Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04 Overview.

I’ve just finished reading and incredibly mediocre post about Ubuntu Jaunty featured in WordPress frontpage. It contained a heavy amount of software, “helping” users to install software via command line in the way “sudo apt-get install (put your software here)”. Now that’s sad, as most people looking for information on installing something within Ubuntu will mostly be newbies, so it’s a quick way to scare them off. As I’m angry again, I decided to write this post to introduce the main new features of Ubuntu 9.04, in both the technical and the “mortal” way. May the force be with me… I hope I won’t end as that poor guy. So, here we go.

Ubuntu first impression.

The same installation since Edgy. Smart, easy and fast. As soon as you pop in the installation disk, the welcome screen guides you through. The installation (including tweaking original values) took me roughly 15 minutes, while an XP clean installation took more than 20. One of the main changes announced in the technical overview posted at Ubuntu Forums, was the increase of boot speed. Definitely, they accomplished it. It takes somewhere around a 25% less to boot, so it’s a noticeable change. Also, the graphic login screen has changed completely, it’s no longer the usual, beige + Ubuntu logo. It was replaced with a heavy coloured, dark screen.

As soon as the login is completed, GNOME 2.26 is loaded. The new stable version features major updates only. No new, shiny, bleeding edge software. Nothing noticeable here, as GNOME works very neatly and bug fixes rarely show up as it almost never fails. One thing I could see though, is that the CPU Scaling widget has been corrected. It no longer is randomly broken after each start.

The system introduces new features also, at system level, the “Computer Janitor” used to clean unorphaned packages, files and else consuming space in the disk. Another feature, is a new display panel (which I couldn’t use as my card is an nVidia, by the way) which helps with the connection of a monitor and/or TV. It was a daunting task to connect anything before, so it’s appreciated. Shame on me, as I won’t be able to use it for now.

Probably the most significant interface change in this version, is the new notification system. In previous Ubuntu version, an icon popped when an action was triggered. A rectangular icon popped up at the lower center of the screen each time the brightness or volume was adjusted, The network status was published as a cloud, Pidgin new messages were marked in Pidgin’s icons, and so on. Cannonical, decided it was way too decentralized, so they were bound to create a common place, were applications would publish their notifications. And again, it happened. They did it.

Notifications.

The new notification system is quite beautiful, yet useful. I only have a few regrets, which I’ll explain further. The new notifications idea model, as stated in Mark Shuttlworth’s blog, is to be a clean way to tell the user that something important is going on, without causing any clutter.

Notification system in action.

Due to the GNOME desktop integration, the notification system works for new messages within Pidgin, new e-mails received from Evolution and system messages, such as network status, volume and brightness. The system works like a charm, as it works exactly the way it’s designed to. It forces you to pay attention to important things, but it won”t get in your way, as hovering the mouse over makes it translucid while also being able to click underneath the pop-up window.

Translucid on mouse hover.

Now, although the system is neatly designed, I’m the kind of people who likes to tweak every other thing. Unfortunately, the notification system is not tweakable in any direct way. I’m pretty sure I could blow up a couple of configuration files to do what I want, but the point is that there is no option to change anything. Time, color, position and to build in notifications from other sources is what comes to my mind. It would be awesome if you were hearing music in your media player, and a notification informed you of anything going on in the player, finished downloads, title of a starting track, the end of playlist… Only two things would need to be built:A method to make a media player notify the system, and a method to make the window pop-up. That’s about it, and it would be a great improvement.

System improvement.

Besides the new and shiny notifications, there were major updates included with this new release. One of the most important, and that I liked the most, is the faster boot speed. Ubuntu was never slow on boot speeds, I’ve been using it on a constant basis since Dapper Drake (6.06) and it always booted faster than any Windows system, under any conditions. After the introduction of the XGL server though, things began to change. It was still faster, but not the way it used to be.

It was obvious, since the XGL server is quite complex and it demands a good quantity of resources. Boot times were noticeably larger, although it was around a 10% of extra time, which often was from 4 to 10 extra seconds. A fair price for the most incredible effects ever seen on a desktop system.

One of the main features of Jaunty, is its faster boot speed. The method which was implemented can be appreciated without using any system analyser. During the boot time, fans work at its top performance, which means, the CPU is working at its top performance. To accomplish this faster speed, Ubuntu consumes a larger amount of processor time to load the system.

This has two points of view: The good part, is of course, the lower boot time. The bad part, is the energy consumption. As the system takes a higher load over the processor, more energy is demanded. Indeed, this may not be an important factor in a desktop computer, but it is in a laptop. The battery receives a powerful drain at boot time.

Although it may sound drastic, on further tests, the data thrown was different from what I expected. The battery consumption is somehow the same in this version compared to others, but the boot time is surely lower. I couldn’t understand this, until I saw it from a different point of view. In previous versions, the boot time was higher, so, the system took more time to boot while using a lower processor demand. The new boot method uses less time with a higher processor demand. So, what actually happens with the energy is almost the same. Even though the processor consumes more energy, it does it for a shorter time.

In conclusion, more energy is required indeed, but not enough to actually make a difference. In my case, it’s a bit less than a 1%, as my battery is small. In larger batteries, it won’t even be noticed.

Conclusion.

Overall, the new distribution include a nice amount of improvements. Although it doesn’t feature new, bleeding edge software, it does include good additions. The faster time is a good feature to count with, and definitely, it was smartly built. The notification system, is also a good system.

I have no further complaints about the system. I didn’t like the time it took to boot since the addition of the XGL server, but it has been solved. The screen assistant was a nice addition, which will solve a number of difficulties. I should have had it for an Economy expo last month.

Even though it’s not a matter of Ubuntu, I do have a thousand complaints to a lot of software. The same way Keir Thomas said it at Lifehacker, Ubuntu was playing a catch up game with Windows and Mac. It has finally reached them, so it’s time to develop. I’m really looking forward to major platform upgrades. It’s sad that a number of people won’t completely change to Ubuntu, or a Linux based system due to the fact that they can’t manage completely an iPod, or use specific hardware, such as scanners.

Although the graphics server is great, there are still a number of things to be worked. AWN may be pretty, but it has flaws, and some factors that can’t be passed.

I’m happy with Jaunty, indeed. I’ll write a list of things that I think that need to be improved. Hopefully, in some years (or maybe less) I’ll be helping the open source projects not only by testing software and writing in my blog, but also providing real, programming help.

Coming next within Linux: How to completely manage an iPod on Linux, Media Players match up, AWN Configuration, GNOME tweaks and Complete configuration of an Ubuntu interface.

Stay tuned.