Ubuntu 9.04 'Jaunty Jackalope' – What to expect - 23/11/2008 by Andrew
It seems only yesterday that 8.10 was released and now the 9.04 “Jaunty Jackalope” release cycle has fired into life. Truth be told, I wasn't very happy with Ubuntu 8.10. Yes, I did give it an honest go though for me it wasn't different enough from Hardy to justify replacing existing 8.04 installs and there were a number of known issues with getting the Nvidia proprietary drivers working.
Arriving slighty behind schedule, the very first alpha was released on the 22nd of November and will be followed by 5 more alphas, a beta (26th of March 2009), a release candidate (16th of April 2009) and then the final release on the 23rd of April, 2009 (the one year anniversary of Boris Yeltsin's death). As many of you would know, the first bunch of alphas should be avoided unless you're testing or enjoy pain. From about alpha 5, I've found it to be good enough for the early adopters to jump in though you will be lumped with 100+ updates a day and some glitches here and there. The price to pay to be one of the first to taste the new repositories :)
Anyway, what should you expect?
Boot Performance
There's been a lot of talk about increasing the speed of the boot process. Now that some motherboards allow you to boot an embedded linux in mere seconds so you can Skype and browse the web, there is a push to have your average distro do the same.
I've often thought about how the PC's that we use today are the super computers of 10 years ago, so why does it seem to take longer to boot to the desktop? Well, more things are happening behind the scenes and that's what's slowing up the whole process. Even if 9.04 is able to cut 20% of the time it takes to get to your desktop (and not cheating like some other proprietary operating systems out there that get you to the desktop but still have grinding to do) it will make a huge difference, but imagine if they're able to get close to 50%? How epic would that be?
Blending of Web Services and Desktop Applications
In non geekspeak, this means that normal applications (such as OpenOffice) will also be internet enabled to do things like 'live thesaurus' and translations – much like MS Office. This is just an example – I have no idea what applications Shuttleworth has in mind when he was throwing out these buzz words.
This, in my opinion, could backfire if they don't do it correctly. Imagine you've got a brand new netbook so you can still work while you travel. Far away from your home ADSL connection and with no expensive (in Australia it's still quite expensive) 3G wireless broadband you're completely off-line. Not a problem right? What happens when the web enabled application you're using tries to phone home for some reason? Will the application still function or will it bombard the user with “No internet connection” pop-ups?
Opening the Debian floodgates
Firstly, 9.04 should be packing Linux Kernel 2.6.28 or possibly 2.6.29 as well as the latest X.org and things like OpenOffice 3.0.x will be there. The Debian floodgates will be open till Christmas day, meaning that new versions of packages are automatically imported up till the 25th of December. The next big freeze won't be till the beta freeze on the 19th of March 2009, so there's ample time for packages to still make the cut. After the beta freeze, unless it's going to fix existing issues a package won't sneak in – so open source game makers take note: Adjust your schedules so that you release your games with plenty of time.
Speaking of games, well, it's been a bit quiet on that front. Apart from OpenArena (which is at version 0.8.1, released recently) there hasn't been too many new versions to report. Nexuiz, Warsow, Glest, FreedroidRPG, SuperTuxKart and many others haven't had a release in quite some time so unless they get cracking, the game listing in 9.04 might mirror 8.10. On the closed source front (nothing to do with 9.04), Enemy Territory: Quake Wars might have an update to their version 1.5 that can allow for VoIP and we might even have Unreal Tournament 3 available by then (we've waited a year already, what's another few months?).
Better Hardware Support
This isn't something that's unique to Jaunty Jackalope, though it's well worth mentioning. With the latest Kernel and X.org being used, you'll have the best chance at supporting newer hardware. Thinking of upgrading to a Core i7 or maybe an AM3 Phenom II early next year? Well, that new motherboard of yours might not play nice with an older Kernel. The same goes for graphics cards, the latest *nix Nvidia/ATI proprietary drivers will support the latest cards (though they always feel a few months behind the Windows versions) so you're GTX290 (or whatever it will be) will need some new driver lovin'.
Bottom Line
Being so early in the release cycle it's hard to say for certain what's going to be in the final version. Hopefully it kicks more goals that Intrepid Ibex and gives us a strong reason to upgrade.