Review: Ubuntu 8.04, a definite show stopper!

As usual, as May approached, I went to the ubuntu portal to get my copy of new Hardy Heron, for the past 4 releases, this has been the modus operandi. I get my copy, try it out, explore the feature, be happy for some days, but it used to fade out soon, for some reason or so. Butby the time 7.10 released, I had got my laptop, and Ubuntu refused to run on it. So I was away from the tux for quite a few months. Even when I got my Hardy Heron CD, i did'nt give much hope of running it in my laptop. In fact the CD pouch remained unopened for over a week, until I thought of trying it on my desktop.
First of all, I have an AMD desktop, with Nvidia board, so I knew, there are possibilities of driver issues, but I was proved wrong, and I got my Ubuntu going in 20 minutes. Nothing really noticeable from the previous versions. The same old brown theme, the drum sound everything the same. But again, I began to notice subtle but definite makeovers. First of all, my update manager "suggested" if I would want to use the restricted NVidia graphics drivers so that I can get the maximum out of my card. I gleefully accepted the request, and by the time I also noticed, my bluetooth dongle was infact working perfect, Ubuntu had installed required drivers for it. I paired up my PDA to it and downloaded some songs.
Now, I got excited, I went on to install all the updates, and began setting the OS up. The Compiz was already active with the Nvidia Driver in place, all the Aero effects and more was in the offering. Suddenly I remembered, during installation, it had even ripped the users and their documents & setting from the Windows XP, that was really a handy option, now I had all my documents ready in the Linux desktop.
In the meantime I also tried the same installation in my laptop, that too running on an AMD/Nvidia combo. No problems at all, everything went smooth, and while I was downloading updates I noticed, the internet is pretty fast, compared to windows. All the drivers also got into place automatically, bluetooth, ethernet, wifi, everything got detected, even my Webcam started rolling, once I installed cheese (I had issues with it on my Windows ).
Now, I went through the packages, somehow I got a feeling that in this release, the Ubuntu people have gone soft on the restricted drivers, it was easily locatable and installable, right from my graphics card driver to installing mp3 codecs,, all done in the background. When I opened youtube, I was asked whether I want to install flash (yeah, that is also restricted software), and went ahead to install flash 9.0. The same when I installed my favourite amarok, I could get mp3 songs songs rightaway. Another thing I noticed was, it was easier to locate installed software from the main menu itself, even if it is a gnome package or KDE package. And the number of packages and support has increased many folds. I could access my NTFS drives in read/write mode, get windows TTF fonts installed, burn DVDs etc. I could not login to my G.ho.st Virtual PC though, I am not sure why. The login kept on failing.
For the first time I felt Ubuntu has outshined Windows (Vista). The plenty availability of software packages, crash free environment, and more importantly very userfriendly and neat interface, now anyone can shift to Ubuntu from Windows with ease. It really is worth a try. I have not logged onto my windows for the past one week. And I send files from my desktop to laptop via bluetooth.
On the negatives, Canonical is not anymore sending you 50 CDs just as you request, so that you can have Ubuntu's hung above your car's rearview mirror. And every two days, I get an updated kernel worth 50 MB, so my internet is put to full use.

If you people want me to, I will blog more about this Hardy Heron release, but only if you would ask me to, and tell me what you want to know, so start sending me your opinions and comments.
-codevalley