ubuntu 9.04 Server Edition Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix ( New Edition ) The system boot time hasn't changed much. ext4 has been added to the list of supported filesytems for the first time. In the next release it is planned to make ext4 as the default filesytem. As for game enthusiasts it would be better to avoid it for the time being as I found the nvidia-glx-180 package buggy. The driver caused my system to crash atleast 4 times before I realised the problem and disabled it. Overall the system is OK to be used by general users.

Its been long since I started using VMware, almost 2 years. VMware became one of the essential softwares of CRAVE lab due to the frequent Linux Workshop taken by the me & Joseph. All seemed well until Ubuntu 8.04 aka Hardy Heron , when vmware-server was removed from the partner repository of Ubuntu. Now if I had to use it again on Ubuntu, then manual installation was the only option. Come to think of it we at CRAVE never depended on a proprietary software so much as VMware. I personally felt it was time that we left VMware and move ahead. I needed a software which was user friendly unlike Qemu. Finally I found the answer in VirtualBox , a Sun Product. I tried it out and man I loved it. It was the answer to all my problems. Now VirtualBox has replaced VMware in our essential softwares list at CRAVE. I will put up another post on the Installation of VirtualBox on Ubuntu when I get some free time. I have put the installation guide for VirtualBox at http://crave.dbit.in/wiki/index.ph...