I didn’t have any time to make contributions to this Ubuntu release. Oh well, maybe next time. There have been some excellent improvements over 5.04, and I’ll just give a preview of what I know so far.
I ran the Ubuntu 5.10 Preview Release Live CD (which is a few weeks old) on my Sager 3760, and I almost cried at the fact that all of my hardware was recognized. My volume keys worked. My screen brightness keys worked. This being GNOME, I had to check out all the apps. Now included in Ubuntu: Gnome 2.12, Linux 2.6.12, Smeg (simple menu editor) and Bluetooth support. I’m not a GNOME fan, but I was very impressed. I hope that the default artwork is updated before the final release, because the initial desktop still looked exactly like a Hoary installation.
Next, I created a Qemu setup within Windows XP to which I installed Kubuntu 5.10 Daily Build 20050927, which was just snapped yesterday. Yay! Aside from KDE 3.4.2 (darn, wish 3.5 had made it in), it now includes amaroK 1.3.2, Kaffeine 0.7, and Gstreamer engines by default for both of those players. The artwork has had a makeover, with a matching bootsplash, KDM login screen, KSplash, and background. I do believe the default icon size for the KMenu is now 22 rather than 16, which makes it much more readable.
I’ll have more on this when I upgrade. I’m waiting till the final release.
Oh, and be ready for a sneak preview of what I’ve been cooking in Photoshop: a redesign of packages.ubuntu.com (or it could serve as a separate site), and it looks like Download.com infected with the Ubuntu Human theme. I got the idea from Linspire having their silly CNR store. Ubuntu/Debian has a repository of thousands of programs, so I wanted to somehow figure out how to advertise them better. Coming soon!