Since my last post, I have kept up-to-date with the latest development news on 11.04 via both the forums and Planet Ubuntu. I've been doing this, not just because I genuinely think Unity is a good idea, and I think that for me at least it will be a big step forward in productivity/usability, but also because I'm interested in seeing what the next version of Ubuntu will be like. I have some sort of irresistible pull to start installing and trying out Ubuntu+1 about 2 (or sometimes, 3) months before the release.  It's been this way since Intrepid

The install process was fine, and once again - as mentioned previously - it crashed far too frequently upon login. Then I managed to install the nvidia drivers, which helped...a little. After I'd ran update-manager, and installed all the latest updates, things seemed to settle down a little, and the crashes were less often, but still present. This did, however, allow me an opportunity to try things out properly, and for the last 5 days or so, I've effectively been running Natty as my main OS (having 2 hard drives is handy...).

I love it, I didn't think unity would be in a very functional state, reading about it the last few months...but having seen some of the improvements, and finally getting to test it properly on my desktop, I do love it. Admittedly, there's still quite a few things to be fixed, and compiz likes to randomly crash, but it's shaping up nicely, and just in time, too!

Unfortunately, however, I tried to boot into Natty yesterday evening, and it just wouldn't boot. It would get to the splash screen, and just stop. I can't figure out what caused it to do this (obviously an update of some kind, but which remains a puzzle), nor can I figure out how to resolve this without going for a fresh install.

With that in mind I think I'll wait until Beta 1, scheduled for March 31st, before trying again. Though knowing me as I do, it's quite likely I'll be drawn into it again before then. One thing's for sure though, and that's that Natty will definitely be getting installed on my Desktop as soon as I get the chance post-release.

I have actually been making use of a tabbed Nautilus (yay!) which I didn't think I would. I've also been using my VPS to torrent the desktop and alternate versions of Intrepid (32 bit versions). Stats of that at the time of writing are:

Desktop - Uploaded: 8126 MB
Alternate - Uploaded: 1680 MB

As you may have guessed - the alternate iso has only been seeding for a day or so. But this is what VPS's are for I'll continue seeding until Sunday night (GMT).

As for what I think of Intrepid on my laptop...well...I love it (as always). The only downside to it that I can complain about is the fact that unless I play my audio at near inaudible volumes (thus defeating the object of audio ). The sound distorts like a music concert recorded on a mobile phone (cell phone for the Americans reading this ).

Luckily - I don't need to use the sound a lot, I've been playing my music from my iPhone and it's dock, as it has a lineout on the rear of the dock

All in all - I think Intrepid is a decent release, though I totally understand people sticking with 8.04.1 as it's an LTS. I mean, I was considering it, but I love upgrading!!

So Ubuntu 8.10 was released to day - as always, downloads were slow, websites went down, torrents were seeded, the usual (yes the forums went down too - in fact they've just come back online ).

I've in the middle of installing Intrepid on my laptop as I write this, so far it looks nice, not to different visually from Hardy when you first boot the live CD, but there are some differences that I think are noticeable when you finally get around to using them.

Anyway, I've got stuff to be doing and /home directories to be restoring, so I'll post back in a few days when I've been running Intrepid properly!!

A few links you may find useful:

http://releases.ubuntu.com/releases/8.10/
http://www.ubuntu.com/
http://ubuntuforums.org

The reason I moved back to Hardy - and back to a 32 bit install - is because I'm starting back at University, and my touchpad kept breaking (amongst other things). I can't really afford to have a laptop that does function fully while I'm studying, it's just not practical.

I may install it in a VM at some point, and I know I'll just install it when it's at the RC stage, just to beat the crowds :p

Unfortunately, I had some issues with my /home partition (I have it separate). So I had to format that too, luckily I have an rsync backup (I had 1 for Intrepid and 1 for Hardy) on my server. So I install gftp and grabbed all the stuff I wanted from there Now all is back up and running smoothly, I don't think I've missed off any app's that I had installed previously!

So far so good, it's got to be said! There's a few issues I've noticed though, these are:

1. gvfs-trash errored out on first boot, doesn't seem to work
2. gnome-power-manager did the same
3. Shutdown from the shutdown menu doesn't work
4. Keyboard shortcuts don't work

Now I can't really comment on the first 2 because I just sent off the error reports and then I got no more prompts...or running applications Though shutdown is an odd one, I have the button on the far right of my top panel, and under the system menu. Trying to shutdown or restart from either doesn't work at all. I hope this gets fixed soon, until then I may added a launcher to my panel to shutdown instead;)

Keyboard shortcuts is a pain, I have a keyboard shortcut for the terminal, but it doesn't work So I tried changing it to a different key combo - still no dice. It's a shame, it's only now that I've realised how much I used it. I hope this also gets fixed really soon, so I can remove the terminal icon from my top panel.

Other than that I'm really enjoying the Intrepid Experience so far. The "newhuman" theme has grown on me quite a bit. I actually quite like it now, I was unsure at first. Also Compiz works great (cube deformation & 3d windows have been added to my features). On Ubuntu 8.04 running 3d Windows made my laptop grind to a halt...smooth as anything now I'm happy!

I'll post more thoughts after Alpha 5, Beta & RC etc. Until then - have a screenshot or 2

UPDATE: Thanks to this comment I managed to get my terminal shortcut back - so thanks for that I still think that'd be classed as a bug though.