As many of you may have seen by now, Ubuntu 7.10 - a.k.a. the Gutsy Gibbon has been released into the wild.

Theme

The general theme across the board in Ubuntu 7.10 is really polishing the user interface and the user experience - more so than any release before. The experience for the user while interfacing with Gnome/KDE is being sharpened in huge strides with every release, and the Gusty Gibbon feature set is overwhelmed by UI polish items.

It’s a huge deal, in my opinion, that Compiz effects are enabled by default given the right hardware. That’s a bold statement in itself. Furthermore, I don’t think that Bulletproof X has gotten near the attention in the media/community it deserves - it’s exactly the sort of thing needed to bring more people into the Linux desktop experience.

Of course, Gutsy has also brought with it a new Gnome relase - Gnome 2.20, which many consider a significant improvement - here is the Ars Technica Review.

Support

Gutsy is not an LTS release - it instead is supported by the shorter 18 month lifecycle (as opposed to three years). Chances are, most people moving to this release are in it for the new desktop features, and are more than happy to upgrade in another 18 months anyway - but it’s good to keep an eye on the prize.

Looking Forward

Like the insatiable ravenous beasts we are, we will continue to look forward for greener grass in a future release (no matter how good the release we were just given actually is). Next on the agenda will be ‘Hardy Heron’, and as of yet is mostly undrafted - but what is available can be found from this Ubuntu Wiki page.