Another Look at Ubuntu 9.04
I recently downloaded Ubuntu 9.04 alpha 5, “Jaunty Jackalope,” to see for myself what’s in the works for the next release of Ubuntu, set to come out in stable form on April 23. Following are some observations, with screenshots.
First, though, some quick notes regarding my testing: I used the USB creator built into Ubuntu 8.10 to make a bootable USB drive running Ubuntu 9.04 alpha 5. My exploration of the new release was done during a live session running from the USB stick. Admittedly, I didn’t take much of a look at what’s been changed behind the scenes; instead, I focused mostly on updates to the look and feel of Ubuntu.
Volume-control applet
One of the first changes new users are likely to notice is the redesigned volume-control applet. It now features a horizontal slider, rather than the vertical one that has existed in earlier versions of Ubuntu:
This probably reflects an upstream change in Gnome, not one made by Ubuntu developers. I’m not sure that I like the horizontal volume control–the vertical variation was slimmer and took up less screen real estate–but this isn’t a big deal either way, because it’s only the volume control.
Janitor
Another feature introduced/resurrected for Ubuntu 9.04 is the “Janitor,” formerly known as the “Cruft Remover” or “system-cleaner”:
This had been a feature planned for Ubuntu 8.10, but it was pulled before the final release because it had a hard time distinguishing between “cruft” and vital system files. Presumably the new version works better, but I unfortunately didn’t have the opportunity during my live session to acquire any cruft for it to remove.
Notifications
The much-anticipated revamp of the notification system was also a noticeable feature of the 9.04 alpha 5 release. Because it had failed to make it into earlier alphas (like the one reviewed for WorksWithU by Guy Thouret a couple weeks ago), there was some doubt about whether Ubuntu developers would have it ready by April at all. But it made it, and it looks pretty nice:
My only complaints about this feature, based on my limited testing, are that some of the text gets cut off, as in the first screenshot above, and there’s no way to configure why/where/how often/for how long notifications should appear (this is strange because I vaguely remember seeing a configuration utility for notifications in an older Jaunty alpha that I looked at several weeks ago). But even with these deficiencies, the new notifications are a major improvement over the old approach, which was ugly and intrusive.
“Places” menu
Notably, the launchers for storage devices in the “Places” menu were consolidated into a pop-out “Removable Media” section for Jaunty:
This is nice, as it means that Places will no longer become hugely long and difficult to navigate when I have a lot of USB drives plugged in. On the downside, some users are likely to be confused to find internal hard disks listed under Removable Media, since few people consider hard drives “removable.” But this is a minor problem.
OpenOffice start time
My final exciting discovery was an amazing starting time for OpenOffice. Sporting version 3.0 (rather than 2.4, the default in Ubuntu 8.10), Jaunty was able to launch the application from a cold start in under three seconds:
This is pretty incredible, because OO 3.0 (which I installed using a ppa repository from Launchpad) takes more than twice as long to start after a fresh boot of my Ubuntu 8.10 system, installed to hard disk on the same machine:
If OO starts that much faster in a live session of Jaunty, I’m excited to see what it will do on a real installation.
Conclusions
Overall, Ubuntu 9.04 is shaping up to be a promising new release. Combined with improvements on the backend like ext4 as a file-system option, the updates to Jaunty’s look will make Ubuntu a more efficient and attractive operating system.
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It’s nice to ext4 making its debut to Ubuntu, but, aside from that, Jaunty looks unimpressive. We have yet to see any real attention being paid to end-users most requested features and fixes (http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/most_popular_ever/). While Canonical is off trying to secure its position in the server market, it’s neglecting the amazing group of people who have pushed Ubuntu into the limelight to begin with.
I find it amazing that GNOME’s development team — with their anti-innovation approach to development for the sake of stability and usability — would allow something as ridiculous as categorizing internal hard drives under a sub-menu called “Removable Media.” That’s a serious usability flaw.
And a horizontal volume slider. WTF? Is that what GNOME devs call improvement? I’ve been a GNOME fan for years, but this nonsense has to stop. KDE is looking better with each GNOME release.
Josh, many of the features here are probably not what we would expect, or would immediately look for. Jaunty’s focus is on web integration and system optimization.
The former is something that I easily saw in Kubuntu, with the Konqueror widget, but have yet to notice in Ubuntu. The latter I think is a step to create a solid foundation for netbook and ARM based systems. Not everything can be done overnight, or in 6 months, for that matter.
Especially in these times, independent innovation is gonna be stretched with people looking for ways to earn money. I’ve read that just about everywhere is hurting, not just us in the USA.
As to GNOME, quit complaining and go help. Claims of “anti-innovation” are hardly helpful. Direct the invective into something useful. Btw, I partially agree with you here (KDE is looking better and better), but remember that incrementalism has often proved far more effective than revolution, with notable exceptions of course.
To finish my though about innovation: the open-source community depends on the people, and not companies, so what hurts the people is gonna hurt the companies worse. Ubuntu is made more by the community than by Canonical because of the related projects (GNOME, Firefox, Pidgin, Open Office, etc)
Sorry to make this two posts, but I accidentally hit the tab button.
Places menu worked that way in 8.10 already if you had loads of removable media.
Does the volume control actually control the volume, or is PulseAudio still screwed it up irreparably?
I think you’re cutting them too much slack on the Places menu. There is absolutely no reason why internal hard drives should appear under “Removable media”. They are not removable. And what happened to the Gnome principle against nested menus? A single longer menu is much better than a short menu with more menus hidden inside it.
Why do the notifications appear over top of the panel? I know they’re translucent, but why not right beneath it?
I’m not sure why these notifications are any less ugly or intrusive than the balloon popups.
Shouldn’t cruft be removed automatically?
That’s all???
CruelAngel: thanks for pointing this out; I’d never seen that behavior even with a lot of attached devices, but maybe that’s because of my settings–I’ve been using the same /home directory since 7.04.
Endolith: the volume control and sound in general worked fine for me, but I didn’t do any rigorous testing. I think the new notifications look nicer and more graceful, but that could just be personal preference; they also seemed less intrusive because they always appear in exactly the same spot, rather than next to the applet that produced them. I do agree that it’s a little silly to have them cover up the panel.
Haisen: as some of the other posters mention, there are more improvements behind-the-scenes in Jaunty, such as improved boot time and the ext4 file system. I only tracked changes in its appearance. And keep in mind that it’s still in alpha; there’s a lot more work to be done.
Ubuntu is slowing down development a bit, but I like it because the project needed to slow down for a while and fix some very basic stuff. Now you can enable smooth scrolling on Firefox and it will work even on problematic computers like my Acer Aspire 5050-5410 laptop! It is freaking smooth even on flash heavy sites and my google reader!
I appreciate those small things because it makes the system feel more “complete” and professional. GNOME is still slow and it seems to get slower and slower and that doesn’t help Ubuntu but hopefully the GNOME team will put it on a diet soon.
I believe that the future of Ubuntu lies in the community, Canonical should start taking some action on Ubuntu Brainstorm, there are hundreds of awesome ideas waiting at least some developer feedback. Ubnuntu’s devs should really start listening to us.
I need to take a look at the release notes because I didb’t really see to much different. The desktop is a little cleaner and more organized, but the repositories are missing things that I use all the time.
I use OpenVZ and other stuff, but I have to install 8.04.02 LTS and upgrade from there in order to keep the stuff that I was used to running on my system. Most of the custom networking stuff crashed when I compile them under 9.04 (and 8.10 for that matter).
However I do like KDE 4, I think it’s going to be the desktop of choice for people who are looking to change from Windows to Linux.
http://intelliginix.com
“However I do like KDE 4, I think it’s going to be the desktop of choice for people who are looking to change from Windows to Linux.”
That is pretty much most people, right?
I like KDE 4.x and I too believe it will be the desktop of choice for the majority; Even Linus, when he tries it again. I used GNOME briefly once and never again.
Too bad that most of Ubuntu previews are GNOME based and I have only seen a few and far between previews of Kubuntu-KDE. Some thing is wrong and it isn’t KDE 4.x.
I agree with the KDE4.* comments. I switched to Kubuntu recently and love it. KDE 4.2.1 is what i am running right now.
Not only is it a stable platform, that is just as good as Gnome, it also has a much more polished and professional feel to it.
Ubuntu with its default Gnome human theme (brown), just looks extremely outdated and ugly as hell.
I’ve got to add my voice to the chorus about KDE4 – its come a long way. It still has a few issues that need to be sorted out. But I cannot see Gnome catching up any time soon.
@Endolith
You may find that the Places folder was changed with the ‘Removable Media’ subfolder because they’re trying to optimise for smaller screens. This has been a big focus from Gnome over the last few months.
Also, I’m glad to see Ubuntu’s new notifications system is getting the praise it deserves – a lot of effort has gone into that spec and the following implementation is really good considering the age of the whole idea.
I’m looking forward to having Jaunty as a solid incremental update to my systems. The increased performance will be a big thing for me.
I have a bunch of external HDDs connected in 8.10. ‘Places” is already organised like above in 8.10.
Hi. Nice article. I have Ubuntu Jaunty already installed on my desktop and enjoying ext4 filesystem speed ups. Also, NetworkManager is now working properly when I connect to work using openvpn. In 8.10, I had to manually set the default routing to access office hosts.
I just want to point out that OpenOffice faster speed may be attributed to java runtime not being found on your usb live session.
Other than that, I highly recommend this release to readers.
Strange that nobody notices/complains about the perceived differences in startup time of OO.org 3.0.
The fast one complaines it can’t find a JRE while the slow one doesn’t, so the perceived speed increase is probably due to a missing JRE.
Currently running Jaunty at the moment and its an improvement on Intrepid. One thing is the dynamic font resolution thats changed so its not stock standard at 96dpi … which helps with high-res displays.
Will the OGL Transitions work on OpenOffice 3 impress? This means when I expose audiences to Ubuntu when I do a presentation they may have more reason to be interested in what I am running.
Will Jaunty include Parental controls out of the box?
BJ et al.: thanks for pointing out the missing JRE when starting OpenOffice. I hadn’t considered that as an explanation for its fast launch time, but it’s probably a factor.
Matt: unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to test Impress so I don’t know if the OpenGL transitions are included by default. But I believe this feature should be available in Ubuntu 8.10 if you install the openoffice.org-ogltrans package.
I also didn’t check for parental controls, but I haven’t seen them mentioned anywhere in release notes, so my sense is that you will still have to install them manually (there are instructions for installing some common tools at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=226298).
The consolidated removable media menu is in 8.10 as well. So it’s not new.
Just one observation about the new notifications. They look so out of place in Gnome. It’s very much a KDE-ish look and feel. Canonical are going to have to radically overhaul the basic default theme.
Slowing down is good. Canonical used to always say they do less but do it better. Or something to that effect.
On the removable media menu, I think it just needs a name change to “Storage Devices..” and voila!, no more confusion..
And I cheer for the slowdown and making speed improvements.. C’mon, even microsoft did that with Windows 7 and believe me I’ve tried it and its Sooo much better than vista..
Ok don’t flame me.. I’m an ubuntu fan, but I need to take a peek at the other side of the fence every now and then..
Keep the good work..