Ubuntu 9.10 – First Impressions
Just a week or 2 after it’s release, I got hands on the latest offspring of the Ubuntu family, this time it’s a koala! I just keep wondering how do they get such weird names!
Well, downloading was easy enough. I got to ubuntu site (courtesy Google!), and downloaded the 32-bit ubuntu 9.10 iso. 
680MB to be approx, it took nearly an hour for me to download it. After which, I put into my usb drive (through usb disk creator), and rebooted to the pen drive. The first that turned out to be different was the booting screen. It just shows a white ubuntu logo that gleams in the black background. It’s kinda resembles Windows 7 boot splash screen, but I like the windows one much better. Next comes the similar ubuntu loading screen, which is a bit darker than in 9.04.
While loading the live CD, I noticed the fast, extremely fast booting up time. I mean this is the fastest a live cd has ever booted (maybe it’s because of the usb, but previous ones did take considerable time). And then comes the desktop. What was noticeable was the resolution, which was set to my default laptop standard, the earlier always switched to lower resolutions until the NVidia graphics driver was installed. My laptop’s the HP Pavilion dv 6602au, with AMD turion inside. So that’s a plus.
Also I noticed a little UI improvement, better styled and nice icons. Aesthetically it has done a good job, and I think this will appeal to normal users too. I then went on to install over my old partition, which contained the 8.10 version. The steps were similar, but installation takes a little less time.
After the installation, the login screen came up. It’s a lot different now, and has some graphical touch to it. I liked it though, quite thoughtful of the dev ppl to have put so. Though I couldn’t find a way to change it till now. Now all the apps are similar, maybe the OpenOffice version is now 3.1, firefox 3.5, and no Pigdin, instead it’s Empathy IM client. Games have been categorized to logical ones and the rest. Also there are more wallpapers to choose from, which is a small but welcome change.
Also they added Ubuntu one, which is kinda web storage where I can synchronize folders in my system to the web, and also add a network of computers. Sadly though it doesn’t work for me now, showing capabilities mismatch ( seems t
What I really welcome is that now I don’t need to connect to a power source for booting into ubuntu as I used to! Ah, at last now I can call my laptop portable!
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