The latest release of Ubuntu (10.04 a.k.a. Lucid Lynx) continues to improve the user experience... unless you have a problem booting it.

The first CD I burned with the latest Ubuntu image had a problem (i.e. burn failure) but I figured I'd try to see how far I could get booting it in Live CD mode since I just wanted to get a quick look at the UI changes. As it turned out, it did not get very far at all. After quickly displaying the bootloader screen, I got stuck in the next screen. Hmm, what screen is it exactly? It's a mostly blank screen (black with a red tint displaying a couple of strange icons at the bottom) which is part of the boot up process and can only be described as cryptic:

Had I not known the disc was bad, this graphic would have been of no help at all in troubleshooting the problem. I can only imagine what someone generally new to Ubuntu and/or Linux would think if they got stuck on that screen. I've been using Ubuntu for a while and can't say that I've ever really noticed that screen before, but I sure noticed it this time in terms of how unhelpful it is.