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 .

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 mostly about polishing the diamond.