UBUNTU 9.04- JAUNTY JACKALOPE

This was announced quite sometime ago. But for those whose ears this hasn't reached yet, here you go. The next version of UBUNTU has been named JAUNTY JACKALOPE keeping in with the UBUNTU tradition of eccentric names. The version number is 9.04 and it comes out in April 2009. The Jackalope is a folkloric fictional animal which is crudely described as a cross between a jackrabbit and an antelope. You can read about it here. Here are some of the basic areas that the guys at Canonical are going to focus on.

FAST BOOTING :- The developers are trying to make jaunty boot lightning quick and this is probably why this version has been named jackalope as the animal is known for its speed(they say it breeds only during lightning). Fast booting is something everyone dreams of. So let's hope jaunty does that.

WEBLICATIONS :- The developers also want to bridge the divide between desktop applications and web applications. So they are going to focus a lot on "weblications."

We can expect a lot more details once the December developers conference at Silicon Valley gets over.
UBUNTU has been getting better and better with every release. So I guess jaunty jackalope is going to be another benchmark. Even if they don't do anything else, making it boot lightning quick will itself be a great development.

Geeks have already started creating mock up designs for jaunty. You can see some of them here.
here is the announcement made my Mark - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2008-September/000481.html

The alpha 1 was released on 22 november and it was not much different from Intrepid Ibex. I guess we can expect something good after a couple of more alphas. Here is the release schedule.
December 18 2008- alpha 2
January 15 2009- alpha 3
February 5 2009- alpha 4
February 26 2009-alpha 5
March 26 2009-alpha 6
April 16 2009- release candidate
April 26 2009- final release.
Here is a screenshot tour of the alpha 1.

cheers
Aravind.