Ubuntu developers are rushing to bring you new open-source software. The project just released Gutsy Gibbon Tribe 5, the fifth alpha release of Ubuntu 7.10. This alpha release offers a bunch of new features. But don’t get too excited yet. The final release won’t be available for about another month.

Still, we have time to review. It may not come with the hype of Vista or a new Mac product, but there’s plenty to get excited about. Right off the bat, Tribe 5 brings you the latest GNOME with a lot of bug fixes compared to Tribe 4.

But what’s new? Well, you can now configure what driver you want to use for your graphic card, set up dual monitors, change the default resolution for all users or change your monitor’s refresh rate without having to turn to the terminal. A new GUI has been added making it trivial to adjust your video and monitor settings.

The printing system got an overhaul. Ubuntu now creates a virtual “PDF printer” by default, which you can use to generate PDF files from all applications that do not have native PDF output support, like GIMP, Firefox, and other non-Gnome applications. The old, unmaintained gnome-cups-manager has been replaced with system-config-printer, a printer management application from Fedora.

On the technical side, if you upgrade Ubuntu from feisty, the developers want you to make sure you have an update 0.59.23 from feisty-updates installed. Then run “update-manager -d.”

Timothy Prickett Moran over at the IT Jungle offers up a pretty good review for those of you who can’t get enough Ubuntu. Click here to read his views.

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