I love Ubuntu, no secret about that. I've also been one to rave like a mad man about each subsequent release of this OS - in my view each release has made significant gains on its predecessor in terms of performance and features. I have however until now never been bold enough to trial an Alpha or Beta release. I do not claim to be a 'nix' guru and I know that the bugs of a beta system will drive me crackers. This time given all the hoopla about the speed and performance of Ubuntu Lucid. I was temped to install the Release Candidate against my better judgement. My better judgement was very wrong. What an amazing Operating System, the upgrade was the smoothest I have ever done in my life, waht was actually quite striking was the fact that I did not need the files I backed up pre the upgrade. Ubuntu Lucid made all the changes around my data, changing what was necessary and leaving what it was not concerned with. As a result I had very little to do to bring my lappy back to full operational capability. I had to reinstall Flash and reload my Medibuntu drivers and codecs and that was that. The speed of the thing is blinding. From login screen to fully loaded desktop a mere 2 -6 seconds. From On button to loaded desktop around 15 - 20 seconds. Its absolutely brilliant.
My greatest fear was the fact that I would need to go through the whole process of setting up FlexBuilder Eclipse for my 64 bit OS - totally unfounded - my setup was intact. This is the Release Candidate and I know that there will be a series of upgrades to smooth out the kinks but I am a very happy camper with this new offering - I honestly do not know how they keep doing it. My respect and thanks to Mark Shuttleworth and the Cannonical team. You are all princes amongst men. I now look forward to the full release and it s upgrades which I presume will make the final tweaks to what I believe is the finest Operating system in the world bar none.
Lucid is now truly for the masses. I know a couple of people who cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called computer people - sending emails, web access and dealing with documents is pretty much their tour de force with computers, they whizz around my Ubuntu environment with out having to ask for directions with the greatest of ease.
Try out Lucid Lynx - Ubuntu 10.04 - you will not be disappointed