Karmic Koala Alpha 5 released

**Solomon** · 04-09-2009

Mentioned on Ubuntu's website :The Ubuntu developers are moving quickly to bring you the absolute latest and greatest software the Open Source Community has to offer. The Karmic Koala Alpha 5 is the fifth alpha release of Ubuntu 9.10, bringing with it the earliest new features for the next version of Ubuntu.

It seems they are really working too hard to compete Snow Leopard and Windows 7.

New Features in this 5th Alpha release which makes it different the 3rd Alpha are mentioned below :

Gnome

The gdm 2.27.91 login manager is a complete rewrite compared to the version in earlier Ubuntu releases. In the Alpha 3 the gdm was 2.27.4.

Ubuntu UEC

Alpha 5 includes alpha images for the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) and Amazon's EC2. You can try out the latest Karmic server alpha instantly on EC2 using a preconfigured AMI, or download an image and put it into your own cloud with UEC.

Linux kernel 2.6.31

Alpha 5 includes the 2.6.31-9.29 kernel based on 2.6.31-rc8. The Alpha 3 had the 2.6.31-3.19 kernel based on 2.6.31-rc3. The kernel ships with Kernel Mode Setting enabled for Intel graphics.

iSCSI installation

The iSCSI installation process has been improved, and no longer requires iscsi=true as a boot parameter; the installer will offer you the option of logging into iSCSI targets if there are no local disks, or you can select "Configure iSCSI" in the manual partitioner. Putting the root filesystem on iSCSI is now supported.

**Solomon** · 04-09-2009

This time Ubuntu has already given some known issues about which you wouldn't like to spend time in reporting them about this alpha release. It is obviously a waste of time. They have already started on debugging the already known problems. Some known issues are :

Users in some timezones will find that their filesystems must be checked (fsck) immediately after install due to a bug in the installer's clock handling
When using the OEM installation option, the desktop fails to come up after reboot for some users
The OEM installer is reported to not correctly set up the end user account in Alpha 5
Due to a bug in the python-boto package, when running ec2-run-instances to launch an EC2 instance you must pass an additional --user-data x option to the command
The virtual kernel image has been built without virtio drivers, so installing using the "minimal virtual" option from the Ubuntu Server Alpha 5 will result in an unusable system after reboot. This problem also affects users of the linux-image-virtual kernel package who have installed from earlier alphas. Users are advised to wait until Alpha 6 before installing or upgrading
Installation of an LTSP server using the alternate CD in Alpha 5 will be incomplete because some recommended packages are not installed. This bug is solved in the on-going development of Alpha 6. As a workaround, users can install the pulseaudio-esound-compat and dhcp3-server packages after installation