Sentana.Net – Journal

Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope – My First Impression April 27, 2009

The latest Ubuntu version 9.04 code name Jaunty Jackalope (a very peculiar name, I might add) has just been released last week on April 23 ’09. This release comes with some new features as stated in Ubuntu.com, so as with many other Linux enthusiasts, I download the ISO for desktop live CD, and install this version.

New Icon
First of all, the first difference that I notice is the CD icon logo. It has changed from the standard Ubuntu logo.

Wubi Installation
I decided rather than upgrading my previously running Intrepid Ibex to Jaunty Jackalope, I just simply reinstall the entire thing using Wubi like last time. Here are the steps of installing Jaunty using Wubi (still simple as before):

1. Wubi pop-up window to Install or Browse the CD

2. Some configuration parameters to set for the installation

3. Extracting the installation files in progress

4. It takes some time (but less that 10 min in my case)

5. After completion, it asked me to reboot the system

Login screen
Once the system is rebooted, it shows the login screen (which I can’t take a screen capture of). The new background look is much more polished than the usual. You can see the boot login screen from here.

Desktop
The desktop background is back to a dark brown motif instead of the coffee stain mark or other African theme from the previous release of Ubuntu. I like this one better, looks very clean and neat.

BTW, there’s also a new Dust theme that some of the users might find it better to look at than the standard Ubuntu Human theme.

Restricted Drivers
The first thing Jaunty did was to inform me that I may need restricted driver for my NVidia graphics adapter. There it shows up that there are two versions that are available for me to Activate, so I activated the recommended version.

After downloading the update & installation, it asked me to reboot the system.

Computer Janitor
Jaunty Jackalope comes with a new standard program called “Computer Janitor”. The main purpose of this program is to remove any third party software that are not in the repositories. Well, I’m not sure whether this is a good move from Canonical, but limiting what users can install seems to be rather constricting. I wish this will be flexible enough for people to install their own software without “Computer Janitor” treats them as trash.

The other standard things seems to be working well (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc.). However, I found three components that are different from my earlier expectations:

1. Battery Life
Comparing between Vista and Jaunty, somehow Vista manage to get much longer battery life in my T61 than Jaunty. I sure hope that there’s a tweak somewhere in Jaunty that can lengthen the battery life.

Update 1 (04/29/09): There are some tips on how to extend the battery life in Ubuntu. The link is here.

2. Plugin Finders in Firefox
When browsing my own website, I was informed by Firefox that I am missing a plugin, and I let Firefox install it for me.


However, when I click Next, the system showed an error pop-up as follows:

And after clicking Close, it tells me that the plugin was successfully installed.

I know for sure that the installation failed, since the time was so fast to download (I know my bandwidth speed was not that fast). So I try to install the plugin manually.


Only after installing it manually, the adobe flash plugin was correctly installed.

I hope Canonical can take a good look at this issue and fix it right away. In the mean time, as long as I can install the plugins manually, I can tolerate the mishap.

3. Software Update
I just downloaded Jaunty on April 24 Indonesia time, which is only about half day after the public release of Jaunty by Canonical. Then I want to enable Universe/Multiverse repositories from the Software Sources, and to my surprise, they are already been turned on automatically.

That was a good surprise, actually. Then I updated my Software Source, and to my surprise (again), it shows that I already have updates available as the picture indicates.

This can either be a quick response by Canonical to update the repositories to keep the system updated, or that Jaunty is already outdated. I do hope it’s because Linux world is changing at a rapid speed that even a one-day old system is already outdated.

That’s pretty much my first impression of Jaunty, and I will update any more findings that I come to face with Jaunty as an update to this blog article.