While still in beta stage, Ubuntu developers integrated the document-oriented CouchDB database for storing addresses, notes and bookmarks. Using Ubuntu One filesharing, now a standard component of the desktop, you can synchronize this data from cloud storage.

As scheduled, the latest GNOME version 2.28 will be Karmic's desktop environment. The GDM display manager was totally reworked. Introduction of the Telepathy framework brings with it the Empathy messaging client that replaces Pidgin as the standard IM program. A new addition is the Ubuntu Software Center, a GUI application for installing and removing software, which replaces the longstanding Synaptic and Update Messenger. New Karmic installations use the GRUB 2 bootloader, while updates still use the legacy version.

An overview of features is in the project release notes.

Ubuntu 9.10 is available for download from the Ubuntu homepage, as are the Kubuntu KDE and Xubuntu Xfce versions. Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud image are also available for Amazon's EC2 public cloud infrastructure.

Ubuntu maven Mark Shuttleworth has already announced Ubuntu 10.4 LTS. The release with longterm support has the codename Lucid Lynx and should appear April 2010. Lucid Lynx should be the last LTS version using the GNOME 2.x branch, as future releases will move to GNOME 3.