Ubuntu 8 is out

Who would have thought that Ubuntu would become one of the most popular, or the most popular, Linux distribution in a matter of years ? Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Hardy Heron is out and can be downloaded from the official Ubuntu website. Am I the only one thinking that this naming convention is utterly stupid and causes confusion by new users ? I have two questions that can hopefully be answered by veteran Ubuntu users.

The first question, why is it Ubuntu 8.04 and not Ubuntu 8 ? There better be a good reason for the .04 at the end of every release. Second, what’s with the “funny” codenames ? I personally would like to see a release named Ubuntu 8 which would perfectly be enough. It’s short and everyone knows what it means.

The releases are available as torrents which should be used to take away some load from the main website and servers. Here is the torrent link for i386 and AMD-64. Those torrents can be downloaded with full speed, at least that’s the case currently.

The Download Squad collected information about some of the changes in Ubuntu 8:

* Firefox 3 beta is the default web browser
* Install Ubuntu from within Windows using Wubi
* Updated Linux kernel and new versions of Gnome and KDE desktops, with the option of using KDE 3.5 or KDE 4 as the default desktop for Kubuntu
* New BitTorrent Client
* New VNC client
* Virtualization software built into the kernel

Cybernet News have additional information about the other editions:

* Kubuntu 8.04 - A KDE version of Ubuntu. There’s now a “cutting edge” version available that includes KDE 4.0!
* Edubuntu 8.04 - Designed for the education setting, and includes iTalc classroom management software allowing for teacher sharing, monitoring, and control of networked workstations.
* Xubuntu 8.04 - Xubuntu uses the Xfce desktop environment which is geared towards less-powerful computers. Have an old computer sitting around? Put it to work with this Ubuntu variant!