Ubuntu’s latest release, version 8.10, named the “Intrepid Ibex”, is coming—tomorrow. This is wonderful, because there are a great number of improvements, particularly in the 64-bit version. There is one problem lingering with Pidgin sometimes spinning a CPU and crashing, and PulseAudio is still a bit finicky, but I am very happy with this coming release.

So, what to do after installing it? Here’s a few things:

1. Install ubuntu-restricted-extras. This will give you MP3, Flash, and Java support.
2. Install Banshee. It’s a hell of a media player, and very enjoyable to use.
3. Optionally upgrade to OpenOffice 3 using the Intrepid PPA. However, the major feature that everyone will likely want from OpenOffice 3 is already included in Intrepid’s OpenOffice 2.4—Office 2007 file support (read-only).
4. If you are able to use compiz, install the Emerald window decorator. It’s lovely.
5. Not sure if you could do this pre-Intrepid, but you can install the smbfs package and say (as a regular user) mount.cifs //SERVER/SHARENAME /path/to/dir -o user=USER to mount a Samba or Windows share in your home directory. If you don’t need a password, be sure to make -o user=USER into -o user=USER,guest

which will drop the request for a password by mount.cifs. You can also put such filesystems in the global filesystem mounting database, /etc/fstab.

Also, if you have the desire to see your fonts get really good looking, add the following to ~/.fonts.conf:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
  <!-- Set the DPI -->
  <match target="pattern">
    <edit name="dpi" mode="assign">
      <double>89</double>
    </edit>
  </match>

  <match target="font">
    <edit name="autohint" mode="assign">
      <bool>true</bool>
    </edit>
  </match>

  <!-- Configure default monospace font. -->
  <alias>
    <family>monospace</family>
    <prefer>
      <family>Monaco</family>
      <family>Courier New</family>
    </prefer>
  </alias>
</fontconfig>

This will add use of the auto-hinter so that you can have fonts that look better. You can tweak the file in other ways, too, telling the font system to not antialias monospace fonts, for example.

Some notable things that didn’t make it into Intrepid: OOo 3, stable ext4, and Mono 2.0. You can get all of these by installing them from PPAs, or directly (ext4 comes with the 2.6.28-rcX kernels, which you can use by building from upstream if you do not depend on any Ubuntu-provided drivers, and if you use NVIDIA, I have a post here that talks about how to re-enable the NVIDIA driver for 2.6.28 series kernels. Mono 2.0 is available in a PPA. If you want to play with MonoDevelop SVN, you’ll need to have Mono 2.0 installed somehow. You can do so in your home directory (without affecting your system) by installing the build-dependencies and then using a script that I wrote and put up here.

I am really happy with GNOME in this release, too. It’s a great release, though I am looking forward to what Jaunty has in store for us, really. I really am a neophyte when it comes to software, and I like to live on the bleeding edge. I don’t know why, but I guess that’s just the way that I am… Maybe someday I’ll stop doing that. For now, though, I like watching the development of things pretty close to real-time.