Posted on April 24, 2008 - by jono
Hardy Is Here
Well, its finally here – today we released Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, known affectionately as the Hardy Heron. Its out there, go and download it, order a CD, or otherwise taste our latest release. 
When a new release of Ubuntu comes out, I always feel an enormous sense of pride with what our community has achieved, and what it continues to go onto achieve. Building a Linux distribution is a tough job, both technically and socially – it is a job that involves hundreds and hundreds of packages and components, thousands of patches, hundreds of bug fixes, a great many weekly meetings, thousands of emails and thousands of people working around the world and around the clock to achieve the same goal – to deliver a high quality free software Operating System that is reliable and easy to use. Not only has this happened with the desktop release, but the server release is looking incredible too – the server team should feel hugely proud for their achievements with this release; a particularly significant release with it bearing the Long Term Support commitment.
What I am most proud of though is that free software community is changing and evolving, and it is changing and evolving in one very specific way – diversity. One thing I have repeatedly stated as a core ambition with the Ubuntu community is to ensure that everyone can put their brick in the wall and improve Ubuntu and to solidify this with a diverse community in which a range of types of contribution are possible. Everyone should be able to help in a way that is comfortable and familiar to them, whether developers, artists, musicians, testers, triagers, translators, documentation writers, advocates, event organisers or otherwise – and I am pleased to see that this is happening. Every day I am speaking to people who are making the important connection between an enthusiasm to help Ubuntu and their particular skillset, and our community is becoming increasingly accommodating to these different types of contribution. There is always room for improvement, but things are looking bright – diversity in collaboration is the embodiment of free software.
So, its time to crack open a few cold ones, and toast to a great new Ubuntu release, and to not only toast the present, but to toast to the future – on we go towards Ubuntu 8.10, the Intrepid Ibex, lets get ready to roll our sleeves up and bring free software to even more people.
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April 24, 2008
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So…when does an intrepid directory show up and new packages start being uploaded? 2.6.25? gnome 2.23? I always get itchy during the freeze.
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April 24, 2008
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Any idea when vmware images will be ready? http://isv-image.ubuntu.com/vmware/
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April 24, 2008
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Congrats! Ubuntu is getting better and better the whole time. Keep up the good work.
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April 24, 2008
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I am seriously impressed. I slapped in the CD, installation was fast and straightforward, reboot and after that I got to really get impressed. Fast, things (like multimedia support) work rock solid, and all the hardware I have just works. I have used some 10+ distributions in the past and so far Hardy Heron seems simply the most advanced and best working of them all.
I even rushed to test to open some OOXML documents from my work email. They opened. Out of the box. I am really impressed.
The previous releases I would not have seriously yet recommended for average joe. Now I got to say I’d rather recommend Hardy than Vista, and it’s the first.
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April 24, 2008
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This gives me a nice problem, I have Gutsy on 5 pcs here at home. I’ve always used the graphical dist-upgrade tool, but seems a bit bandwidth hoggy to do that 5 times!
Anyway of caching the packages locally? I guess I download the iso, burn it, then add that disk to my sources?
Great Blog Jono.
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April 24, 2008
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wohoo… great release.. been using it for a long time too
the website and forum improvements are great too 
Long time fan of pink floyd yet it was the first time i saw this music video for high hopes tonight, I wonder whether mark was a fan cause near the end you can see the original ubuntu logo(people in the circle holding hands) 
http://youtube.com/watch?v=8ioavsW0tgI
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April 25, 2008
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Many congratulations. I hadn’t upgraded lately, and am much impressed by the new product. Coolest feature so far: configuring external laptop displays without restarting X. This is really becoming a superior desktop distro. Last hurdle I can see: the GUI part of network-manager needs reworking, but it’s not worse than the Mac and WinXP equivalents, which are also unnavigateable. I’ll try to contribute to the next version of network-manager. Thanks!!
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April 25, 2008
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“Everyone should be able to help in a way that is comfortable and familiar to them, whether developers, artists, musicians, testers, triagers, translators, documentation writers, advocates, event organisers or otherwise – and I am pleased to see that this is happening”
I’m sorry Jon, but if you want to look at a glaring failure of this policy to work check out bug 202174
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/abiword/+bug/202174
Ryan went WAY beyond the call of duty and sweated blood to try to get abiword-2.6.2 into Hardy but failed.
Don’t just count successes and I know you’ve had a lot of those, look at failures too.
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April 25, 2008
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You guys and the whole Ubuntu community rock!! i’ve been using ubuntu for over a year now since i dumped Vista. This is the easiest and most powerful distribution ever. Migrating from Vista to ubuntu is just like changing my cellphone: easy. Is there anyway the gnome guys or ubuntu guys will take a more serious look at the artwork? we need to impress people who judge from look, dyou know.
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April 25, 2008
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Congratulations on the release, mate.