Saturday, March 7, 2009

Jaunty is coming

With the impending arrival of the latest version of the Ubuntu zoo, Jaunty Jackalope has an anticipated release date of April, 2009.  I've only had a chance to look at one of the very first alpha verisons in the first weeks of December 2008.  I didn't then, nor do I want to now offer any kind of a review since that very early alpha would have been still mostly Intrepid under the hood.  They really hadn't had a chance to make any difference.

I'm going to be blazing all of my systems with the first jaunty beta that I hear is reasonably stable.  I may only wait for upgrade of my netbooks.  I have a full Interpid install there and I would like to be sure that the transition there will go smoothly.  But, since I noticed that almost none of my other systems in the house are running the same versions of Ubuntu, I'm going to take the time to make the house "pure" and do clean installs accross the board with exception of my mac.

I hope to have all the systems installed before the end of the beta period so that I can participate with feedback and any bug reports.  I realize that as a non-coder in the linux community that my "product" as contribution to the community does not come in the form of improved code.  I have taken it upon myself to work harder at those things which I am capable of doing.  That is to triage bug reports on Launchpad, run beta versions of software and submit bugs so they may be fixed.  I'm also doing the very silly task of offering even just plain old feedback to the teams/developers who support my favorite applciations.

I think as the open source community grows and we have more and more software projects each year that the unsung heros of our time (the community developer) may not get much notice.  I know he is usually commended by his peers and he has the emotional satisfaction of the software he created that supports hundreds or thousands of users.  I just wanted to take this moment in my personal space to salute those people.  They all deserve a big round of applause, a pat on the back and a big "atta' boy".  All of you have my respect and my personal thanks for making your contribution to the community that I and my family consider ourselves a part of.

--
CafeNinja

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