Ubuntu 8.04 Alpha 1 Released.

Hardy Heron was announced for the first time on August, 29 2007 and it will be available on April 24th 2008 as an LTS (Long Term Support) release. The release schedule for Hardy Heron has been made public more than a month ago:

There aren’t many changes in this first alpha release of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, except for an “Gnome-btdownload” entry in the Internet submenu and some extra keyboard layouts in the Installer. Also, the GNOME version is 2.21.2! Let’s have a look now at the roadmap for Hardy Heron:

Labeling and formatting of partitions: A way to format partitions with various file systems, with LUKS encryption support, was proposed. At this moment, there’s no GUI to change the label of a Linux filesystem, and for VFAT partitions.

GMount ISO : Virtual Drive for Linux.

Gmount-iso is a small tool written using PyGTK and Glade. It allows you to easily mount your cd images. This is a frontend to the ‘mount -o loop -t iso9660 foo.iso /mountpoint‘ command…

Convert your CDs and unprotected DVDs into “virtual CDs” — disc images that run directly on your hard drive, replacing physical discs and saving wear and tear on your CD-ROM drive. Share virtual CDs over a network, and enjoy access rates up to 200 times faster than physical CDs, boosting the performance of PC games, photo CDs, and disc-based applications. Play disc-based applications directly on your hard drive..