Ubuntu 9.10 may seem like a while away yet, but it promises to be the greatest update to Ubuntu so far.

This is just a quick list of some of the expected features and functions of the marsupial named update due to hit in October.

A New Look

Ubuntu 9.10 will most certainly include the long promised overhaul of Ubuntu’s looks.

“..brown has served us well, but the Koala is considering other options.” – Mark Shuttleworth

Jaunty’s new notifications may be a hint of what’s to come – sleek, stylish and elegant.

The desktop will have a designer’s fingerprints all over it – we’re now beginning the serious push to a new look. – Mark Shuttleworth

The new theme is expected to be previewed at the Ubuntu Developers Conference (Oct 29 – Nov 2).

Plymouth

What’s Plymouth? Why it uses a kernel mode setting to drive a graphical boot interface, duh! Sexy answer is that it provides a very quick boot and entirely new splash screen that is both visually stunning and smooth and flicker free.

Plymouth offers a number of plug-ins and APIs for creating some fairly unique visuals.

Fedora is already currently using it – take a peek!

Super Speed Boot Times

One goal of Ubuntu Jaunty was making boot up/start up times much faster. So far they’ve achieved this with reports of Jaunty booting up in as low as around 20 seconds!

..let’s see how much faster we can get you all the way to a Koala desktop. – Mark Shuttleworth

Netbooks

Intel’s’ Moblin Netbook Linux distribution is boasting incredible boot up speeds of around 16 seconds. The Koala will learn from this and implement it into their 9.10 Koala release.

Attention will also be paid to smaller screens, hardware compatibility and improving the usability of applications on smaller screens.

…we have been learning and adapting usability to make the Koala cuddlier than ever. – Mark Shuttleworth

New Login Experience

Logging into Ubuntu 9.10 will become much more exciting! Ubuntu will replace it’s current GDM (Login Screen) with something far sleeker, cooler and animated.

Meet the your new ‘Log In Experience’. Watch the video to see how it works.

This, of course, doesn’t begin to touch on what else may be included with the Koala because there are still decisions about what to include to be made.

We do know that Cloud computing will play a large part, but whether this will relate to mainstream users more than servers or developers remains to be seen.

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What are you hoping Koala will bring? Comment below!