Ubuntu 9.10, Karmic Koala, has been out for a couple of weeks now, so I upgraded my main desktop machine over the weekend. Well, I say upgraded, but what I actually mean is “went through the upgrade procedure, found that the machine wouldn’t boot anymore, so ended up doing an in-place reinstall instead.”
In fairness, this is the first time in 5 years that I’ve had to do a full reinstall on this machine – I’ve done upgrades on it every six months since Warty Warthog and up to now it’s been fine. It’s also worth noting that a reinstall of a Linux system (assuming you know what you’re doing) isn’t like using the typical “rescue” CD that comes with a Windows machine – all my personal data and settings were left in place, so I was back up and running within an hour. Still, not a great start to the new OS.
Having upgraded to Karmic I quickly installed Inkscape and fired it up. The version that is in the 9.10 repositories is 0.47pre4 (at the time of writing). The full 0.47 release is due any day now, so I’m glad they decided to go with this version rather than making Ubuntu users wait another six months for the new features in 0.47. Because of this upgrade, however, any new SVG files posted on this site will be from a 0.47 version of Inkscape. If you do decide to go looking for the Easter Eggs we hide in our comics, please bear that in mind.
Our comics are released under a 
... which requires suitable attribution if you use them...
... and doesn't allow commercial use...
... and requires any derivative works to be released under the same licence.
This symbol indicates an SVG file that you can download and use under this licence
Unsurprisingly my Ubuntu server died half way through upgrading, and now after reinstalling it the silly machine won’t boot. I think they’ve done “something” that stops it working on some machines.