The name's ridiculous, but "Jaunty Jackalope," the next release of the popular Linux distribution Ubuntu, is seriously focused on the user experience. Dig what's new and improved in the beta of Ubuntu 9.04, released today.


We've covered bits and pieces of what's coming up for Ubuntu 9.04 in the past few months, such as Mac/Growl-like notifications (that you can grab now, if you want), some stylish community themes, and the speedier ext4 filesystem.


One feature I couldn't show in the screenshots was the improved boot time in Jaunty. Having lived in it for about a week and installed a few apps, it took 24.9 seconds from choosing my OS to boot in Grub to a login window, and about 19 seconds more to get to a fully-loaded desktop (about 43 total).

What's below are screenshots taken from the last alpha version before it. If Jaunty's release schedule holds (and it almost always does), a final release is just a month off. Ubuntu's beta releases are usually pretty close to the final thing, though, and it's easy enough to download an ISO file, then live-boot and test it without harm using UNetbootin from Windows or Linux.

Yada yada technical geekery. Here's how Ubuntu 9.04 looks and works different from before; click on a thumbnail for a bigger view and description:

For a thoroughly detailed screenshot tour of the KDE and Xfce-based variants of Ubuntu 9.04, Kubuntu and Xubuntu, check out Softpedia's review of Ubuntu 9.04 Alpha 6.


What are you liking about the Jaunty Jackalope? What's still on your must-have list before a Linux switch makes sense? Tell us everything in the comments.

Ubuntu 9.04 Beta [Ubuntu.com]