Why Dell Should Upgrade Past Ubuntu 8.04 LTS
Another Intel graphics regression in Ubuntu 9.04 due to all of the invasive work that has been taking place. Some improvements will already be found in the xf86-video-intel 2.7.0 driver, but that will not be shipping in Ubuntu 9.04.
Turning from the X Render back-end to the OpenGL back-end with QGears2, Ubuntu 9.04 sped ahead. Ubuntu 9.04 was over 80% faster than the 8.04.2 and 8.10 builds.
There was a slight regression with the newer Intel graphics stack with OpenGL image scaling, but when it is already running past 200 FPS, this will likely go unnoticed to the end-user.