The year ended with a flood of new Linux releases. Here are some of the best.

Karmic also included by default Ubuntu One, Canonical's file synchronising and collaborating software. It is very similar to the Dropbox service which allows users to automatically synchronise desktop files with an online service as they work. Ubuntu One's advantage is that it is tightly integrated into the Ubuntu desktop. It's downside is that it only works on Ubuntu at present.

Karmic Koala also has a neater notification system which fades in and out in the vicinity of the notification bar. It's attractive and not too intrusive. Audio controls are also a lot better and work well straight out of the box.

Something that most distributions have been working on is better network control. Karmic Koala's mobile broadband support is very good and network control in general is easier than ever. Connecting to existing wireless networks is also very fast which means connectivity is up and running as soon as you log in.

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I hate to say it, but the Karmic release has been nothing but a pain for me. I waited a month to reinstall Karmic and have every problem under teh sun. Internet connectivity for wired and wireless, KDE crashes on my PC, GNOME crashes on my daughters, SMB problems that did not exist before, video problems and X crashes... the list goes on and on.

I have been a *bunutu user since 7.04, but I think this release has frustrated me enough to move to another distro. I just need to find one with an excellent KDE implementation. I don't have time to mess with Arch unforunately and Chakra doesn't like me for some reason.

I have to agree. Karmic has been the worst Ubuntu release as of late. It has given me a lot of problems where as the last several prior releases have all been good. I like Ubuntu but I must have been doing something wrong to get this bad Karmic experience.

Also agreed - Karmic was an total failure here, too. I had nothing but issues with it. The one machine that hasn't been switched from it is still constantly having network-manager problems, despite being extremely stable under the previous 3 Ubuntu releases. Very disappointing.

Well I see that slackware 13 is on there, as it was released in 2009 ... this must mean that this is a good list.






(note, to the unobservant ... I'm j/k )