The past few releases of Ubuntu had become quite uninteresting, so this breath of fresh air is especially welcome. The standardization of the 3D desktop is a good thing because it’ll allow more exposure. If the plug-and-play functionality works as advertised, it could convince more people to try Linux, since the biggest barrier (aside from software incompatibility) is hardware malevolence. I’m behind Canonical on this.

clipped from www.news.com Some of the Gutsy Gibbon work involved introducing new features Canonical hopes to stabilize for Hardy Heron Take, for example, the “tickless” kernel, which is designed to reduce power consumption and improve server virtualization performance by letting the processor enter a somnolent state more often. Among other Gutsy Gibbon developments are snazzy 3D graphics for the desktop version, desktop search called Tracker and the first incarnation of a Ubuntu Mobile version for portable gadgets. “Ultimately we took the decision to take the risk and enable this functionality by default.” Among other Gutsy Gibbon desktop features are plug-and-play function to more easily install proprietary or missing software to play audio and video files; easy support for multiple monitors; the ability to read and write from hard drive partitions using Microsoft Windows’ NTFS file system using the Fuse software. Canonical plans to release “Gutsy Gibbon,” the Ubuntu Linux version 7.10