Hardy Heron Beta - Alias Ubuntu 8.04
The Ubuntu team has released the first, and probably only, beta version of the next generation of Ubuntu with Long Term Support (LTS), Ubuntu 8.04.
Hardy Heron Beta - Alias Ubuntu 8
The final edition of Ubuntu Hardy Heron is scheduled for release in April. The support periods of 36 months for the desktop version and 60 months for the server, which are geared to the needs of professional users, only apply to the Gnome variant of Ubuntu. The Kubuntu variants with the KDE desktop do not offer long term support. While Ubuntu 8.04 uses Gnome 2.22, there are two versions of Kubuntu 8.04: one with the tried-and-trusted KDE 3.5.9 and another with a version of the new KDE 4.0.
Apart from this, the beta uses kernel 2.6.24-12.13 and X.org 7.3. The KVM virtualization solution replaces the Xen hypervisor in the server version. Libvirt and Virt Manager are available for creating and managing virtual machines.
Ubuntu 8.04 is available for x86 computers and for 64-bit machines with the AMD and AMD64 and EMT64 CPUs. Download links and additional information are available from the website here. The KDE version, Kubuntu 8.04, now has a separate Wiki page.