Intrepid Ibex Alpha 6

I decided to take the plunge and upgraded my regular laptop to Intrepid's Alpha 6 release. I must say I am not in the least disappointed, nor do I have any regrets so far. Apart from a few quirks and the odd random crash (usually in some obscure service that doesn't directly affect my work), it has been a pleasure to work with.

The upgrade was smooth and neat. Since I had already customized my session with Hardy, there was no noticeable difference on the desktop after the upgrade - all my Compiz, Emerald and other settings had been retained. Most packages had been cleanly upgraded, too. VirtualBox gave me a little trouble, with the kernel module refusing to build. However, a day later all was well - apparently one of the packages had not been updated from the repos.

The suspend and hibernate work pretty well out of the box. I use a Dell Vostro 1500 with an Nvidia 8400M GS card (with the -177 driver). I was pleasantly surprised to see that the sleep function worked without a hitch on the first attempt when I closed the lid - with absolutely no tweaking of any configuration anywhere. Ditto for the hibernate function.

The other thing I really liked in this version is the network manager applet. Switching between office and home networks has been an issue for me (I generally don't use DHCP). I had a couple of scripts on Hardy and earlier to help me switch quickly, but it was still an exercise. Intrepid has made this much easier, and the switchover is really fast.

While there was some talk on the forums about improved startup speed, I must say I can't see all that much difference from earlier versions. The shutdown, though, certainly seems faster.

Overall, Intrepid is looking good. If Alpha 6 is this usable, I'm sure the final release should be a hit with most users.