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January 15, 2009

Scheduled to be delivered in three months from now, Ubuntu's upcoming 9.04 release of its operating system is currently available in beta format since this morning and the results are pretty good.

Ubuntu version 9.04 offers the "Ext. 4" file system that is already highly acclaimed according to some Ubuntu enthusiasts.

One of the good features of Ubuntu Linux is a straightforward release schedule with a new major version every six months or so.

The next major release of Ubunbtu is scheduled to be in about three months and is known as either version 9.04 or "Jaunty Jackalope" (if you can believe it), depending on whether you prefer a more scientific or comical title!

Ubuntu’s developers have included the latest Linux kernel to come out of Linus Torvalds’ hands as well.

While the Linux kernel always includes more drivers, better performance and various bug fixes, often times these go under the radar since they can be at times obscure to say the least, or just generally have little meaningful and measurable significance to the ordinary Linux user.

Especially for any Windows’ readers who may be unfamiliar with filesystems besides FAT/FAT32 and NTFS, let's explore this a bit more...

The Linux kernel version 2.6.28 was officially released on Dec. 24, 2008 and was delivered as a stable implementation of the current ext4 filesystem, and this is also now included in Ubuntu’s daily development builds.

It is that filesystem which is getting Ubuntu Linux afficionados excited.

To be sure, “ext” was the first file system created specifically for Linux and its name stands for the “extended file system” or EFS for short. It first was developed in April 1992.

The Extended File System (ext) actually has a history relating back to the Minix operating system. The filesystem used in Minix had a limitation of 64 Megs and a filename limit of just 14 characters.

Of course, and in today's modern IT environment, 64 Megs is a very small limit on the size of a disk partition but you need to remember that era...

For a comparison, Microsoft’s MS-DOS 3.2 operating system had only come just a couple of years earlier and it was even restricted to a much lower partition of 32 Megs, or exactly twice smaller.

Yes, times have in deed changed a lot since that era, and Ubuntu Linux is a good reminder of that.

Source: Ubuntu Linux.

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