Ubuntu 8.10 Intreprid Ibex review

Earlier this month, Canonical released the latest version of their Ubuntu operating system called Ubuntu 8.10 'Intrepid Ibex'. That's the beautiful thing about Linux distros. The new version rolls out at least every 6 months instead of 4 to 5 years like Windows or Mac OS. Download or order (for free) the latest version of Ubuntu from their website here.
Version 8.10 offers a slight improvement over 8.04 (Hardy Heron) and unlike Hardy, Long Term Support (LTS) is not available for Ibex. To upgrade your old Ubuntu system to Intrepid Ibex, just download the desktop version and load the disc into the drive. A dialogue box will appear and you just click Start Package Manager to begin the upgrade. Alternatively you can do a clean install using either the desktop or alternative version CD.
Installation time on my 1.2GHZ Pentium 4 PC with 768MB RAM took approximately 45 minutes using the alternative CD. GUI-wise, Intrepid Ibex doesn't offer much difference from Hardy Heron where they still use the brown Human theme for the desktop. A lot of people objected to the wallpaper used in the beta version so I guess this new arty wallpaper is a real improvement from the previous one. Not that it matters to me much of course since I'd prefer my Mac4Lin theme better. As always, all my hardware was detected and installed automatically, graphic, sound, network. That's another thing I love about Linux. No need to search for any drivers.
One major improvement in 8.10 is the 3G support. Now you can just plug in your 3G modem or phone (if they're supported by Ubuntu) and you can connect to the Internet instantly. There's no roaming mode in this version and Ubuntu automatically set my network to DHCP. You can also choose your wireless network in the Network Connections setting.
Like Hardy Heron, mounting a different partition requires authorization which I think is totally unnecessary.
You can now mount and unmount a volume just by clicking the appropriate button on the left pane of your File Browser. And just like Hardy Heron, I still cannot move my deleted files to the trash bin, leaving me no choice but to delete them immediately. From the forums I read, they say it's a bug caused by the NTFS partition that I'm using. Nevertheless I still think people at Ubuntu should try their best to rectify this problem for security reasons. A working Trash bin is essential for any respectable operating system all right? Funny I didn't have this problem with Gutsy Gibbon though.
Playing proprietary file formats such as mp3s, wmv, quicktime and DVDs still require downloading some codecs. Among the first thing I did after installing Intrepid Ibex is to add the Medibuntu repository and download the libdvdcss2 and w32codecs codecs.
Mozilla's Firefox is still their default browser with the latest 3.03 version installed. Adobe Flash plug-in is still missing from the browser and you need to install it manually because all 3 of the plug-ins showed in the photo just didn't work. Enter this line below in your terminal to install the flash plug-in.

sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree

For productivity suite, Open Office.org version 2.4.1 is installed by default although you can always manually upgrade to the 3.0 beta version. I find that this version loads a lot faster than its predecessor too.
Another new feature for Intrepid Ibex is you can view multimedia contents like streaming audio/video and podcast from selected providers like the BBC and YouTube. I didn't get to watch any of them because they took forever to load on my snail speed Maxis wireless narrowband.
I don't know what happened to the encrypted private folder that I choose to set up during installation because I just can't find them anywhere. Except for the 3G connectivity, overall I think Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex is not much different from 8.04. And if you're happy with your current version, I don't see there's any reason for you to upgrade to 8.10. The NTFS-trash bug is still there and the GUI and theme is pretty much the same. All my applications worked perfectly though and my PC hasn't freeze or hang even once since I upgraded to 8.10 three days ago. Well if you count out Crossover Chromium that crashes every time I run it. Overall, I think Intrepid Ibex is a decent improvement from Hardy Heron. I do hope Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunting Jackalope would be much better.

Update

I did found a solution for the cannot move file to trash NTFS bug but it only works for Inteprid Ibex.
In your Menu bar go to Places > Computer and right click on your NTFS drive. Select Properties and then click Drive. In the Mount Options box enter UID=1000 and then close. Unmount and re-mount your NTFS drive or if that didn't work, restart your computer. It worked like a charm for me but be warned that this won't work on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron. I screwed up my NTFS partition after trying that and I was forced to reinstall Ubuntu at home. Good luck.