I’m an Ubuntu Linux fan.  I use the 8.04 LTS “Hardy Heron” release on most machines and at work.  To date, its definitely been the most stable and I can’t see moving off of Hardy until the next LTS release.

However, on my home system I tend to get upgrade fever.  Always looking for that new feature and update to Rhythmbox or Listen etc.  I originally upgraded from Hardy to 8.10 Intreprid… and regretted it.

Intrepid was way slow, don’t know why, but the desktop bring up was slower then Hardy, it took a good 20 seconds to connect to the network *after* the desktop was up.  Generally clunky interactivity.   For me it resurfaced the same NVIDIA issues I thought were fixed back w/ Gutsy!

With the release of Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jakewhatever, I was pretty skeptical and hesitant to move. Yet, Intrepid was sucking and I just backed-up my stuff, so I decided to try it thinking I’d just end up back on Hardy.

Long story short… Ubuntu 9.04 is awesome.  The new 15 second boot up is amazing.  The desktop is up and running, connected to the internet before I can get my hands on the keyboard.  Overall interactivity is the snappiest I’ve seen.

I even did the whole reinstall in less then 15 minutes.  Didn’t bother trying an upgrade, but rather did a fresh install using the CD.  I keep my “/home” on a separate drive, so by choosing manual partitioning, I just reloaded (formatted) “/boot” and “/” but kept “/home.”  Fifteen minutes later, I rebooted, had all my stuff, desktop and even wallpaper still in place.  Slick as hell.  (I stuck with ext3, not touching ext4 until is smells less foul).