What’s Coming in Ubuntu 8.10?

The next Ubuntu release is already around the corner. Only two more months, and the next tidal wave of brown 2 paragraph reviews will be upon us. PolishLinux decided that they’d be ahead of the pack, by taking a look at what Ubuntu 8.10 looks like right now, and what new features it brings. Of course, many of these features come from upstream, and will find their way into other distributions as well – or are already there.

One of the important new features is an upgraded Network Manager, which includes a much broader and better support for 3G networking. It is possible to network with 3G today, but the process is rather complicated and not very user friendly. With the recent surge of popularity of netbooks, and the focus on true mobility, the importance of easy 3G support in Linux is clear. “The developers are promising to make this process even faster and a lot easier.”

By default, Ubuntu 8.10 comes with a pre-configured guest account, allowing people to make their system accessible to others without the risk of losing data or messing up the system. A related addition is the ~/Private directory, which can be encrypted and is inaccessible to others.

Other changes include a graphical configuration tool for fontconfig settings, tabs in Nautilus, a cleaning utility for the package database, a new look for the installer, and a lot more. The theme will also receive a redesign, but it is not yet complete for the current alpha releases.

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