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Topic: Ubuntu

Karmic Koala: That's One Seriously Fast Marsupial

Summary: The latest Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" beta is by far one of the fastest running Linux distributions on earth and sports a number of usability and functionality improvements over previous releases.

Jason Perlow

By for Tech Broiler |

Even though Ubuntu's servers were absolutely hammered today, I was able to download and test out the latest 9.10 Karmic Koala beta.

Tech Broiler Ubuntu Karmic Koala 9.10 Beta Tour from Jason Perlow

While I would consider Karmic Koala to be an evolutionary improvement rather than a revolutionary one over Jaunty Jackalope and Intrepid Ibex where functionality is concerned, I can certainly see where a great deal of the development time went, and that is raw performance.

Click on the "Read the rest of this entry" link below for more

I used Sun xVM VirtualBox 3.06 to create a Virtual Machine using the 64-bit version of Karmic Koala, with two vCPUs, 2GB of RAM and a 40GB virtual disk file. Once I tweaked my virtual hardware settings accordingly for all of the AMD64/AMD-V performance optimizations -- something that I wouldn't need to do with native hardware -- installation was a breeze and an absolute pleasure. The installer application itself is extremely polished and looks like something that even Apple might produce, it's that good, using nice transition effects and a fully automated hardware detection.

Gallery: Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala Beta

What you'll immediately notice is how quickly Karmic Koala boots up. Without the VirtualBox extensions installed that improve I/O in a virtual machine, the software booted in less than 15 seconds into a full desktop as soon as the BIOS POST screen completed. With the extensions, I was able to trim it down to about 10, which is incredible to say the least. If you think Windows 7 or Mac OS X boots up fast, you haven't seen Karmic Koala yet.

The Karmic Koala desktop is GNOME 2.28, which is the latest and greatest. Ubuntu has made a number of tweaks and improvements to the built in applications, namely the Software Center which has a friendlier look and feel. Empathy is a new multimedia Instant Messenger application that replaces Pidgin, which had a few issues with Google Talk protocol that I needed to resolve by changing the default settings to "use old SSL" and forcing the server to talk.google.com and specifying port 443. Otherwise, it seems like a nice alternative to Pidgin but doesn't quite have all the plugins that I'm used to. Fortunately with the Software Center, you can add Pidgin back in.

For productivity Karmic Koala also comes with the latest GIMP 2.6 as well as OpenOffice 3.1. Firefox is 3.5.3, the latest patched version. In the 64-bit version of the OS Ubuntu preloads the 64-bit version of the browser, which presents a few issues when it comes to plugin compatibility, particularly with Flash. You might want to consider installing the 32-bit version of Firefox manually.

Under the hood, Karmic Koala sports a 2.6.31 Linux kernel and now uses the GRUB 2 bootloader and ext4 filesystem by default, as well as significant tweaks to udev that contribute to some of its performance improvements.

Koala looks like it's going to be a nice release, I'm looking forward to the final version with all the various buglets and glitches I've encountered all cleaned up. For those of you who like to be on the bleeding edge, definitely give the beta a whirl.

Have you tested Karmic Koala yet? Talk Back and Let Me Know.

Topics: Ubuntu, Apple, Software, Servers, Operating Systems, Linux, Hardware, Google, Browser, Virtualization

About

Jason Perlow, Sr. Technology Editor at ZDNet, is a technologist with over two decades of experience integrating large heterogeneous multi-vendor computing environments in Fortune 500 companies. Jason is currently a Technology Solution Professional with Microsoft Corp. His expressed views do not necessarily represent those of his employer.

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130 comments
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  • I'm having issues with VirtualBox . . .

    I'm having issues with VirtualBox: Even though it
    worked before, lately it's claiming that "VT-
    X/AMD-V hardware acceleration has been enabled,
    but is not operational" and not allowing me to run
    64 bit Ubuntu :(.
    CobraA1
    Reply Vote

    • 3.06

      Has been flaky, particularly in Win 7. Seems to be the most stable in CentOS/Redhat so far.
      jperlow
      Reply Vote

      • Jason, how's Win 7 looking *in* the latest VirtualBox?

        Seems VMware isn't happy with Win 7 yet; I see from the VirtualBox guest OSes page that Win 7 RC was working okay.
        TriangleDoor
        Reply Vote

        • Works fine.

          I installed it on one of my Linux boxes, it runs fine virtualized in VirtualBox.
          jperlow
          Reply Vote

      • I found it.

        I found the issue. Apparently my BIOS was all
        messed up. I had to turn virtualization off and
        back on to make it work.
        CobraA1
        Reply Vote

    • Re: "I'm having issues with VirtualBox"

      Try going into BIOS and disable VT-X, reboot, go
      back into BIOS and re-enable, reboot, and try VB
      again.
      66c10
      Reply Vote

  • RE: Karmic Koala: That's One Seriously Fast Marsupial

    I had some issues with alpha 6 - I couldn't even get it to boot on Virtual Box... anyway; wiped and am very slowly downloading the beta instead. I'm sure the two parties involved will iron out all the issues before the final release.
    rikasa
    Reply Vote

  • Worries: Grub2, EXT4 and Ubiquity

    Karmic contains some bleeding edge stuff: Grub2 (bootloader) and EXT4 (file system).

    Ubuntu is taking a big risk with those. Any bug with them, will have high impact.

    Furthermore, an old bug in Ubiquity (the graphical installer on the Desktop CD), still hasn't been fixed: when creating a dual boot (e.g. with Windows), Ubiquity by default proposes a ridiculously small amount of disk space for Ubuntu. Namely 2.5 GB.

    Of course you can correct that manually, but the default partitioning proposal should be reasonable.

    It seems to me, they are pumping some pretty revolutionary stuff under the hood, which they want to be tested worldwide before putting it into the next LTS version (10.04).

    If you put stability and reliability first, better stick to the current LTS (8.04).
    pjotr123
    Reply Vote

    • I agree,

      I agree and sure hope nothing new is introduced in 10.4 like PulseAudio was in 8.04 -- if audio were critical I'd have had to roll back to 6.06. Fortunatley, all the issues for me were resolved after about a few months of automatic updates.

      My major knock on Ubuntu is they don't update the development tools and libraries for the LTS stable versions to match what is current -- for example Glade3 is barely usable at version 3.4.5 while 3.6.7 is current, and the gstreamer stuff is old enough to be missing many needed features.

      Stability and reliability are important but having near obsolete development tools and libraries hold it back IMHO.
      wkulecz
      Reply Vote

    • Good points, that is why they have the LTS versions - for those that value

      stability over getting the latest and greatest.
      Hopefully all of the bleeding edge stuff will be
      well tested by the time that 10.04 comes out!!
      DonnieBoy
      Reply Vote

    • oh my

      a new bootloader and a new file system! i can't wait for that!

      \s
      Azathothh
      Reply Vote

      • New Stuff

        Well, at least you dont have to pay NZ$60 for it 8) like one other minor .6 release recently.

        chromeronin
        Reply Vote

    • GRUB2 & EXT4

      I've been testing since alpha and I spent too many lost hours trying to figure out GRUB2. At Mint, someone called me bad mouthing, which I oppose; but I do warn people for this unfinished beauty-in-spe: it gives you no steering wheel, and th?t is necessary if you want to tune your start page in multi-boot.
      As for EXT4, it gives me no advantage, nor with Mandriva/PCLOS, neiter with *Buntu's. GRUB1 does n?t recognize EXT4, so when you ad an OS to restore a nice booting up page, you'll miss an OS or so.
      I loudly call for some GUI to regain control over GRUBbing your OS'es.
      capricornus
      Reply Vote

  • Perlow have you tried booting from a proper install?

    Those boot times do sound great, are they the same for a vm boot as they are for a real world boot?
    louiswu
    Reply Vote

    • I'm getting 15 sec boot times with Jaunty 9.04

      No reason to not believe his statistic particularly when tweaks have since been made in 9.10 to Upstart, udev,the inclusion of new grub2 and EXT4.

      P.S. I've been using EXT4 for about six months and haven't experienced any issues--I see though there are recent kernel updates for it--be sure you are up to date. (There was an issue with dragging files to Trash in Nautius sidebar that would honk up the system--use alt+SysReq+R-E-I-S-U-B to force a graceful shutdown.)

      10 second boot time? Believe it!
      D T Schmitz
      Reply Vote

      • Wow

        wow that is pretty amazing, I wonder how much a
        ssd would decrease that.
        louiswu
        Reply Vote

        • Oh, about three shakes of a lamb's tail (5 secs)

          http://arstechnica.com/open-source/reviews/2009/09/ubuntu-910-alpha-6-released-boot-optimizations-arrive.ars

          D T Schmitz
          Reply Vote

  • Apples to apples comparisons?

    Are you making your comparisons to Jaunty and Intrepid installations
    that are set up the same way? When I first started looking at Jaunty I
    found that the performance in a Sun VirtualBox VM felt much faster than
    when I later installed it directly on the hardware that VM ran on. To me
    that was counter intuitive but with all the detail you give on the Karmic
    set up you used I have to ask whether or not the comparisons are being
    made to Jaunty and Intrepid on the same set up, or did I miss
    something?
    Thanks
    use_what_works_4_U
    Reply Vote

    • Intel?

      Did you happen to have an Intel graphics card on that machine? I had the same thing happen but the perceived sluggishness was really the Intel graphics problem when using Compiz. The performance showed up on a box that has Nvidia graphics.
      storm14k
      Reply Vote

      • Yes as a matter of fact

        I don't have the machine anymore, but I believe it was an Intel GMA950.
        use_what_works_4_U
        Reply Vote
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