I recently upgraded to the latest version of Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal from Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.
It was pretty easy to upgrade to Ubuntu. I used the Ubuntu Upgrade Manager, and change the settings to upgrade to “All versions of Ubuntu” instead of Long Term Release/LTS versions. All I had to do is agree to upgrade to Ubuntu, and wait for Ubuntu to download, and install the updates, and then I restarted my computer, and Ubuntu 12.10 was installed.
If you do not have a lot of free space on your computer, I recommend emptying your web browsers history, and moving your personal files to another hard drive, or to an external hard drive. You can also uninstall programs in Ubuntu which you no longer use. You can use the Ubuntu Software Center to uninstall programs.
Ubuntu 12.10 is similar to Ubuntu 12.04. I like the file search in the launcher lense in Ubuntu 12.10, and that it now displays images in the file search.
Ubuntu 12.10 now lets you pin web apps like Gmail, YouTube, Spotify, Ubuntu One, Amazon, and Yahoo mail to the launcher for quick access from the desktop.
The performance of Ubuntu 12.10 even on an older 1.86 GHz Dual Core CPU with 1GB of RAM, and onboard Intel graphics is pretty fast compared to other operating systems which I tried on the PC like Windows Vista, and 7. Although, Ubuntu 12.10 seems slightly slower then 12.04, but it is not really noticeable. I recommend Lubuntu which uses the LXDE lightweight desktop environment which uses less RAM, and CPU resources then Ubuntu.
One of the biggest improvements in Ubuntu 12.10 for me is the Ubuntu Software updater since once I launch it, it automatically checks for new updates for Ubuntu and software installed on Ubuntu.
The Launcher sidebar on the right also seems nicer then before since it is a grayish color with transparency.
Ubuntu also makes changing the background image and desktop theme easy in the System settings.
I’m pretty happy with Ubuntu 12.10, and its performance on my older computer.