So much for the pre Christmas profits for computer makers.
Dappers coming in June, if you want the final, supported for three year, LSB compatible version. The current release is already more stable than any version of Man* or Suse Ive ever used, and on par with Fedora. A few folks, like yourself, have had some minor trouble with apt-upgrading, something that should be fixed by final. A from CD install should go off w/o a hitch.
This is the first time Ubuntu is going to push hard for corporate adoption and support, so 2 months is nothing for the final release. Again, for hobbyists, its cooked enough already. Ive updated it with the little applet ten times or so, and nothings gone wrong.
BTW, I dont see a huge jump to Vista. XP SP2 is a decent enough OS for most folks, and I doubt people that bought computers in the last couple of years are gonna either spring for a uber video card, or a brand new box just to get a few pointless interface effects. I might be proven wrong of course.
XP was a pretty big improvement over 98, are the features in Vista going to be worth it?
Of course most people getting Vista will be doing so via OEM installs. So the post Christmas release will slow down adoption, probably until the next holiday shopping season.