Last week I upgraded a desktop PC from Ubuntu 9.04 to 9.10.

The process was reasonably smooth and required user input only a few times through the upgrade.

There was an issue with networking that required attention after the upgrade. This desktop had been using WICD for network settings and the upgrade removed WICD and re installed Gnome network manager which added dhcp settings to the static ip settings in /etc/network/interfaces. As soon as this additional entry was commented out everything worked.

Yesterday I upgraded a notebook from Ubuntu 9.04 to 9.10. The network manager problem did not happen with this upgrade and all that needed to be done after the upgrade was to re-enable update the medibutu repositories.

The biggest improvement I have noticed to date is the improvement in sound. Possibly my Subsystem Mitac Device 8253 was not properly supported in 9.04 because the sound quality was very poor no matter what sound options I selected. Also with 9.04 it was not possible to enable sound in virtualbox running XP Pro and still have reliable sound in Ubuntu.

Now with 9.10 the sound is way better, it can be used in the virtual machine and the host simultaneously and now there is adequate volume. Previously there was not enough volume level even with the volume set at the highest setting.

Although I have not timed the boot-up time it does feel as if 9.10 is taking a little longer to boot than 9.04 took to boot.

The menus have been changed around a little and everything is still where you would expect.

The Ubuntu Software Center is different for those who use this instead of the synaptic package manager to add and remove programs.