Hardy Heron is about to be released (within 24 hours).

I’ve tested Hardy Heron’s release candidate. Some nice and new features :

• it’s a LTS release which means 3 years of updates on the desktop (5 for the server) which makes it very suitable for schools and some companies
• smarter and faster copying of files in nautilus
• the newest kernel (2.6.24)
• PulseAudio
• Xorg 7.3
• Firefox 3.0 b5 as default webbrowser
• improved memory protection
• and more

Some bugs :

• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openjdk-6/+bug/219666
• https://bugs.launchpad.net/linux/+bug/220640
• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/compiz/+bug/200230
• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/totem/+bug/218750/
• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.24/+bug/129200

Of these bugs bug #220640 has the most severe impact on me. If I upgrade my laptop to Hardy I won’t be able to connect to the wireless network of my university. I have always been able to connect to this network using wpasupplicant and ipw3945. But ipw3945 has been replaced by iwl3945 which is not yet as mature as ipw3945 and apparently does not support this particular network. I’m happy to do more testing using the Hardy live cd if people have suggestions.

All software always contains some bugs. One of the nice things about the free software community is that everybody can be open en honest about bugs and that everyone can help each other. Hardy is really looking nice and I’m sure it will be a great release!