Ubuntu 24.04 ‘Noble Numbat’

I see they opened the next release up for development and announced the name. Does this mean more of our Australian members will be running Ubuntu?

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Not until they also embrace choice of init system.

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I could not resist …
Does that mean
It comes in castlemaine four x flavour
Do you throw it on the barbecue
Is sudo renamed Sheila
will they offer an English language version ?
Ha ha ha
sorry Neville no offense just my poor taste of humour!

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Sadly , Numbats are nearing extinction. Less than 1000 individuals left.
Is this an omen for Ubuntu?

For a long time, Ubuntu release codenames included an endangered species (until it was broken by Utopic Unicorn).

So it’s not a surprise to have Numbat in the codename of 24.04 LTS

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My ignorance of Ubuntu is there for all to see.

Don’t worry. It’s not that obvious to many users. And this is why we have trivia quizzes for these trivial stuff :wink:

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The last surviving habitat for Numbats is just a tad east of where I live (Perth West Australia) in wandoo* forest… Constant battle of PETA and Greenpeace types wanting to stop poison baiting and mass eradication of feral predators… it’s a shame… **

Anyway - some fenced studies have shown that when dingoes (essentially them and half dingo, or feral, dogs) aren’t targetted, they keep both feral cats and foxes in check, and smaller mammalian fauna can bounce back (dingos and numbats lived right across mainlaind Australia for some 4-8 thousand years in a “thin equilibrium”).

The numbat once ranged across Australia from NSW to West Australia - but since white settlement has been decimated… Once upon a time there were enough white ants for numbats and echidna to share (lame joke)…

Most of the coastal eucalypts in WA are rough barked, jarrah, marri, tuart and flooded gum (flooded gum mostly only has smooth white bark above the flood line - but they can readily hybridise with the ubiquitous “river red gum” [e.g. the gums on the Murray River in SA, Vic, NSW) but head over the Perth foothills into the wheatbelt, and you will hit “wheat”, but also belts of mallee scrub and sparse woodlands composed of smoothbarked wandoo eucalypts - they’re beautiful…

But there’s also giant flowering Karri and Tingle (which along with mountain ash on the east coast, are amongst the tallest flowing plants on the planet) in the wet forests further south, which are also, smooth barked…


** forgot where I was going with that - yeah - so the federal government has finally authorised the aerial culling of feral horses in the east coast - they’re a massive pest and cause uncounted ecological damage… good riddance - I HATE how some quarters think of the horse as “more special” than any other feral pest (I read somewhere in the 1980’s that The Queen tried to intervene to stop aerial culling of equus ferus caballus)…

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There must be a cheaper method of control.
Are we sure it is not some sort of adventure tour for helicopter gunship enthusiasts.

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You’re probably right - I don’t have a problem with horses personally - I watched a couple of them this afternoon not far from where I live (2 km?) on the Swan River - it was pleasant, in small controlled numbers they’re okay. I just prefer more efficient animals, and horses only have one stomach and are incredibly wasteful…

I recently read a well researched treatise on the relationship between : bronze age, indo-european speakers (i.e. ancestors of English etc), and horse culture… Somewhere in central Asia, humans started coralling in plains animals, probably mostly aurochs (bos bos), and accidentally horses… somewhere - humans accidentally discovered that horses were easier to ride than cows - but they (their remains) still figured heavily in sacrifices and diet for a few thousand years… I know some Germans, and central Europeans who reckon that a propoer goulash should be horse flesh, not cattle, and there are, to this day, butchers in non-Parisian France, who specialise in choice cuts of horse flesh…

Horses were the only transport for centuries. In the middle ages you lived in a little village. To go to the next village, say up to 10miles, you walked. More than that, you got a horse or a carriage. To plough land you harnessed a team of draft horses.
My mothers family were blacksmiths. I grew up at the blacksmith shop where we lived. Horses were part of our life, even in the mid 1900’s… the milkman delivered milk with a horse and cart. The baker same.
In rural areas horses were essential to work sheep or cattle right up,until ag-bikes and 4wd’s took over in the 1960’s. They are still essential in mountainous country.
The modern urban world has lost touch with working horses.
If we ever have to go back, the skills will be lost.
There is a downside. Horses are dangerous to handle. Lots of people were injured … shieing, bucking, kicks, overturned carriages… just like car accidents today.
We dont keep a horse for that reason. Donkeys are much more placid and easy to handle.
Dont get me started on feral donkeys. All feral animals are a problem. We domesticate animals, change them so they are unfit to survive in the wild, then let them go. There is a lot of suffering in feral animals. It is our fault… we use animals then ditch them.

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