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.

People seem to have quite high expectations of Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy), and to be honest, I don’t think they’ll be disappointed. Gutsy seems to be shaping up to be the best Ubuntu release ever, and it’s due for release next Thursday (18 October).

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..."

A recent bug report for Ubuntu Linux has confirmed that both the Feisty and Gutsy versions of Ubuntu cause some unnecessary wear and tear on a hard drive

"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!

"The Ubuntu team yesterday released details of plans for its next release, Ubuntu Gutsy. New features include a mobile edition, the latest version Gnome and KDE 4.0 and improved hardware support."