About a week ago or so, Ubuntu development team have released their latest version of Ubuntu, 9.04. With this new release, also came a lot of improvements, bug fixed, new packages, new kernel, new notification style, boot performance improvements and so on, but one thing that I hate and hated in Ubuntu, was the lack of style or design. The guys from the Ubuntu development team didn’t really do anything when it comes to the look of this new release. Basically, they removed a couple of Gnome themes, which kind of bugs me too much (removed Glossy theme), also they modified a bit the usplash and also added the well awaited notification style. Besides this, this new release doesn’t bring any new theme or style to the distro.

Now, when it comes to boot performance and overall performance, the guys really did their job, Ubuntu boots in +/- 20 seconds, even on a netbook. I have tested this distro manly on a netbook, because I really need to switch my normal work laptop, which is running on Ubuntu 8.04, to this new release. I need it to see if even a netbook can handle it and if it can handle it, how well it will actually work. To my surprise, Ubuntu 9.04, handles and works super well, out of the box on my Acer Aspire One. The netbook test overall was perfect, with one minor thing… the Intel graphics drivers have some weird issue and do not really work quite well with flash videos or movies in general, but as I was reading in some forums, seems this is some kind of a bug coming from Intel and again I suppose will be fixed sooner or later. This only means I will need to watch YouTube.com, videos or some movies on my other 2 laptops (sick isn’t it, 3 laptops and one server).

The other cool part of this new release is the notification area and its style, which was changed by the guys from Ubuntu development team and which really rocks. I don’t think is fully finished or polished, but the idea overall is super cool and gives a very nice touch to Gnome and of course to Ubuntu.

To be honest the release is a great success, it has the speed, it has a lot of improvements and new packages, some nice design and style touched, even if it would need much more, but it has what it needs and if Ubuntu will continue this way, we might see a blooming Linux in the end-user department.

I know that Ubuntu could and can deliver more then this release, but maybe there is a reason for this small delays and the only thing we can do is hope that the next release will look better, perform better and have much more packages and stuff added into it to make even a Windows lover move to Linux.

Until next time… check out Ubuntu, try it and leave a comment if necessary, Cheers!