Ubuntu 8.04 alpha 4

POPULAR Linux distribution, Ubuntu has just released an alpha of its next big release, Hardy Heron.

While alpha's come and go in software land, it is always interesting to see what the software developers can think they can stuff in the new versions. In the case of Vista that was loads of really interesting stuff that never made it. In the case of Ubuntu that is often things you will see when it is released. This is mostly because the developers have until April to get the thing to work and don't really have much time to drop stuff.

We had a look at what Ubuntu 8.04 will offer and there is some interesting stuff. Firstly there is PulseAudio, an open-source sound server which has a decent mixing capability.

One of the other things to make Linux geeks moist is the inclusion of GIO and GVFS. This kills off the somewhat moldy GnomeVFS library and replaces it with a D-Bus interprocess communication protocol to coordinate between various daemons that handle mounting and file operations.

There is also something called PolicyKit which provides a security policy control. The big idea is to kill off gksudo which scares off a lot of new users, although since it requires a password the bulk of new users are going to be hard pressed to find the difference.

There is a bit of eye candy with an improved panel clock applet so it can save you time looking out the window to see what the weather is.

However most of the stuff is not really that world shattering so far.