Let There be Much Rejoicing

I finally got a new laptop yesterday–a secondhand Dell Latitude. I’m pleased with its specs, of which you can learn more than you wanted to on my hardware page, but this also meant something else: I had the perfect reason to install Jaunty.

Upgrading from the Upgrade Manager always kind of scares me–the Ubuntu people are abundantly clear that it could make the system go banoonoos–and it’s a lot of work to do a fresh install over an existing install. But this computer needed Ubuntu anyway–so I just burned a Jaunty disk and used it.

I’m impressed.

First of all, the thing is fast. I don’t have the greatest hardware on the block, but it still boots in under a minute, and–almost as good–there’s no more Windows-ish “Show the desktop but don’t make it usable for another thirty seconds.” When GNOME looks like it’s done loading, GNOME is done loading. Period.

To be fair, I’m using a faster processor than I did with Intrepid and Hardy, so I don’t know if I can honestly praise Jaunty for this, but it seems a lot more responsive.

The new notification system is great. For people miffed by the fact that you can’t close notifications: why would you want to? If you need to see something under them, hovering over them with your mouse makes them mostly transparent, and otherwise–who cares what’s going on in the top right corner of your screen?

Maybe I wasn’t paying attention in Intrepid, but I’m reasonably sure the System Janitor (System>Administration) is new. It looks like a really good idea, though I haven’t needed to use it yet.

The default wallpaper was subpar–I was really hoping for a picture of a jackalope. Oh well, I changed it to this anyway.

I don’t know who to blame for this–Compiz, maybe?–but the new way for switching between workspaces moves the windows, but not the desktop itself (i. e. the wallpaper remains static while other stuff moves over it). I know it’s minor, but I still disapprove. I’ve always maintained the image of a bunch of windows tied to various desktops, which could be moved about like a slide under a microscope to be viewable by my screen. Now, the image seems to be of a bunch of windows floating in outer space, ready to be snagged and plopped onto my desktop. There’s a subtle distinction, and I don’t like it.

I know I’m supposed to be excited by the new GNOME release, but so far I haven’t seen anything different. I’ll keep you posted on that.

Overall, though, I’m very excited about this release–much more so than I was about Intrepid–and happy to call myself a Linux user.