The public beta for Ubuntu 9.10 codename Karmic Koala has been released by the Ubuntu Team, which is cool. I downloaded the beta and installed it on my virtualBox a few days ago. Ubuntu 9.10 – Karmic Koala brings a lot of new features and I’m kind of excited for the final release.

When you install the OS, you will notice that the installation dialog have been reworked, and you’ll see the information about the distro and its features. Boot performance has been improved and faster than before. Splash screen software has been replaced with Xsplash (Read the blog post of Scott James Remnant that’ll explains why). And by default, Ubuntu 9.10 uses ext4 filesystem and the GRUB 2 boot loader.

The latest release of GNOME(GNOME 2.28) has been included. Pidgin has been replaced by Empathy as the default instant messaging client (read the comparison of usability here). In the Applications menu, the Add/Remove Applications has been replaced by Ubuntu Software Center and has been moved to System > Administration menu.

Well, I’m still playing with Koala and there are still more visible and under the hood features. Me can’t wait. The final stable version will be released on October 29th, 2009. So if you want to try Ubuntu 9.10 : Karmic Koala, you can download the beta here.

Ubuntu 9.10 Screenshots