Vlogcanic

Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon’s official release date is only two days away and as soon as the light goes green Ubuntu’s download site and mirrors will be really crowded (how many among those eight million impatient users will be trying to download 700 MB .iso images at the same time?) so getting a proper download is going to be a difficult feat, at least for the first few days, and even for the most expert users.

Just to make the impatients even more so, here’s the short and incomplete list of new features:

• GNOME 2.20
• 3D desktop.
• Deskto search.
• Fast user switch.
• Dynamic screen configuration.
• Graphical configuration tool for X.
• Automatic printer installation.
• Easier managment for non-free software.
• Write access for NTFS partitions (at last!).
• Better power management, courtesy of the new kernel.
• Hard disk encryption.

So how to get it without standing in line?

There are options: some very nice usenet poster is going to upload it sooner or later to the .iso image or linux binary groups, and there’s bittorrent. It’s my view, however, that the best way to go for the time being is to take a page out of DistroWatch’s website and just download the latest release candidate from any of the available mirrors that you can find on the candidate’s official announcement, just posted a few days ago.

Yes, I know, it’s not the official new version. And yet, given the minimal time span between the RC and the final release they can hardly differ significantly in content. I think that would be the more practical thing to do until Ubuntu’s servers start to clear down and the final release becomes an easy download.