After reading that the next version of Ubuntu had been released and finding the page that detailed how to upgrade using the graphical update manager I decided to try it. Once more my faith in Ubuntu has been affirmed. It took just under 2 hours to downlaod the 1172 files it needed, then effortlessly upgraded my system and rebooted into a shiny new Gnome 2.14 desktop. All of my settings were migrated – even for apps that it uninstalled as not supported (xchat being the first one I found).

Latest version of Firefox and Thunderbird are appreciated. As I found with FreeBSD the boot time is quicker with the latest Gnome, though the warning about the .dmrc file remains at startup (even after checking all the items it says might be wrong), but otherwise the restart was as smooth as I could have wished for.

No doubt there will be some rough edges, but so far none has been apparent. This is certainly a candidate for the smoothest os upgrade I’ve ever done. Anyone who believes that Linux desktops aren’t coming of age really needs to take a look at Ubuntu Dapper.