Ubuntu development is so gradual these days that there’s almost no point getting too excited about new versions. Its being a mature Linux distribution means that updates aren’t that much of an upheaval and I must admit to liking it than way. Taking a look at the first alpha release of Ubuntu 9.04, otherwise known as “Jaunty Jackalope”, it seems that there isn’t a change to that gradual, some may call it glacial, approach. The biggest change that I noted was the addition of an encrypted private area to your home user area. In the times in which we live, I can certainly see that coming in useful though it may not set pulses racing in some quarters. OpenOffice is still at 2.4 and things don’t appear very different on the surface at all. Of course, things like kernel changes and such like could be going on under the bonnet without many of us noticing it.Saying that, it played well with VirtualBox and I seem to remember virtual machine trouble with early builds of 8.10 so that can be taken as a plus point. I suppose that it is a case of wait and see before there is anything more obviously defining about 9.04. Anyway, they’ve got until April next year…