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Ubuntu 8.04 Beta Released
markybob writes "Ubuntu Hardy 8.04 beta has been released. It features GNOME 2.22 and uses Linux kernel 2.6.24. Furthermore, it uses Firefox 3 beta 4, and PulseAudio is enabled by default. To ease the transition of Windows users, it includes Wubi, which allows users to install and uninstall Ubuntu like any other Windows application. It does not require a dedicated partition, nor does it affect the existing bootloader, yet users can experience a dual-boot setup almost identical to a full installation."
Just installed the amd64 version on my quad core box. I am really liking the goodies -
/virtio - KVM is something that never worked well for me.
Startup is quicker than previous version on the same hardware. Filesystems are now mounted with 'realtime' flag out-of-box - yay for even more speed!
I was able to install it inside of Windows (Vista x64) without any performance loss using the Wubi installer - Ubuntu entry appeared in Windows boot loader and I did not had to partition my NTFS formatted disks - you can try and see how it works without losing data or even disk space when you am done trying it. Cool.
Firefox 3 - my favorite browser is bundled and integrated - can't ask for more!
Got to try KVM
If you *must* run windows for company apps, then Wubi probably isn't for you. It's more of a dual-boot type thing, cept it uses a file on your windows partition as it's 'hard drive'.
You might want to try out andLinux. It's a full on linux that integrates seamlessly inside of windows.
Personally, dual-booting is kind of a drag because of the constant reboots to get into Windows to do that one Windows-only thing, so I like cygwin or andLinux over Wubi.
The move to pulseaudio as the default sound systems is welcomed. It's mastry of emulating OSS, ALSA and ESound are simply awesome and supposedly these are emulated more efficiently than the origtional competing sound systems.
The problem is that there is an alsa compatibility library that needs to be fixed ASAP before this distribution gets released.
To see the breakage just run the VoIP client named Ekiga and get into it's audio wizard. It just hangs there.
I've been studying long and hard to learn Asterisk and I'll be damned if I will run a distribution that can't provide audio to SIP client software on my laptop.
https://answers.launchpad.net/alsa-plugins/+question/27568
I was an early adopter of pulseaudio on my 7.10 laptop and have suffered not being able to run voip clients such as:
X-Lite
iaxcomm
Ekiga
Twinkle
Kphone
I really like Ubuntu, but I'm concerned they may loose significant market share if they don't resolve this matter FAST in the beta stages of 8.04.
-Joe Baker
GPG Key ID DDEC0260