Latest in Open source ?

In recent weeks lot of new things are happening in linux/opensource. Thought of briefing few of them here.

1. Ubuntu 8.10.

Ubuntu released there latest offering of popular linux distro Ubuntu 8.10 code named "intrepid"
I upgraded my Ubuntu install from 8.04 to this new version, I can see lot of minor feature addition/refinements.

Also, good news is that, the super fast next gen Ext4 filesystem is now
available in Ubuntu, currently getting shipped with Ubuntu 9.04 installer
which is still in Alpha.

Ext4 is designed to provide better performance and reliability over Ext3. Many
benchmarks test have shown that, Ubuntu boots up in less than 21 seconds with the new Ext4. That's impressive ! !

Find more details in here

2. KDE 4.2 is now out.

KDE 4.2 is finally GA'd. Released a week back, Jan 27th to be precise.




The new version comes with lot of refinements, new feature addition to existing
4.1. Some of the notable ones are refinements to plasma desktop interface, whole
lot of new plasma applets, new and improved workspace tools, addition of new
features to Kwin and so on.

Take a look at Visual Guide to the new KDE here

I have KDE 4.1 running in my Dell Inspiron and will upgrade it to 4.2 pretty
soon, I tried updating kde4.2 but with no success. I am running KDE on a ubuntu
8.10 ( No Kubuntu) and may be that needs some tweaks before I do upgrade.

Will post the detailed steps once I am done.

3. Intel released Moblin 2 Alpha for Netbooks.

Intel recently announced the release of their opensource OS for netbooks called Moblin.

Moblin is designed to to work on Atom-based Netbooks providing faster boot time. One can install this new OS even on normal PC /laptops.




I have downloaded the latest ISO from the Moblin website, but didnt get a chance to play with it yet ! !