As last Thursday (April 8th) saw the Beta 2 release of Ubuntu v10.04-LTS (Long Term Support), I thought I would give this new version a trial run on my test-bed laptop.
Besides I was getting bored with running Windows 7 release candidate and it's bi-hourly reboots.
Also as this is a beta, and I've had such success using UNetbootin to create a VMware ESX 4.0 bootable installer USB, I'm going to have a bash at creating a bootable Ubuntu USB installer - (yet another first for me!)
Test-Bed Laptop
Nothing flash. A Dell Latitude D600 with:
- 1.4GHz Pentium M
- 1Gb RAM
- Intel 2200BG 54Mb Wireless
- Secondary (modular bay) battery
Creating USB Installer
I've decided to make this into another post - See HERE
Installing
Nothing much untoward, looks like the installer application has a fresh new look, but other than that, standard easy to follow fare.
First Impressions
WOW! Looks good... Very good... Continuing from the last release, v9.10 - See my Installation guide HERE Once again, there was no post install playing around required. Everything just ...worked!
Here are some eye candy and comments:
Desktop. Also both batteries!
Start Menu
Wa-hey! The brown is gone!
File explorer. Nice and simple
Seems to make more sense than previous versions
Progress dialogue
The red certainly does stand out!
Firefox.
All in all, I think you'll agree, looking very nice!
Also compared to Windows 7, this old laptop is flying once again. A real performance boost from the old girl!
According to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LucidReleaseSchedule the final 10.04 release is on 28th April. Not long to wait now!!
- Chris