The next version of the most popular GNU/linux distribution will be out by april 23. New version is called Ubuntu 9.04 and it is  codenamed Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope. Over 8 million  strong and still growing community of users is Ubuntu's biggest strength. Take a sneak peak into the new and improved features of Ubuntu 9.04.

One of the major goals of developers of Ubuntu 9.04 was the boot time decrease. According to many statistics, it has already started to showing results. ITwire has tested the new alpha releases and found out that, with every new alpha release of  Ubuntu 9.04, boot time is decreasing by a wide margin. That is great news.

The other important features include all new Gnome 2.26, which has widely improved features for applications like Evolution, Nautilus etc. Ubuntu 9.04 will be based on the latest linux kernel version 2.6.28. Other applications include Open Office.org 3.1, GIMP 2.6.5, Mozilla Firefox 3.0.6, Pidgin 2.5.4 and so on.

New notification is another major improvement. It looks so much like the one in KDE 4.2 or even better. Take a look at the screenshots.

It looks real good and goes a long way in enhancing the overall appearance.

Truly Ubuntu and GNU/Linux as such, is going places. Let us hope Ubuntu 9.04 will live up to our expectations. Let me end this with a quote from Mark Shuttleworth itself.

"The bar is set very high, and we have been given the opportunity to leap over it. It's a once-in-a-lifetime chance to shine, and we want to make sure that the very best thinking across the whole open-source ecosystem is reflected in Ubuntu, because many people will judge free software as a whole by what we do."