Improving boot time has been a focus of Ubuntu developers in recent releases, with the goal of a ten-second startup set for Ubuntu 10.4.  To test progress thus far, I compared boot performance for Ubuntu 8.04, 9.04 and 9.10.  Below are the results, which demonstrate the impressive strides that have been made thus far towards a faster boot.

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For the release of Jaunty, the Ubuntu developers decided to disable the control-alt-backspace shortcut for killing the graphical X session. This move prompted a lot of complaining from advanced users. Although I personally sympathize with these people, their grievances reflect the all-too-common tendency of a minority of geeky users to rise up in arms about trivial features, impeding the progress of things that matter.

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Because I was traveling, I didn’t get around to upgrading my desktop to Ubuntu 9.04 until yesterday.  After what seemed like the fastest Ubuntu installation and quickest boot ever on my system, I was excited to log into Gnome and see what the stable release of Jaunty has to offer.  Instead, I was met with a lot of frustration and loss of faith in Ubuntu’s commitment to stability, due to egregious regressions in the performance of my Intel video card.

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With Ubuntu 9.04, otherwise known as the Jaunty Jackalope, set to be released in less than three weeks, WorksWithU will be publishing some posts about what the latest and greatest version of Ubuntu will mean to different groups of users.  Today, we begin with a look at the new features that Jaunty brings to traditional desktops.

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