Smoothwall Firewall project

Thursday 1 October 2009

Ubuntu 9.10 Beta in a Virtualbox virtual image






I downloaded the release candidate for the beta release for Ubuntu 9.10 yesterday and installed it in a virtualbox VM without any issues. The first thing you notice is the new graphical xsplash start-up screen which is set-up by default and the speed of booting up and presenting a desktop. The virtual machine drivers work perfectly with this release , as they have done through this whole release cycle.

The default theme they have picked is very attractive and usable, but this time around there are several choices of background which will allow you to modify it easily. Combine this with the community themes and the system can be set-up exactly how you want.

I will be upgrading my machines now the beta is out, and I will report back on how that went. I will have to reverse several of my current settings, like running the 2.6.31 kernel in jaunty to be able to do the system upgrade without too many problems. I will also get rid of some of the old kernels I have kept lying around.

It will be great to have many of the features I have installed manually like Firefox 3.5 and the latest version of Openoffice already build in, it makes the maintenance easier. The new release does have several new features including Ubuntu one cloud disk storage and the new software store, but as always with Ubuntu this is more evolution than revolution, which is fine by me.

It is always at about this time though I feel my laptop is perfectly setup and does everything I need , just to upgrade it ;-) . Without being willing though to go through one or two minor issues you will never have access to the latest in software development , which is what I want.

The final beta should be out today, so it is well worth grabbing the iso and at least running it up in a virtual machine.



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