Ubuntu 9.04 Review

I guess its a bit late , but i thought it would be best to judge this version of ubuntu after a few months , as there were a lot of bugs initially in this OS which were reported at the ubuntuforums. So i thought it would just be a matter of time when all these bugs will be fixed . So here is what i think about ubuntu 9.04 :

FIRST IMPRESSION
At first , i was really happy to see my wireless card being detected . I mean it was fantastic!!I didnt have to do a thing.. Not even go to Hardware Drivers and enable it . It worked right out of the box . I was so glad to see that happen finally. Being with ubuntu for such a long time , its seriously awesome!!
Apart from that , i guess the looks are the same . There is hardly any noticeable difference although ubuntu keeps promising a new look everytime!!But the good thing is , i didnt have to worry about compatibility AT ALL!!Ubuntu uhas started to get a hang of it i guess.. No drivers or installations needed to get any device working . Right from sound,video,LAN,WLAN,Webcam etc everything was perfect!!.

NEW STUFF
I didnt find a lot of new stuff in this version of ubuntu . I guess you cant expect a lot of NEW VISIBLE changes when you see a new version every 6 months . But one thing which i guess is very noticeable is stability!!I've found that to be very much present in this version . I guess thats what keeps improving in ubuntu. I mean now firefox crashes a lot lesser , my system responds much faster , the softwares run much more smoothly etc etc etc .
One of the best new things that i found in ubuntu is a nice black notification popup window which pops up on the top right corner of the screen whenever it needs to alert me of anything . The best part of this new feature is that the same notification window comes up for almost all softwares . Wireless updates , LAN updates, Pidgin updates , softwares updates etc , anything that ubuntu wants to let you know comes up as a notification at the top right . This is really nice as it doesnt quite disturb you of your work by popping up a new window on top of your current working window , but just informs you on the side which is VERY NOTICEABLE so you wont miss a thing!!. Here is a screenshot of the notification window i am talking about


Another new thing i noticed in this version of ubuntu is the Computer Janitor found under System->Administration . This application basically gives you a neat and simplified way of removing packages which you may not need anymore . Its not like synaptic or add/remove which lists all of the packages making it difficult to find your packages. This just lists the current installed packages . Something like the Add/remove programs feature in windows.


BUGS
Well not everything is fixed here in ubuntu . There are still problems which i guess havent yet been looked at . Firstly , samba & nautilus arent playing well together . Sometimes i still get these types of warnings when trying to open shared folders via samba . They dont happen all the time , i mean if i just double click on the same thing again it works , so its not a major problem , but is still a hindrance.
Another similar problem is smb://prash-desktop not opening always . It opens sometimes but sometimes wont . Again i guess nautilus to be blamed here . Also Places->Network acts crazy as well. Sometimes you find it detecting computers in your LAN along with its workgroup but sometimes you find nothing!!.

Also i guess Firefox + Flash issue isnt completely sorted out although i guess its improving!!The following is not a bug but its something that i wish ubuntu had - Ubuntu has this goal of a PC ready installation where all basic software like openoffice,totem,remote desktop viewer,firefox,pidgin etc are all installed already so you dont have to install them again , therefore making it READY TO USE as soon as its installed . I also wished that ubuntu included JAVA ( for browsers ) and flash to be installed by default in ubuntu as these again are sort of required by most browsers and today almost every machine is connected to the internet.
Firefox Still crashes , the crashing has not completely stopped although has been significantly less!!

FINAL WORDS
I am really excited about this OS . I am so glad to have upgraded to it on my main machine as well . This ubuntu is really stable and has some really cool new features built up to this version . I feel that ubuntu is becoming better by the version and i really hope it continues to do well and gains majority in the operating system market share some day :) .