After spending a couple of days backing up large amounts of data I had no idea I actually still had, Friday night was the big day for the upgrade.

The Installation

My upgrade path this time around was a bit different than previously. I’ve been doing upgrades to existing installations for the last couple of years. Hearing the good reviews for 13.04, I decided it would be a good opportunity to do a fresh install and start over without some of the junk accumulated in config files and other mysterious places.

The install was simple. I popped the DVD in my drive and went through the steps. I can’t recall how long exactly it took but everything went fine. I think the only unclear piece during the installation phase was the selection of what wireless network to use. That step doesn’t say specifically to double-click the network you want to connect to so that created a few moments of confusion. Otherwise, piece of cake, like most previous Ubuntu installations.

First Impressions

First of all, I noticed booting was definitely faster compared to my 12.10 installation. I can’t say whether that’s related to just a one release difference or the difference between multiple incremental upgrades compared to a fresh install.

Second, once I got to the desktop I saw with my own eyes what everyone else has been saying all along: Ubuntu 13.04 and Unity in particular is significantly faster than it was on my 12.10 installation. Not only is the Unity Dash faster when it comes to appearing but search results are also much faster. In 12.04 and 12.10 I had to turn down some of the graphical effects to make it usable. In 13.04, I haven’t had to do that (at least not yet). That in itself was worth the upgrade.

The third part I noticed right away was that seeing and connecting to shared network drives worked without me having to do a thing. I think that previously, I mucked up the network share piece in one way or another and it just never worked right. Considering that I keep a lot of stuff on network drives, this was welcome news.

I am now at the point of reinstalling software, copying data I really want on my computer back to the computer and in general trying to get back to the point where I was at. I’m also busy performing the 10 Things to do after installing Ubuntu 13.04. Of course, I have my own take on what apps are really needed beyond that and I’ll address that in the next post, in the next few days.

Overall, after using 13.04 less than a full day, I like what I see. It’s by far the most polished release so far. Well done to all of those that put time into developing 13.04.