The install procedure has received the new Ubuntu look and is the first sight of the windows icon move to the left and new dark theme that the distribution sports.

The installer now provides feedback on password strength and the option to encrypt the user's home directory in one place. If you wish to shoot for a strong password, be prepared to insert numbers, symbols and capital letters.

In this version of Ubuntu, be prepared to sit through a couple of rotations of the propaganda slideshow. During this time, the installer was busy downloading and unpacking packages — a proper wired connection is recommended to lessen the waiting time.

Logging in with GDM is one of the rare instances where the distribution goes with a lighter feel.

She's up and running and we are welcomed by Ubuntu's new purple-blobbed background.

As we chose to encrypt our home directory, we immediately had to choose a passphrase.

GNOME Terminal now comes with a purple background and white text by default.

Ubuntu Software Centre has also been updated and improved.

At one stage in the beta process, Yahoo became the default search engine, but the decision was quickly rescinded and Google is back again.

A new video editor program, PiTiVi, finds its way into the distribution. Although simple and easy to use, it does have an annoying habit of rendering videos into a black box on export. It is unknown at this point whether this was a problem with the program, the renderers, or merely this user's ignorance.

A new suite of logic games, gbrainy, is available to test your brain.

Lucid Lynx comes with GNOME 2.30. In this shot we are making use of Nautilus' extra pane feature to split the file browser's window.