Today, September 11th, we decided to post for our readers, especially Ubuntu users, some of the community themes and icons that will be present in the upcoming Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) operating system, due for release on October 29th. If they will not be installed by default, the following themes can be easily added by accessing the Synaptic Package Manager and search for the community-themes package, which is already available in the daily builds. Without further ado, here are the themes:

1. The Kin theme, originally designed for Ubuntu 8.10, is a slab-based GTK theme developed by Ken Vermette. 2. The Night Impression theme tries to apply balance and harmony (but with dark colors) to the GNOME desktop and it is developed by John Baer. 3. The Impression theme tries to apply balance and harmony to the GNOME desktop and it is developed by John Baer. 4. The Hanso theme is a new, refreshing hybrid GTK theme with deep, rich, brown colors and modern appeal, while retaining usability. It is developed by James Schriver. 5. The Turrican theme offers a clean and easy-on-the-eyes GTK theme for the Ubuntu desktop. It is developed by Luca Forina. 6. The Breathe icon theme is a refresh to the old Human icon set. It is developed by Cory Kontros.

Remember that this is not the official artwork for the next Ubuntu release, these are third-party themes developed by the community members. Oh... and don't forget that you can freely combine these themes to create your own Ubuntu desktop experience!

The Kin theme

The Night Impression theme

The Impression theme

The Hanso theme

The Turrican theme

The Breathe icon theme

Among some of the interesting features that will be present in Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala), we can mention the lightweight and powerful GNOME 2.28 desktop environment, which brings lots and lots of improvements in many areas, such as Empathy, Evolution, GNOME Control Center, GNOME Media, GNOME Power Manager, and many more. Karmic's kernel packages will be based on the latest version of the newly released Linux kernel 2.6.31, which will offer improved support for webcam or wireless devices, new filesystems, USB 3.0 support, etc. Moreover, applications such as OpenOffice.org 3.1.1, The GIMP 2.6, Mozilla Firefox 3.5, Mozilla Thunderbird 2, Transmission 1.7 or Pidgin 2.6 (not as default IM client) will also be present in the final version of Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala), due for release in late October this year!

Don't forget to visit our website next Thursday (September 17th) for a detailed report on the Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 6 release, where we will unveil more of Karmic's new features!