I’ve been a full-time user of Ubuntu since 5.04 and have seen this user-friendly distro come a long way.
I ran the upgrade with no trouble a few days ago. I just ran it through the standard “Update Manager” utility. The whole process took around 2.5 hours on an 8mps connection (including installation). It was smooth sailing, only a few questions were asked during the whole process — mostly application-specific things. Your mileage may vary; some people have reported problems with their OS after running the upgrade utility.
My only gripe so far is that it forgot one Gnome setting. I was surprised and annoyed to note that the system beep was back and more aggressive than ever. Everything beeped. I work on a laptop in a quiet office where some people might find it rather annoying. I was ready to stab the beep. I then remembered to dig through the sound properties to turn it off. The upgrade tool forgot to remember that setting.
Okay, I have a second gripe. The new search tool, Tracker, was introduced to replace Beagle and reduce overall dependencies. A valiant effort and one I was rather excited about. Beagle runs on Mono and is an excellent piece of software, but I’d rather not have dependency on Mono — it’s less overhead if the same application could be written in C like tracker. However, I haven’t been able to get Tracker to work.
Other than that, I highly recommend Gutsy Gibbon. Ubuntu is an excellent and stable distribution for every level of computer user. I’ve deeply customized my Ubuntu installation over time and with every new release, the experience has been getting better. For power users, alternate window managers are better supported. For average users, things just got easier and more clear.
Go Ubuntu team!