If all goes according to plan, the first alpha release for Ubuntu 9.04 (the Jaunty Jackalope) will be released tomorrow. For those of you looking forward to the release of Ubuntu 9.04, the alternative OS gurus at Phoronix have a little info for you:

The focus on Ubuntu 9.04 will be on boot performance, but perhaps not the wider performance issues at hand with Ubuntu. Late last month we delivered benchmarks of Ubuntu 7.04 through 8.10 and had found the performance to get slower with time, at least with the test system we had used. Other readers and Ubuntu users have since chimed in on our forums and elsewhere with many feeling that Ubuntu has been indeed been getting sluggish on the desktop in the more recent releases. In addition, earlier this month we had delivered comparative benchmarks of Mac OS X 10.5 and Ubuntu 8.10 and had found that the Apple operating system had the upper hand. Finally yet importantly, we have looked at the X.Org and Mesa performance with both the Intel drivers and ATI drivers going back to the Feisty Fawn.

As development efforts on the Jaunty Jackalope progresses, we will be sure to deliver Ubuntu 9.04 benchmarks on a variety of hardware to see how the desktop performance pans out in this next Ubuntu release. You can run your own Linux benchmarks as well by using the Phoronix Test Suite, our advanced open-source testing software that provides automation support, software/hardware detection, and many other features. Some of the other changes in this next Ubuntu release will also influence the performance, such as Canonical considering making the move to EXA acceleration by default in the xf86-video-ati driver.