I have the beta of the latest Ubuntu on a spare partition on my HD, mainly out of curiosity. My impressions in one sentence:
“Looks okay, but it’s not for me.”
Basically, the same reaction as I have to Windows 7 and Mac OS X.
The install was fast and painless, boot times up to GDM were quick (quicker than my main Arch install, even), but Ubuntu’s GNOME is as slow as ever and starts a load of services I don’t need (bluetooth? I don’t even have bluetooth hardware in my PC), but deselecting them doesn’t seem to make any difference.
The new Software Install Center looks good and works well, and the new look doesn’t bother me, but neither did the old one. I think it now looks marginally better. I moved the window buttons to the right, and completely failed to throw a hissy fit about it. Afterwards, I uninstalled empathy and installed Pidgin and Chromium.
There were some issues…I couldn’t get the USB Disk creator to work, for example, and I don’t like Compiz one bit. More importantly, it detects but doesn’t automount any of my USB sticks, and I noticed this in Karmic and Mint 8 too.
In any case, after my look around I quickly booted back into Arch. Ubuntu’s just fine if you want Ubuntu. I however want to use anything I like, and what I like changes every month.
San
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