Concerning first impressions, perhaps the team would like to focus on installations that work properly. Releases 7.10, 8.04, and 8.10 have increasingly become more painful to install and fewer things worked correctly for me once installed.

The desktop image hardly matters if you can't get there to see it.

Yeaaa , we the ubuntu lovers all are watching , what would be the next.. Since ubuntu , its changed my whole life .. This OS made me to explore, eager in getting outputs , all had made my life colourful.. Thanks Mark .... And for the guy who shared this "heartthrob" just couple of minutes before

yep...another ubuntu...they should concentrate on something more needed than eyecandy....really do not understund the ubuntu politics....

Ubuntu tries to bring the none "geek" people to Linux work. People how loves their desktop be polish right away, Those people don't like using the command line, or spending much time looking on "how-tos" on the web. Microsoft brought "windows 7", and now Ubuntu try their best to make an interface as nice and usable and clean as windows 7, so all the none geek people would try Linux and maybe stay with it. Maybe even 9.10 version would not be as polish as Windows 7, but that's a progress that takes some time. Intuitive and a clean desktop is one of the greatest advantages of windows over Linux right know, we still have to do many configurations by using a command line and that's must be a choice not the only way to go. when all the GUI stuff would be written and be intuitive linux would be much more popular OS. Go Ubuntu!

I believe that 2010 will be the year of UBUNTU

"Intuitive and a clean desktop is one of the greatest advantages of windows over Linux right know," My Ubuntu installation has one thing on the desktop, (a mounted drive), and only volume and network tasks running on the bar. Windows starts dozens of processes, many of them on the desktop that users have to close during each boot. You, sir, got your comment backwards. This is an advantage of Linux, not Windows. Since 8.04, Ubuntu has been an easier install than Windows for myself and most people I know. People also need to remember that Ubuntu is first and foremost based on Unix, not Winblows. Comparing them is irresponsible. You also need to remember that they are releasing every 6 months, not every few years like the Windows OS and their new Service Pack that costs money (err... windows 7?)

I'm excited to see how 9.10 rolls out, especially with ext4. This is definitely a big step towards evolving the OS even further.

I have to agree, 8.04 and 8.10 were a little painful compared to Feisty and Gutsy. But I've been fooling with the 9.04 alphas, and really like what I'm seeing. Much much faster overall. Between 9.04 and Win7, my system is going to have a joygasm this year. 9.10 is just going to be icing on the cake.

I think ubuntu still needs a lot of improvement in order to take on windows or mac. First , ubuntu desktop , wallpapers , themes badly cry for improvements in terms of looks . The fonts used in ubuntu desktops and the graphics are far from windows . hardware detection is not that good : it could not detect my nikon s210 digi cam .a disappointment ! third party softwares are not up to the mark : without an net-update you can not even play a lot of audio - video formats ...a lot of very popular softwares neither run on ubuntu nor have any alternative ...the power of exploiting the high functionality of new cpu-s is very poor...sound not good enough ...and so on.

Windows ?
Ubuntu has changed my life from the frustration of Windows.

Ubuntu a better life for freedom