Just a few days ago Canonical released the new version of Ubuntu, 13.04, Raring Ringtail. The upgrade went a bit faster on the desktop than the server; the desktop has the hex-core, while the server is simply dual (still pretty robust, though). There don't seem to be any issues on the desktop, but the server had a change to the Dovecot configuration file that caused it to abort peeking at users' own mailboxes; a quick fix to the config file (adding an explicit default value, mind you) and all is well again.

For first impressions, there aren't many. I guess that speaks well of the upgrade. The upgrades always feel a little snappier, but that's not a fair measurement; I didn't do any before or after benchmarking. There's a new icon for the software updater, but that's not a big deal, either.

The LibreOffice was upgraded to v4, but I haven't had cause to open it yet. There's some improvements to Unity, too, but I'm guessing that they're fairly transparent; it might be why it feels snappier. One thing I did notice is that when I used Synergy to go from the desktop to the server display, there wasn't the usual hiccup on the server as it suddenly had mouse movement again, so that's something.

A lot of the updates seem related to management  and virtualization. I did build the beefy desktop to do more virutalization, so perhaps I'll get into it a little more...when I find some time to sit at the keyboard a little more.

For now let it suffice that the upgrade went fairly painlessly, and that except for the moments of service interruption during the upgrade and the Dovecot glitch, all is running well even now.