Rebel Zero

We’re now seven days from the official release of Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope. As a matter of fact, you can now grab the Release Candidate which is the final stage before release, and/or you can get your requests in for a free release CD if downloading a copy isn’t an option.

I’ve been running Jaunty since the start of the Beta cycle and I’m quite pleased with it. Jaunty was first installed on my Eee PC 701 with all the other 8.10 Intrepid installs being replaced shortly afterwards. Besides the increases in speed, Gnome 2.26 keeps getting better and more tightly integrated.

The new notification system that Canonical has developed has been received with mixed reactions. Issues that some users have include style and placement, or its use at all. Some application’s default settings have been changed in order to take advantage of the new system which may cause confusion for some users. For instance, pidgin is set to never show an icon in the taskbar. The notification system applet is to handle the function of displaying your “hidden” buddy list. Evolution’s blinking new mail envelope is gone with the notification applet taking its place as well. It only took me the better part of day to get used to this new design.

The flashplugin-nonfree package now installs Adobe’s latest Flash Player 10. It’s also become a transitional dummy package with the flashplugin-installer package taking over the installation of the plugin. There’s still no 64-bit flavor with nspluginwrapper providing the i386 wrapper. Crashes still occur on a semi-regular basis on my 64-bit installs. Read that as “more of the same”.

Boot times are tremendous. My Thinkpad T61p boots in 30 seconds. If it weren’t for my slow, half-asleep typing skills when entering the encryption passphrase during the boot sequence, I could cut that down by another ten seconds. My new Eee PC 1000HE boots in under 21 seconds while my hand-built desktop takes 31 seconds. I think my desktop’s slowness can be attributed to how I have the file system set up. The next time I have an opportunity, I’ll set it up with a fresh install of Jaunty on a more efficient file system.

Speaking of file system’s, Jaunty introduces the option of the ext4 file system, ext3’s eventual replacement. It comes with some anxiety from the delayed allocation times for writing to the hard drive. It poses the possibility for corrupted files in the case of a premature shutdown or crash. This has made Ubuntu keep Jaunty’s default as ext3 with ext4 as an option during installation. Theodore T’so, ext3’s and ext4’s creator, blames poor application programming rather than the file system design. Either way, patches have been issued to limit some of the delay which will be included in the next stable kernel, 2.6.30. Ubuntu has mentioned they will incorporate those patches into Jaunty’s 2.6.28 kernel.

I’ve taken the strategy of having my /home on a separate ext3 partition with everything else using ext4. This keeps my personal data in a more secure location while everything else is pretty much replaceable should a data loss event occur.

In the end, I’ve taken the Jaunty plunge for good. My mix includes a couple of Hardy Heron server installs surrounded by Jaunty Jackalope desktop installs. Intrepid Ibex was fun for the time inbetween, but Jaunty offers much more than Intrepid ever did. Hit the links at the top to grab a copy of your own Jackalope.