GNUZureus?
Ubuntu 5.10, "Breezy Badger", has been released.
I've upgraded from my 5.4 installation and I'm very impressed. My preference is for Kubuntu so the changes I see aren't quite the same as those most other Ubuntu users will see. The changes are spectacularly well done, target quite precisely the most important areas, and have dramatically improved functionality in many areas.
I'm especially impressed by the improvement in interoperability with HP Scanner+Printer drivers, and the latest ATI drivers. (Though I'm still never buying ATI again...)
There is, however, one major problem. Previous Ubuntu releases suffered for lack of a usable free Java VM .. Ubuntu as a general rule doesn't include any software which isn't free ("as in speech") and so Sun's Java VM is unsuitable for inclusion. As a result of this, in 5.10, the Ubuntu team have included the "GNU Interpreter for Java", or GIJ.
While at first this seems like an excellent solution to what was previously a gaping hole, GIJ won't properly run the single most popular Java application currently available - For many people the only reason a Java VM is even installed. The Azureus BitTorrent client.
Not only does it not run it properly, but the Breezy Badger dist-upgrade automatically replaces any previous Java VMs you may have had installed without asking - Breaking Azureus without a word of warning. Azureus of course has no idea why it isn't working, and reports any number of weird errors that could easily frighten the hell out of somebody who'd just upgraded their OS, including "bad file descriptors" for every file, "corrupt gzip header", and many others.
I am surprised by Ubuntu's decision to do this ..but the rest of 5.10 is brilliant.
For anybody else experiencing this problem, I have included a fix I found at http://evilducky.adakist.com/?p=5