Ubuntu 9.04 code named Jaunty Jackalope has made its debut as a release candidate. This is a pre-release of Ubuntu which is almost ready for general use. On first glance, this release of Ubuntu looks very promising.
Ubuntu 9.04 includes the latest version of GNOME (2.26) desktop environment, the latest Xorg (1.6) server, Ext4 file system support (Though Ext3 is still the default file system used unless you choose otherwise at the time of installation), improved handling of multiple monitors and so on.
But what really caught my fancy was a remarkable improvement in boot time. Ubuntu 9.04 boots much faster than it's predecessor Ubuntu 8.10. On my computer with 2 GB RAM, it took Ubuntu under 20 seconds to boot from GRUB menu to the GUI login screen.
You can download the release candidate of Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope from the official Ubuntu website.
