Ubuntu 9.04 'Jaunty Jackalope' is gold, ready for download
By Thomas Ricker 
posted April 23rd 2009 8:24AM
posted April 23rd 2009 8:24AM
posted April 23rd 2009 8:24AM
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It's Great!
I like the new changes and UI enhancements, much cleaner boot screen too. It feels faster (yeah, not a true benchmark) -- I'm glad I updated last night before the swarm of users hit the repository's :)
how long does it take to boot up?
with my 2ghz laptop, windows xp takes 50 secs
with Presto linux, it's 13 seconds
you-bun-too
you-fail-hard
Oo-boon-too.
oo-boon-too
Ready to give it a shot. Hope it's better than the last iteration.
whowhatme = wrong
bonqueesha = right
My Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop (Core i7 920, OCZ Apex SSD) boots in 8.3 seconds according to bootchart.
8.04 for now.. I like to wait about 2 weeks into a new release to watch for major complications (there never really are any).
Ubuntu 8.10 was slower on my laptop than XP. Laptop, not netbook.
I installed the distro of Ubuntu right before this one and it ran awesome on my laptop. Even automatically found my wifeless drivers. I don't have a powerhouse of a laptop either. A Dell Inspiron 13 w/ 2 ghtz core 2 duo and a couple gig of ram.
Still doesn't load as fast as Win Vista coming out of hibernation mode though. :P
How do you compare?
Out of the box Ubuntu 8.10 does a lot more than XP. Out of the box, compare it to vista, functionality wise so speed wise too.
Netbook flavour is much lighter.
@Bokal,
You're absolutely right. Just look at the visual effects available for free in Ubuntu. They blow away anything Vista or even OSX can throw at it. And it's standard on the FREE OS.
Visual effects that enhance productivity? Haha
Visual effects like expose (there's an expose clone included in compiz) are the only things that make Ubuntu usable for me. The taskbar is such a poor task switcher and Alt-Tab is only halfway decent if your hands are already on the keyboard.
@shanoboy
I guess finding your wifeless drivers is quite hard, since they must be going out a lot. Useful feature of Ubuntu, if you ask me.
Okay, then. Allow me to rephrase it.
Ubuntu is slower on my laptop than Windows 7. Any programs I later install don't affect the startup speed and responsiveness unless you have them run at startup.
None of those fancy effects are of any use (except maybe the expose clone), in fact they got annoying after a few days (jelly windows...?).
Your drivers are not married? :O
'Jelly' windows aren't even included by default in Ubuntu. Have you even tried it or are you basing your opinion on Youtube videos?
"Visual effects that enhance productivity? Haha"
Certainly possible. Take, for example, the Genie effect from OS X when minimising a window. It's definitely a visual effect that "sucks" the window down but it improves productivity by providing a visual indication of where the window has gone to (i.e. you shouldn't need to search for it later). The effect is certainly old and, I'm sure, has been surpassed but it's a good example of visual effects that communicate something useful. It's certainly possible to introduce visual effects that serve no useful purpose and I'm definitely against them but it is not correct to say that visual effects are all useless. One of the reasons why I'm not much of a fan of Compiz Fusion is simply that it is rare to see it used for anything useful.
I downloaded.
I installed.
I waited while it downloaded 100s of MBs of updates.
I played with jelly windows.
I formatted.
Yes, I'm talking about Compiz, not OSX.
Were you using the Live CD while running Ubuntu?
If yes, then my friend you could install it runs faster than XP on my Comp.
Jelly windows are a part of Ubuntu! I don't have it on my computer now, but once it prompted me to download the drivers for my video my windows would go all squishy when I moved them around.
For a free O/S it rocks, at least all linux distros arn't like gentoo(compile everything! ^_^)
sounds like a troll... I've never seen a situation where Ubuntu would run slower than XP or Vista... In fact, you can install it on lightweight computers and it runs excellent..
@loosely
indeed, I gave new life to my old pentium III Toshiba portege laptop by booting it with Ubuntu. XP was killing it, despite all my attempts to reduce visual effects and such. I basically use like I would a netbook, and it works beautifully.
Not LiveCD, but I did install it with the Wubi installer (inside Windows). Does that make such a difference?
@shanoboy
'wifeless'
@superhobo
Yes, because the Wubi install is a file on the windows filesytem (kinda like vmware) things that require disk access will be slower.
Okay, then, that would explain the slowness, a bit.
I'm just glad to see how far Ubuntu is going, given it's free standings.
I've seen far too many non-commercial Linux builds fall flat before version 1.0, that anything that gets above about version 3.0 makes me happy in ways I cannot describe.
I'm sure you already know this but ubuntu didn't start with version one. It was version 6.04 (I think). They use a year.month naming scheme so 9.04 was released 2009 in April
Looks like the first version was 4.10 (October 2004).
http://www.ubuntu.com/community/ubuntustory
There wasn't even a 6.04.
There was a 6.06, though
Yeah, of course.
I wasn't actually using the Ubuntu versions as an example. I MEANT that it's good to see a linux distro get above a pema-beta stage.
This is version 11, by the way. :)
Funny how did engadget publish this story before Canonical officially announced the release of 9.04
"Engadget News: Always five minutes faster"
Its the time zones...
Can someone in California tell us if this is released in that time zone yet? Engadget is always EST...
(...)
ubuntu 9.04 FTW!
I was amazed when a co-worker actually came in yesterday with a Macbook running Ubuntu yesterday. Got me thinking about using it again.
Just wish I had a crap laptop around to install it on.
@Look_Around_You
Why not dual-boot?
Because grub sucks. That's one of the main reasons I that I'm not currently dual-booting Ubuntu. Is there a way to disable/uninstall it? I like the Windows OS picker start-up thingy so much better.
I'm sorry to interrupt you but could you please explain to a noob like me WHY THE FµCK grub sucks ?
grub is the best bootloader I've ever used. No clue what he's smoking.
It's just preference, I guess. I like the look and feel of the Windows bootloader much better than grub. I tried dual-booting Ubuntu 8.10 shortly after it came out, and it seemed like grub had more options to choose from than were necessary, and as soon as you went through grub, it takes you to the windows bootloader anyways, so what's the point?(on a Windows machine, anyways). I also didn't like how Ubuntu was the default OS with grub, though I'm sure there's an option to change that. Idk. To sum it up, I just think grub looks unprofessional compared to the Windows version.