Over 4 years in the making of Canonical’s Operating System, Ubuntu 9.04 (jaunty jackalope) has released the first and final beta, after successful public testing of alpha 1 thru 6. I have to say, Ubuntu has come a long way. This version is the first one (for me at least), that installs without a hitch, and everything is working at first try.

The biggest pain was always to get the network working. Since one needs the Internet to research issues and find solutions, once connected everything seemed workable.

There are several detailed reviews out there, I won’t get another one here. Just google for it and you shall find plenty. What I want to give you is the bottom line.

• This release is fast. Especially if you opt for the new filesystem, ext4. Pay attention during install, as it’s not the default yet. Phoronix has posted a very good comparison. Check out their Real World Benchmarks of Ext4.
• Second, the network manager is much more user friendly and stable.  Wireless connections are a breeze. And my cisco vpn is up in no time, after installing the appropriate vpn adaptor.
• And there some are more themes, backgrounds and screen savers and they have gotten some more customization options.

So what’s next? What else do we wish for? For me, next to new features (which is always nice), I rather have a fast, stable and good looking OS. Let’s be honest, Vista and MacOS still look better. Even though Ubuntu has made leaps in UI design, it’s still trailing behind. I feel once that gap is closed, Ubuntu will be a challenger for the mainstream OS.

Keep up the good work!