So - I popped in the Jaunty Live CD, got to the boot menu. All is going well so far, I expected it to not boot though due to my graphics card (Nvidia 9500GT) and a Dual-Screen setup....ok I'm on the desktop (that was quick!). My dual-screen setup was detected just fine (with both monitors at the correct resolution no less!) I was already impressed just from that. I had a play around, and it took me all of 5 minutes to decide that I wanted to give it a proper try out, and to backup my home and install it properly.

1 reboot later, past the (in my opinion) great new GDM theme and nice new splash screen, I'm logged in, installing my nvidia drivers (180.xx) as recommended by a little pop-up. After that install and reboot, I get compiz effects working great, as well as an extended desktop - awesome!

After a bit more playing, I have the dust theme installed (it's come a long way since I last used it), as well as having emesene using the new notification system (which I have to say looks great!). I'm also running on an ext4 based system, and so far - all is well. Hopefully I'll have more to say when the beta is released, but this is running on my main desktop, so it's getting plenty of use

UPDATE:

I've got to say, after using jaunty some more this morning, one thing struck me...it's REALLY quick. Boot is way faster than 8.10 and running general. Shutdown is quicker too

So I'm thinking that when I've got a bit of free time I'm going to try Jaunty in a VM, just because I've not actually tried it at all so far, I'm a bit disappointed in myself! From what I've heard on IRC and generally from people using it, there's been the usual breakage of some things, but that's to be expected. Other than that I've actually heard a lot of positive things about it, so I'm looking forward to actually installing it on my system

As for Java, some of you may know that I'm on a Software Engineering course at University. This means I do a fair amount of programming and general sitting-in-front-of-a-computer-looking-busy . One of the modules on my course this year is OO (Object-Oriented) Software Development, for which we're using Java. Now I'm not a huge fan of Java, but I can appreciate it has many uses, and I don't mind coding in it. The only issue is that, from the lectures, I don't actually have a fantastic understanding of OO Methods and such. So I got a book out of my Uni library - Java in Two Semesters - so far, it's actually really good, and I already have a better understanding of things Now I just have to finish an assignment!

One final comment - I'll be changing my Planet Ubuntu feed in the coming week to include all posts from my blog, as I'd say that 99% of my posts relate to Ubuntu in some way