The Intrepid Ibex (alpha 3) cd image has been released today. Here a review of its status.

Grub Splash screen

There is a regression. The bars are everywhere on the screen.

Resolution

If change the resolution probably, the settings daemon will crash.

Audio

In the Ubuntu Hardware test it works, but it doesn't work for real (Polypaudio?). Anyway if you choose ALSA instead of autodetect it works.

Nautilus

It has tab for real and you can open a new one with CTRL+T.

The devices are mounted twice.

Image viewer

It has a plugin system ad some plugins, but even a simple action like "reload image" doesn't work.

Bluetooth

It receive files from anybody by default, without any user interaction. Unfortunatly it can't send files for an unknown reason (probably missing pairing).

Internet

network-admin is not installed by default, so you have to use "sudo ifconfig eth0 ..."
Still "sudo pppoeconfig" but an improved Network Manager is planned

Third party and proprietary support

Flash plugin

Firefox inform you that Flash plugin is missing, if you decide to install it the needed repository is enabled and the installation proceed without any problem.

Nvidia driver

There is a regression. The driver 71xx is suggested(instead of 96xx) and the 96xx doesn't work.
"sudo displayconfig-gtk" is still your friend

Conclusion

It seems cronic, some old issues that have been fixed in the past (nvidia, splash,..) seems to break periodically. This is not a good thing, anyway you can test the status of Intrepid Ibex at any stage and report the bugs. If you don't need any new feature stay with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS "Hardy Heron" as much as possible. The 8.04 LTS will still be updated even when 8.10 will be released.