This will probably not interest a lot of people, so I won’t keep you for long, but the guys at Canonical have almost completed the next installment of Ubuntu ver 7.10 (yes, that’s October ‘07), codenamed Gutsy Gibbon. This follows on from the previous (and equally odd named) releases that were Feisty Fawn, Edgy Eft, and more. What this means for those who don’t know, don’t care, is that the world renowned Ubuntu Linux distribution has just reached its next major release point, an LTS (Long Term Support) release, with a full support schedule for desktop (< 18 months), and server (<2 years), I think anyway. Who’s going to be using the same peice of hardware in 2 years that they’re using now, you may ask, and I have no answer. It baffles me too, however, like that old Telemarketing ad on Late night TV (No, not Timothy Tony Robbins), just “Set it, and forget it”, remember that old gem? In some way the same logic can be used here, in that you can set up a system like a file/web/mail server, or a home theatre PC, and with occasional maintenance, it should work as is until support stops, and a new version comes out to start the process over again.

Of course, the crucial difference is, we’re talking about a computer, not a rack of lamb, but seriously, its the same thing. Think of it as a really slow cooked lamb, that cooks away nicely after you’ve forgotten about it for 18 months, and then without a thought, dissapears, and a whole new lamb takes its place… Mmmm.. Slow roast lamb.

After 120 minutes, the sheep was looking nice, not so after 24 hours. Unrecognisable after a year.

However, jokes (yes, for a split second I thought it was funny, no I could not find a picture of a burnt sheep) aside for any linux/Ubuntu users out there, this release should be a good one to get your mits on, due to release of new Gnome/KDE and better integrated Aero/MacOS style graphics bliss, that being Compiz/Fusion, as well as large improvements (once again) in hardware support in the kernel itself.

Exciting stuff, for some at least.

I just remembered this weird joke I used to find hilarious as a kid:

A teacher asked her class to write an essay for homework on the topic of Agnostic Apathy, to her surprise a student came back with one line stating: “I don’t know, and I don’t care”.

What the hell?? Was I a tree hugging hippy? I’ll admit its amusing, clever at best, but no where near the comic genius I once gave it credit for.

Times change Shannon, times change.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 at 1:30 am and is filed under Computing, Linux, Online. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.