With just over a month to go until launch day, Canonical has released the first public
beta version of Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron. To be honest, most of the features in the beta first made their appearance in
early alpha releases. But there are a few relatively minor improvements, and a ton of tweaks that set Hardy Heron apart from Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon.
- Firefox 3 beta 4 is the default web browser
- PulseAudio is enabled by default
- New PolicyKit manager for advanced permission controls
- Gnome 2.22 is the default desktop environment. You can also install Kubuntu 8.04 which comes with KDE 3.5 or KDE 4, depending on which version you prefer
There's also a new disc burning application, BitTorrent client, and VNC client. Virtualization software is built into the kernel. And you can install Ubuntu from Windows using
Wubi.
Keep in mind, this is still beta software, and it's not recommended for installation on production machines. The full version of Ubuntu 8.04 is due out on April 24th.
