The month of April has two significant events for me every year, tax day and a new Ubuntu release. The new release, version 9.04, is codenamed Jaunty Jackalope and the Release Candidate for it is now available. The Release Candidate is for all intents and purposes the final release, with a small chance that it will be changed to fix some bugs. Jaunty Jackalope will feature the GNOME 2.26 desktop environment and the 2.6.28 Linux kernel. The new kernel contains a version of the new Ext4 file system which is finally stable, but due to glitches will not be enabled by default. I haven't upgraded yet, but it certainly sounds like I should. You can download the new version here.