I am leaning more towards Ubuntu these days - have been using it regularly over the last 3-4 months. I was prompted for an upgrade to 9.10 yesterday night (it was officially released in the last week of Oct). And I gladly took it. Here is a link to 9.10 release notes.
Success of an operating system is majorly dependent on its usability, features and the interface. And Ubuntu is fast catching up on features and interface. 'Usability' is a tricky though. Device support or an applications' compatibility is proportional to the popularity of an operating system. Software companies are generally unwilling to spend time and money for R&D on their software's compatibility on less popular operating systems. And as long as this happens, these companies' software or related apps remain incompatible on that less popular operating system. This is like a circular reference and a major hurdle for Ubuntu. Workarounds exist for sure, but they reduce the usability. Case in point is Apple's iTunes. It is only supported on Mac and Windows OS. One can get iTunes to work in Ubuntu through WINE (WINdows Emulator), but those extra steps hit the usability of Ubuntu real hard.
But I am confident that more and more companies will continue to confide in Ubuntu or Linux in general as this OS is less cumbersome, robust and user-friendly. And 9.10 is a step in the right direction. It scores high on the user-interface part. It is not instantly distinguishable from Mac OS. Menu bar on the top of the screen and look and feel of the OS is almost the same. But Mac is more shiny and visually attractive. Polished is an apt word for the Mac OS. The log-off/shut-down button has changed significantly in both appearance and functionality. It now has many advanced options (including hibernate). You can also directly control your IM status from this function/button. Appearance of other logos like wireless signal strength, battery power have changed and make the overall appearance of the desktop look very slick.
There were around 200 packages that were disabled from 9.04 and around 400 odd new packages. Most of the apps I had continued into 9.10. A comprehensive list of apps is in the release notes. I still reiterate that usability remains to be the only hurdle for Ubuntu (or for that matter any variant of Linux). Once software corporations start opening up to Linux (obviously Microsoft and Apple will be stay away from producing Linux-friendly products - atleast till Linux becomes super-popular), the real evolution will begin.
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