Another interesting addition in this release is the Palimpsest Disk Utility software, available under the Applications -> System Tools menu. The Disk Utility is a S.M.A.R.T. testing/monitoring tool, showing you the temperature and uptime of the driver, and also a partition management tool that allows you to mark as bootable, delete or label a hard disk partition. Palimpsest Disk Utility is created by Red Hat.
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Starting with this alpha, the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) was also introduced. With a preconfigured AMI, you can instantly try out the Karmic Koala Alpha 4 server instantly on Amazon EC2, but now, with Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud, you have the possibility to download an image and place it into your very own cloud!
Last but not least, the kernel packages are at version 2.6.31-5.24, based on Linux kernel 2.6.31 RC5, and the Kernel Mode Setting is now enabled by default for Intel graphics. The GNOME 2.27.5 is also present and the iSCSI installation has been improved (the iscsi=true boot parameter is no longer required).
The Karmic Koala Release Schedule:
September 3rd, 2009 - Alpha 5 release
September 17th, 2009 - Alpha 6 release
October 1st, 2009 - Beta release
October 22nd, 2009 - Release Candidate
October 29th, 2009 - Final release of Ubuntu 9.10
[Image Credits: softpedia]