FOSSwire

It's April, which means that it is the month of a new release of Ubuntu. Hardy Heron (8.04) is going to be the eighth release of the distribution, which has enjoyed enormous popularity in recent times.

I use the KDE variant, Kubuntu as one of my main desktop operating systems, but I haven't yet tried out the beta of Hardy Heron. I'm putting the standard Ubuntu desktop disc through its paces.

The first thing you notice after booting off the CD is that the boot menu has new options. Instead of just booting into the live CD environment only, you now have the option to boot in and 'Try without change', or to jump straight into the installer.

In the normal mode, it boots fairly quickly, considering it's a live CD and you can get up and running straight away and play with all the default applications as much as you like. If you do then decide after a quick play to install, you can use the Installer icon on the desktop, just like previous versions of the Ubuntu Live environment.

Hardy features some visual changes from its predecessor. The GNOME theme has been subtly altered - menus now have an orange coloured bar on their left and some gradients and colours on buttons and other core widgets have been slightly changed too.

There is also a new default desktop background, which features an artistic rendering of a heron in the Ubuntu colour scheme. I personally think it looks professional and makes a nice backdrop to the new distro.

Going over to your other option on the boot menu now, choosing the install-only mode is slightly quicker, but really only cuts out the extra time it takes to load the desktop and double-click the icon.

The installer is very much like its predecessor. It is reasonably simple to understand, minus the usual, unavoidable confusion that partitioning will cause. I managed to do a full install on the disk easy and quickly, and had no issues with the installer that has happened on occasion in previous Ubuntu releases.

Stability is a big issue here - Hardy Heron is planned to be the second release of Ubuntu given the Long Time Support (LTS) moniker, which means it will be officially supported for three years on the desktop, and five on the server.

I didn't experience any major issues in my brief play, although one application I did launch crashed (it was the Screens and Graphics control panel application listed under Other). The fact that it crashed was handled with admirable grace, with a balloon popup appearing in the top right of the screen.

Clicking the icon gives a dialogue with some more information.

Also, the wired network connection that was available to Ubuntu didn't work straight out of the box. Granted that enabling it is simply a matter of clicking the network icon in the top right and clicking Wired Network, but in my opinion this should have been automatic and not required any user input at all.

From the brief look I've had, Hardy Heron looks very promising. There are plenty of changes to the architecture underneath the distro that bring it up to date with some of the developments in other distributions (PulseAudio, for example), but the experience from the user's point of view remains one of the best and easiest of any Linux distribution available.

If you want to have a play around with the Hardy Heron beta, you can download it from the Ubuntu site.

Recent releases of Ubuntu have a feature where the installation CD can be used as a repository for installing software, just like any repository on the web.

The advantage of this, obviously, is it means that you can save bandwidth for some packages that haven't been updated since the release, or even sometimes be able to install new packages without an internet connection at all. The main disadvantage - the CD has to be in the drive.

And when you get asked for that CD when installing something, and you really don't feel like finding it on your messy desk, or wherever it's hiding, it can be frustrating.

Thankfully, it's pretty easy to switch off the support for installing from the CD. In Ubuntu (the normal Gnome version), go to System > Administration > Software Sources. On Kubuntu, head to the Adept Manager application, then go to Adept > Manage Repositories.

In both cases, you'll get a dialogue looking something like this. Go to the Third Party Software tab.

In there, simply untick the entry starting with cdrom: (the top one in my screenshot) and close. You might be asked to reload the software lists, so do so.

And that's it. The CD should be disabled, and you'll always go online to download new packages.

Ars Technica is reporting that the Motion Picture Association of America have been hit with a DMCA takedown notice after offering a download of an Ubuntu-based networking monitoring tool without source code, a direct violation of the GPL.

The MPAA software was supposedly designed to assist universities in detecting people using software to download and share copyrighted material and was apparently based on the Ubuntu Linux distribution.

The obvious irony here is that in trying to distribute a piece of software designed to prevent copyright infringement, the MPAA have - infringed copyright by breaking the GPL licence. Leaving that irony aside for a moment though, and it's clear that Matthew Garret, who filed the DMCA takedown on behalf of the Ubuntu team, is sending out a clear message - that GPL violation is exactly the same as violating any other copyright.

Those who aren't fans of the free software/open source movement often cite their doubt as to whether the GPL is enforceable, especially when you are dealing with individuals rights, who don't necessarily have the legal resources to chase up all possible violators. In this case, the MPAA obviously realised that not complying was definitely not an option, as the commercial arms involved in Ubuntu (and possibly others) would have piped up and put pressure on them.

Would this have happened with a small GPL'd project with limited resources, however, if a similar violation happened? It's not really an easy question to answer, although there are efforts such as GPL Violations to raise awareness of smaller violations of this nature.

Enforcing the licences is definitely important. It's important to send the message out to potential exploiters that there are consequences for not following those terms.