Today, being October 22 2009, is the day Windows 7 is officially available as a wide release in the U.S. This means it should be available on the shelves at your nearest electronics retailer.

As many have been saying right along, Win 7 is a good product. It runs on even the most minimal of hardware (even a netbook,) has huge support for tons of different peripherals (if your printer didn’t work in Vista, it will probably work in 7,) and a whole host of other features.

The bundled disc comes with both 32 and 64-bit editions. And if you’re wondering which of the versions to buy, the only one needed is Home Premium. The rest do not have any significant features most would need from my perspective. This is why the upgrade edition I bought was Home Premium and not Ultimate.

Also bear in mind Windows 7 is available at popular online retailers such as NewEgg (who is including free shipping by the way.)

For you nervous nellie’s out there who say, "I’ll wait until the first service pack before I buy," that’s a waste of your time. All of us, including myself, who used Windows 7 RC had already been using this OS for several months. It works. It has had an overwhelmingly positive response. I personally use it as my primary operating system on both my custom PC tower and netbook.

You’re in good shape with 7. I say that with utmost confidence.

Need your Linux fix? Ubuntu’s new version 9.04 is available today and with it some genuinely significant updates, such as:

GNOME 2.26

The biggest improvement (for me) is that GNOME does better multi-monitor setup now with this version. Multi-monitor troubles with a Linux GUI have been a longstanding complaint of mine, and while Ubuntu 8 was a huge improvement over 7 for dual-or-more monitor setups, Ubuntu 9 with GNOME 2.26 should (hopefully) finally nail this so it’s done right the first time.

Linux kernel 2.6.28

This is obviously important because the OS runs on top of this. The Linux kernel has come a long, long way since 1991. You thought the Linux kernel was older? Not really. UNIX is (very) old, yes, but not Linux.

And yes I know the latest kernel is technically 2.6.29.1 at the time of this writing, but 2.6.28 is still a step up for Ubuntu.

Optional ext4 filesystem

This is not required to use as ext3 will still work fine, but this is what Linux distros are heading towards.

Ext4 will support volumes up to 1 exabyte and individual files up to 16 terabytes.

For those that say, "There’s no way I’ll ever have volumes or files that big", remember when we all thought 1GB was huge? Consumer grade exabyte drives will happen; it’s only a matter of time and probably not that far away.

Linux is ready for (what is currently considered to be) disgustingly huge volume and file sizes now with ext4. Best to get familiar with it now if you have the chance.

You can check out more of what’s available in 9.04 here. Lots of good stuff.

I’ll be checking it out personally once the official release is available later today.