While the major media news agencies are trying to predict the future winner of the US Presidential Election, the development team over at Ubuntu has announced that Jaunty Jackalope is now open for general development.

Ubuntu 9.04′s release schedule has been posted with an expected Alpha 1 due around November 20. They are hoping for a Debian import freeze around Christmas but note that this is tentative due to the upcoming UDS and the holidays.

One date of interest shown on the schedule is that of Hardy Heron’s next point release to 8.04.2 on January 22 shortly after Jaunty’s Alpha 3 release. Jaunty’s Beta is currently expected on March 26 with the final release falling on April 23.

Of course, as with any developing OS, caution is key. Colin Watson says it best in his email message:

We do not recommend that users upgrade to Jaunty at this time; it is likely to be in very considerable flux until the initial round of merges is complete. As ever, any developers wishing to take the plunge at this early stage should ensure that they are comfortable with recovering from anything up to complete system failure.

Good luck!

I’ve usually stayed away from the Alpha releases in the past as I’m not much of a developer, but I do have a used Thinkpad that is currently without a meaningful purpose. Perhaps destiny will bring the two together.

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