I installed the new Ubuntu 8.10 on friday. The thing is I have no idea what the differences with the previous version are. So let’s take a look at the release notes and changelogs.

According to the changelog this new version of Ubuntu uses the new Gnome 2.24. The release notes of Gnome explain some of the new features.

The version of Gimp is also updated to 2.6. This new version of Gimp has changed a whole lot. Release notes are here.

I changed my font rendering to use Subpixel smoothing. I’m not sure. I think I like it. The text on my screen looks a lot better now. It’s pretty.

Another big change is the user switcher. The user switcher is combined with the shutdown button and your IM status. You can set your IM status with the user switcher applet.

A lot of applications have been updated to new versions. Perl is now version v5.10.0, which is the newest version. This version of perl has a lot of nice new features, including named captures, a switch statement, state variables, defined-or operator and smart matching.

I had no problems with this update, except for mailman. That package was only installed because I wanted to test it out for my production server. But it seems the installation files have a problem because I did not have any lists created, yet. This was not a big problem; I only had to run sudo aptitude dist-upgrade.

All in all a nice and simple upgrade from 8.04 to 8.10, without any huge problems.