Ubuntu 9.04 — I'm feeling pretty good about it

I resisted upgrading from Ubuntu 8.04 LTS — the project's "stable," long-term-support release — because everything worked pretty well, my hardware was fairly well-recognized, there were no showstopping bugs ... and that's a good thing.

After running the LTS for a year (I still have it on another laptop), I decided to undergo the pain of an in-place upgrade through 8.10 and to 9.04. My intention was to be ready for a semi-immediate upgrade to Ubuntu 9.10 when it is released later this month.

But now that I'm running 9.10 and everything is working even better than with 8.04, I'm facing the same dilemma — and again, better a dilemma of this sort than the other.

Why is 9.04 so good on my particular hardware? I'm running a 2002-era Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 laptop (1.3 GHz Celeron, 1 GB PC133 RAM, 20 GB hard drive) and a Cnet CWD-854 USB WiFi adapter.

Here's a rundown of Ubuntu 9.04 compared to 8.04 on my rig:

Better in 9.04

Boots faster
NetworkManager (after config-file tweak) MUCH MUCH better
Sound better (PulseAudio has improved)
Flash better (v. 10 way better than v. 9)
CNet CWD-854 USB WiFi adapter hasn't killed laptop once (major improvement)

The same in 9.04
Toshiba laptop suspends but won't resume
Intel video (I thought it would be worse, but at this point in the release cycle, it's OK)

Worse in 9.04
New method of notifying users of updates via minimized window instead of update icon is puzzling; not a deal-breaker, just a head-scratcher