The Karmic Koala - Not Ubuntu's Vista

The Karmic Koala - Not Ubuntu's Vista: "

Ubuntu Linux, without a doubt is the most popular Linux desktop OS out there. It has come a long way since Warthy Wathog some 5 years ago. The crowning release of the distro was on the 29 of October when Karmic Koala was unleashed into the wild.



To say this release is good will be an understatement. It is the best so far in the history of Canonical. However, Karmic Koala, just like any other software that is made up of lines of code, is bound to have bugs. I am yet to read anywhere that it was stated Karmic was going to be bugless. I am amazed at how people are equating Karmic to Vista in terms of buggs and hiccups.



First of all, Ubuntu Karmic is far from repeating the spectacular, legendary failure of Vista. The latter was a big, unprecedented blunder on the part of Microsoft. Not so is Ubuntu Karmic however. I installed the beta and later the final release and not a single thing went wrong. I am not going to be naive to say it will go so for everyone. No, people will experience some problems with it. Even the multibillion dollar Windows 7 is giving people a hard time with bugs.



But it is very surprising when you have people begin to predict the demise of Ubuntu just because they have encountered bugs with Karmic. What people are not saying however, is that Karmic is radically different from all the previous releases in that it comes with some really new functions and features that are now making their debut. It is packed with new features that are bound to cause some performance problems.



For years we have all been saying we want to see Ubuntu stand up to Windows. We want to see new functions and features in Ubuntu. Now that Canonical is beginning to deliver, we the same people are now turning to attack the developers. I agree with a good friend of mine when he says Ubuntu is always under scrutiny because it is the most popular Linux desktop distro out there. But to make all sorts of noise because some bugs have been discovered is just being unfair to Ubuntu.



To reduce the incident of bugs with your system, you should consider backing up your system and doing a clean reinstall. I have always been against upgrading from one major release of a software to the other. It is always better to start afresh. You should also have a realistic expectation of the OS. You should know it is something made by man and may suffer some deficiencies.



If you are thinking of installing Ubuntu Karmic but are being put off by the hue and cry you are reading all over the net, I can confidently say to you that go ahead and install it. It is a great release and your your system is likely to run smoothly with it. The bug issues you are hearing are the exception rather than the rule to the Ubuntu experience. Go on and enjoy real freedom.