Quite a lot of people have been waiting for the latest release of Ubuntu, version 8.04 dubbed the “Hardy Heron” – primarily because it’s a LTS release. So how does the Hardy Heron stack up? I decided to jump into the Hardy Heron brigade and have a look. Is it worth the upgrade?

Read on to find out more!

System Specifications

I used my beloved Dell Inspiron 1520(Intel Core2Duo T5250 @ 1.5 Ghz, 2 GB DDR2 667 RAM, nVidia 8600m GT, Intel 3945 Pro/Wireless) for testing out the Hardy Heron.

I had a pretty bad time with Gutsy – no sound despite the sound card being detected, LCD brightness varying as if its possessed etc – these resulted with me removing Gutsy and going back to openSUSE 10.3.

Also, generally I’ve always tested the 32-bit versions of most distros. This time I decided to break the tradition and go with the 64-bit version.

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It’s that time of the year. Everyone’s excited and looking forward to it. Ofcourse it’s the release of the next LTS version of Ubuntu, Ubuntu 8.04, aka Hardy Heron. So what’re new features expected in Hardy Heron you ask? Well here are some of them
[...]

Well the new wallpaper for Ubuntu Hardy Heron is out. Have a Look. What do you guys think? Personally, I like it a lot. Really striking, much better than – somewhat bland wallpapers of the previous ones. But still, nothing quite like openSUSE’s artwork.

Also, Madsrh has been working on the booklet and DVD inlay cover. here’s a little peek on that

So what’re your opinions?

Here’s a much needed feature, the next version of Ubuntu, Ubuntu 8.04 aka the Hardy Heron will finally feature a XRandR GUI.  This feature has been implemented under Alpha 6.

Basically this allows the user to change, amongst others, resolution, refresh rate, rotation(ie, to rotate the screen by X degrees) on-the-fly, using the RandR 1.2 extension. Previously  the user would have to change the resolution via the screen resolution applet(or worse, by directly editing xorg.conf file) , and restart the X server for the new resolution to take effect. This feature makes it easier for users to change resolutions as and when required. I’m a bit surprised that it took this long for the feature to be implemented, but nonetheless good to know that the feature is in place

The Ubuntu developers are moving very quickly to bring you the absolute latest and greatest software the Open Source Community has to offer. Hardy Heron Alpha 2 is the second alpha release of Ubuntu 8.04, and with this new alpha release comes a whole host of excellent new features.

Note: This is still an alpha release. Do not install it on production machines. The final stable version will be released in April 2008.

In General

These features are showcased for your attention. Please test them and report any bugs you find. If you want to see what the developers have cooking for the next alpha release take a look through the hardy blueprint page https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/hardy

Upgrading from Ubuntu 7.10

To upgrade from Ubuntu 7.10, run “update-manager -d” using the update-manager package from gutsy.

Xorg 7.3

The latest Xorg is available in Hardy, Xorg 7.3, with an emphasis on better autoconfiguration without config files.

Linux kernel 2.6.24

Alpha 2 includes the 2.6.24-2.4 (2.6.24-rc5-based) kernel. This brings in significant enhancements and fixes that have been merged in the last few months into the mainline kernel. Among these is the introduction of dynticks support for amd64, bringing the same power savings already available on 32-bit systems to 64-bit laptops and desktops.

PulseAudio

Alpha 2 includes PulseAudio enabled by default. Some non-GNOME applications still need to be changed to output to pulse/esd by default and the volume control tools are still not integrated. https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/cleanup-audio-jumble

Download Alpha 2

Get it while it’s hot. ISOs and torrents are available at:

• http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/hardy/alpha-2/ (Ubuntu)
  http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/hardy/alpha-2/ (Kubuntu)
  http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/edubuntu/releases/hardy/alpha-2/ (Edubuntu)
  http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/jeos/releases/hardy/alpha-2/ (Ubuntu JeOS)
  http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/hardy/alpha-2/ (Xubuntu)
  http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/gobuntu/releases/hardy/alpha-2/ (Gobuntu)
  http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/hardy/alpha-2/ (UbuntuStudio)

Caveats

As expected during early development snapshots, there are several known bugs that users are likely to run into with Hardy Alpha 2. We have documented them here for your convenience along with any known workarounds, so that you don’t need to spend time reporting these bugs again:

• Due to the X server failing to provide a configuration file, the keyboard selection made during install will not be carried over to the installed system. https://launchpad.net/bugs/173008
• Video problems have been reported with the 64-bit (amd64) version of Edubuntu desktop. As a workaround, users can manually specify a video resolution at the boot menu. https://launchpad.net/bugs/173130

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