Been playing with the feisty fawn all evening and afternoon, and I like it. Some things I’ve noticed:

• RealPlayer is gone from the software repositories. Who is to blame? I have RMVBs, you know!
• Beryl is now built-in, installed, and waiting to be activated via System > Preferences > Desktop Effects. It really feels like the Ubuntu devs have optimised it. It feels snappier, and the default effects are better than anything I choose when I installed it on the eft.
• Rhythmbox looks a lot cooler, has support for Last.fm (not just scrobbling, but playback too), Magnatune (like eMusic, but lets you decide how much you want to pay for an album), and Jamendo (free Creative Commons music; you donate to artists you like). What is still lacking is the ability to manually add album art to tracks.
• Skype is still not included in the software repositories.
• The fawn automatically supports my wireless card, and can join WEP networks, but not WPA networks. I need a third-party package for that.
• Gaim looks more polished; it’s slowly catching up with Adium, with respect to looks. Still lacks that OS-wide integration Adium touts (Address Book, Currently Playing Track et al).
• Ekiga: *sigh* I’m not even going to launch it. People use Skype. A lot of non-tech-savvy people, and almost everyone I know. Stop trying to force them onto a VOIP application that currently only runs on Linux! At least push Gizmo or something, if you’re not fans of Skype. But I must admit, Skype sucks for not actively developing its Linux client. You’re both to blame.
• New entry in System > Administration: Restricted Drivers Manager. Turns out, all my drivers are free and open source, baby! How pure am I? As pure as a person who doesn’t really care if his drivers are restricted, proprietary, open source, or on Ecstasy (the name of an awesome 1200 Mics song, by the way). They need to work.

A bit of good news: Remember how Ubuntu repeatedly rejected my ShipIt requests? Well, I think they were holding off till the fawn’s birth, because they have accepted my request for 3 Feisty Fawn Live CDs.

A bit of bad news (for Apple): Leopard is going to be shipping around the same time as the next release of Ubuntu, Gusty Gibbon. If it, by any chance, happens to take after Vista and get delayed again, it’s quite likely that Ubuntu, at the rate it’s going, will overtake OS X and secure its position as the coolest, most usable operating system on the market. I’ll still be using OS X, thank you very much, but I’m afraid many people might not. Dozens are already dropping it for Ubuntu. I do hope, though, that the leopard makes it out of its cage in time, and mauls the gibbon.

Update: Ubuntu’s splash screen still doesn’t work with any of the computers I’ve installed it on. I have to manually disable it via /boot/grub/menu.lst.

What’s amazing is how seamless installing codecs is. Way better than OS X. If you play a file that you don’t have the codec for, it asks you if you want to install it, and installs it. That simple. Did so when I opened an AAC.