Ubuntu 7.10 is the current DEVELOPMENT version of the Ubuntu operating system. It will be released October 18th, 2007. The common name given to this release from the time of its early development was "Gutsy Gibbon".

There's a month to go before the next Ubuntu release, 7.10 aka Gutsy Gibbon, hits the download servers. A September 4 daily build shows a number of improvements over the 7.04 release which was named Feisty Fawn.

Development plans for Ubuntu 7.10 (codenamed Gutsy Gibbon) were announced last night on the Ubuntu development mailing list. Scheduled for official release in late October, Gutsy Gibbon will include version 2.6.22 of the Linux kernel, GNOME 2.20, and Xorg 7.3. Kubuntu 7.10 will feature KDE 3.5.7 and offer optional packages for KDE 4.0 RC2.

Last week we looked at Ubuntu Server's documentation, discussed hardware requirements, tried to figure out what sets Ubuntu Server apart from Ubuntu Desktop, and what's included in the current release, 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon).

My heart sank a little bit as I sat through 2-3 minutes of what can only be described as 'error messages' while this early release of Gutsy Gibbon booted on my virtual machine - although it came through in the end. Here we have the Alpha 2 release of Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon for me to cast a preliminary eye over 3 months prior to release.

It took me a while to upgrade from 7.04 to 7.10 because Ubuntu servers were so busy. It would even time-out at times. But now it’s done, Gutsy Gibbon is turning out to be a very solid release. I’ve been using Ubuntu since 6.04 and it has definitely gone a long way!

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! I know that I enjoyed the days off of school, and thankfully having nothing better to do than finally install the latest Ubuntu: 7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon." So onwards now, lets see how it fared:

If everything goes well, Ubuntu 7.10, Gutsy Gibbon, the next community version of the popular Linux distribution, will appear in October. It will not, however, include the latest and greatest X window server and utilities: Xserver 1.4 and X.Org 7.3.

The Ubuntu team has announced the beta release of Ubuntu 7.10 and its variants, including Kubuntu, Edubuntu and Xubuntu. The final release of Ubuntu 7.10, dubbed "Gutsy Gibbon," will happen sometime next month.