Mini (p)review Ubuntu 9.04 Alpha 5
The alpha 5 of Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope has been released. I’ve installed it on my Sony TZ laptop for a little test drive.
Downloading went very smooth, it looks like Canonical has added some servers for the alpha downloads. When I started the live CD it worked as we’re used to. From the boot I went straight into to the installation. I read that there were some issues with the partitioner, but it gave me no problems at all.
Booting into the freshly installed Ubuntu I was confronted with a layout which is very similar to 8.10. I found the 
only visible difference after connecting to the wireless network: the new notification system. It shows nice, half transparent, notifications in the upper right corner of the screen. Strangely they fall over the top Gnome panel, I couldn’t find out if that is meant to be or a bug. A little alpha bug: the contents of the notification window showed a couple of times and then died. When I change the volume or the brightness I only see a black filled rectangle.
There are hardly any changes in the preferences panels. But the system itself works great. It boots fast, works very smooth when started. Compiz performs good, nothing special, but that’s good enough. This release feels like an update of the ‘bottom’ of the system: everything works smooth and fast, but there are no obvious changes.
Overall I’m looking forward to April when the final will be released.
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