Karmic Koala Alpha 2 ready for testing.

Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala Alpha two is now ready to download for testing. This is an Alpha release, so do NOT install it on production machines! The final stable version will be released on October 29th, 2009.

So what's new?

• Linux 2.6.30-5.6 kernel based on 2.6.30-rc5, with Kernel Mode Setting enabled for Intel graphics. Note that LRM is now deprecated in favour of DKMS packages.
• GNOME 2.27.1
• GRUB 2 by default
• GCC-4.4
  

Changes to video:

The new Intel video driver architecture is available for testing. In later Alphas there will be probably a switch from the current "EXA" acceleration method to the new "UXA". This will solve major performance problems of Ubuntu 9.04, but is still not as stable as EXA, which is why it is not yet enabled by default. To help testing UXA, please check out the instructions and testing webpage.

Feedback about the new Kernel Mode Setting (KMS) feature is also heavily appreciated. This will reduce video mode switching flicker at booting, and dramatically speed up suspend/resume. To help test this, check out the KMS instructions and feedback webpage.

For more details visit http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/karmic/alpha2