Ubuntu Gutsy is the next major release of the most popular Linux distro, due for release in October. Like all Linux distributions you can upgrade to the beta version anytime you want, as long as you don't mind encountering a few bumps in the road.

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.

Ubuntu Gutsy has just been released after 6 months of development and testing. Although Ubuntu is known to be as user-friendly as possible and this is not a LTS release, Canonical made a lot of progress for this release on the server side too.

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.

"The Ubuntu team is proud to announce the Release Candidate for version 7.10 of Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Edubuntu, Gobuntu, and Xubuntu codenamed “Gutsy Gibbon”. The Release Candidate includes installable live Desktop CDs, server images,alternate text-mode installation CDs, and an upgrade wizard for users of the current stable release..."

Gutsy Gibbon Tribe 3 is the third alpha release of Ubuntu 7.10, and with this new alpha release comes a whole host of excellent new features. Note: This is still an alpha release. Do not install it on production machines. The final stable version will be released in October 2007.

Almost eighteen months ago, on the 18th of October 2007, Canonical announced the release of Ubuntu 7.10, codename Gutsy Gibbon. Many important features and updates made Ubuntu fans all over the world extremely happy and eager to upgrade. The default desktop environment for Ubuntu (GNOME) reached then a very important milestone: 2.20, bringing a huge list of changes. [...]

"You can now download the Alpha two release of Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon, remember that this is not a stable release, so use it only for testing purposes."

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!