Ubuntu 9.10 – Codenamed Karmic Koal-

Ubuntu 9.10 is codenamed Karmic Koala. The developers plan to bring cloud capabilities to Ubuntu’s server edition, boost startup performance on the desktop, and continue work on the distro’s netbook flavor.

Usually Ubuntu releases are every 6 months with the new update. The next major release—version 9.04, codenamed Jaunty Jackalope—is moving towards feature freeze and is scheduled for launch in April. Ubuntu 9.10, which will be the next release after Jaunty, is planned for October.

Since the Ubuntu Server launch in 2005, its been gaining good faith amongst all the Server companies but lacks many features and this Red Hat takes the deal. Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, has been investing considerable effort into making Ubuntu a first-class server distro. During the development cycle for Karmic, Canonical aims to strengthen the server edition by introducing enhanced support for cloud computing.

On the desktop, boot performance and beautification will be an area of focus. The target boot time for Jaunty is 25 seconds.  Sounds amazing for Ubuntu as compared to the present version. The developers would also explore ways to bring a smoother, flicker-free startup animation. If you have used Red Hat, i suppose, it would be similar to that. More news regarding the Karmic and Jaunty release would be done inUbuntu Developer Summit (UDS) in May  at Barcelona.