Ubuntu 8.04 alias Hardy Heron has launched !

As we all know, Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) is now available. I can’t wait to install the new release as I am a huge fan of Ubuntu. I still remember my first encounter with Ubuntu a few years ago. A good friend of mine handed me a copy of Ubuntu he received in his mail. I can’t remember the version but I know it had two CDs in the case: a live and an install CD. Since then I started playing with it and never got bored. Fortunately I had a little of experience with Knoppix and Red Hat. Also now I know my way pretty well in SuSe, Fedora Core and Mandriva. However Ubuntu and SuSe, both have something special that attracts me.

From the beginning i thought: “wow, they’re doing such a great thing providing everyone free CDs”. My opinion hasn’t changed. This is truly admirable and for that and a bunch of other reasons, Ubuntu gained many fans over the world and started creating awesome communities. Unlike many other distros Ubuntu knows how to “play the game” and introduce itself on-the-fly anywhere and anytime. It’s not a secret that Ubuntu targets a lot more home users than companies, corporate entities or such. I had a great time with Fedora Core in terms of server administration and I can tell you that it is definitely the best distro out there qualified for the job. Ubuntu on the other hand knows better than any other how to fulfill a home user’s demands regardless the fact that he may run on a desktop computer or a laptop; at least that’s what I noticed.

Back to Hardy Heron. This particular version promises a lot. New features since 7.10 that just wait to be tested. In the next few lines I will try to highlight some particular new things in Ubuntu 8.04

As far as new features concerning the system core, Gnome 2.22 kicks in. This version basically has several goodies such as the latest Nautils which is a file manager that interacts with the user in a more pleasant way and displays a window like the Autoplay from Windows whenever a removable media is inserted and brings a lot of other cool spices to the mix. Google Calendar support in Evolution, an internal clock applet and many other cool features are also available and ready for you to play with.

The kernel version is now 2.6.24. Practically this is good news for laptop users because the new kernel brings the already available on 32bit architecture power saving features to 64bit laptops and desktops.

PolicyKit is a tremendous step ahead mainly because it offers you the chance of dynamically configure permissions. For example now you don’t need to run the entire application with root privileges because you can be given the root access only for specific tasks. Yet PolicyKit has been integrated with several native tools such as Network, Users and Groups, Services and Time & Date.

PulseAudio which is a sound server, is also available in this new version. I am very curious to find out if the issue of listening to online streams has been solved or yet it needs some advanced tunning. With this tool hopefully you can enhance your overall audio experience choosing from different advanced options such as adjusting volume level independently for different applications, assign the usage of different sound cards installed in your system for specific programs and many others.

Xorg 7.3 has been integrated as well. This time the ones who use their laptops for presentations and use a projector have the possibility of setting up different screen resolutions, refresh rates, rotation and other aspects for the second monitor in a dynamic mode.

As far as new software functions, I am pretty anxious to find out if they will still integrate the Firefox Beta 5 in the final version. I was hoping that they would synchronize their launch date with Firefox 3, but I guess that would have been too cool :)

This time they came up with something pretty neat. It’s called Brasero and it’s an awesome application designed to help you burn CDs/DVDs. This native application makes a good team with Nautils merging and completing it’s burning options.

Transmission is the new BitTorrent client included in Ubuntu 8.04. I never used this client so I can’t really tell you much about it. However after reading it’s feature list and after I viewed some screenshots it seemed OK. If you want test different BitTorrent clients check out this list.

As i was telling you about a clock applet which comes with the new Gnome environment I was looking over some screenshots and reading it’s main features. It seems like an interesting widget (if i may call it that way) which can be pretty useful if you travel a lot or just want to keep your things sorted with the help of that calendar.

Say goodbye to xvnc4viewer as it was replaced by Vinagre. I only used this one once, a few months ago and overall seems to be a good remote viewer. The good part about it is that you can be connected to several machines at the same time. A cool feature is that when you search for remote machines on your network and find any you don’t need to bother configuring the access as the process is automate. Also you can organize your connections and keep track of favorite or recently used ones.

Uncomplicated Firewall is said to be an easy to use firewall which can be configured via the command line. Again, as I was telling you, in my opinion Fedora Core is the best solution for servers. For example FC 8 features an interesting GUI for configuring it’s firewall. I believe that’s a big step ahead for Linux, in general. I think that many are afraid to work more with their keyboard than with their mouse.

Totem has a new feature. Now it can be used to search and play videos from YouTube. That’s truly an awesome feature.

Inkscape can be a solution for handling PDF files in Ubuntu as it supports text and graphics editing.

Many improvements have been made in order to provide better support. For example the first thing that might be of great importance for a wide range of potential Ubuntu users is the new Ubuntu CD Menu. This awesome menu lets you choose between running a live sample of Ubuntu (acts just like a live CD), installing Ubuntu as another OS or install it just like an ordinary application in your Windows based environment. However as expected the last method is known to have some performance issues.

Wubi for example jumps to help Windows users install Ubuntu providing them with a basic interface containing several vital options for a new installation. Wubi and the umenu might be considered ways of converting Windows users into potential Ubuntu users. At least they offer a smooth pass from Windows to Ubuntu.

I am more than convinced that the above compilation of apps and not only is the optimum software package for Ubuntu. As a final conclusion, Ubuntu 8.04 alias Hardy Heron announces itself as a pretty interesting, improved Linux distribution that worths trying.