Ubuntu 8.04 - Hardy Heron New Features List

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There are many beta testers of the latest Ubuntu 8.04 out there trying out before the final release due this April 24th, but one thing you would want to know is what to expect before you install it.

Here is a list of what you can expect as part of the new features of the Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron.
Easy Installation
Ubuntu adoption on a dual boot is much easier by making it simple for Windows users to install Ubuntu onto their PCs without affecting their Windows installation, preview and try it out first before you commit to it. When run the installation CD within Windows the autoplay will launch the umenu and Wubi which will give you the option to install Ubuntu within windows or not. Wubi allows users to install and uninstall Ubuntu like any other Windows application. The setup wizard will take you step by step in choosing drives, to install, and setting up the windows boot manager and so on.

Uninstalling it all is easy, just click the uninstall option in windows to remove it all.

Desktop GUI and Apps Upgrades
At the time of this article it includes GNOME 2.22 which has an entire new set of features such as:
- "Cheese" tool which lets you take photos and make videos using your computer's webcam.
- "GVFS" a new network-transparent virtual filesystem layer for GTK+. GVFS is designed to overcome the shortcomings of the older GNOME-VFS system. Improvements over GNOME-VFS include remembering login credentials for the entire session and being more resilient to failures
- Built in internationalization into its clock
- Evolution mail improvements on spam filtering , perfrmance and integration with Google Calendars
- "Remote Desktop Viewer" features the ability to discover machines on the local network and bookmark your favorites
-"PolicyKit" is a new cross-desktop security framework. The purpose of PolicyKit is to provide a consistent way for user applications to gain extra privileges, e.g. for administrative applications.
- FireFox 3 comes installed by default.
- Bittorrent is replaced with "Transmission", a fast, easy, and free multi-platform BitTorrent client with a focus on being lightweight yet feature-filled.
- "Vinagre" VNC client is installed by default in Beta, replacing xvnc4viewer
- The "Brasero" CD/DVD burning application, which will complement the CD/DVD burning functions of Nautilus and replace the Serpentine audio CD burning utility, is installed by default
- New System Monitor utility
- Command line controlled firewall called ufw (Uncomplicated Firewall) host-based.

Energy Savings
In todays age we are all about conserving energy right? Well if your not, then your probably at least concerned with reducing overheating of your dual core CPU's? Anyhow, as one would expect with a new release of Ubuntu comes updated kernel software which amongst many things will help the performance of dual core and 64bit processors. It has dynticks support for amd64, bringing the same power savings already available on 32-bit systems to 64-bit laptops and desktops. In other words better power management for 64-bit users and kernel-based virtualization.

This is definitely the best Linux distro so far out there.

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