I like what I’m seeing. I like it a lot. Well done, Ubuntu guys!

The changes are subtle but impressive. The dramatic improvement in boot speeds is a lot more useful than it might first sound. It’s no longer a matter of suspending to disk at the end of the day for me and my computers. Now I just shutdown and reboot. Hibernating is too time-consuming nowadays!

There can be no doubt that the Ubuntu guys have finally caught up with Windows and Mac OS X (and, after all, this was the whole point back in the beginning).

Crossing the line

However, I’d argue that Ubuntu actually crossed the finish line this time last year, when 8.04 was released. Sure, there were a few bad decisions rolled out as part of that release, including a sound subsystem that was essentially unfinished. But what you got with 8.04 was a genuine swap-in replacement for Windows or Mac OS X. It really was Linux for the ordinary human. No hype. No bullhonkey.

The new Network Manager in 8.10 brought significant functionality for mobile workers, but it’s getting harder and harder to list genuinely new features in each release. Subsequent releases have been most about polishing the diamond.

All of this leaves the Ubuntu guys with a very real problem: Where do they go next? What do you do once you’ve won the race?

It’s an interesting question, and it’s not hard for those of us who follow Linux to dream-up suggestions. Just take-up a few interesting technologies that are lying about on the open source workshop benches. The Ubuntu project is already sponsoring the porting of Google Chrome to Linux, but they could be the first distro to feature Google’s speedy new browser. That would be a significant coup. How about if they made Gnome Do a large part of the project? And what’s been holding them back from including gDesklets all this time?

I’m sure you can think of other suggestions (mention them in the comments below).