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Sean Michael Kerner (bio)



Ubuntu's Misleading Hardy Heron (8.04) Release

By Sean Michael Kerner on April 21, 2008 10:22 AM
ubuntu.pngFrom the 'you gotta read the fine print' files:

I track Ubuntu development reasonably closely, which is why I was surprised to see a release this AM titled," Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Desktop Edition Released." After all, according to the publicly available info I had on Friday, the release was set for an April 24th release.

Perhaps I was mistaken? Nope, that not the case. Ubuntu in my honest opinion has just put up a slightly misleading headline for its press release.

After you get pulled in by the headline -- (with the 'released' in it) - if you actually read the very first sentence of the release it states:

LONDON, April 21, 2008  Canonical Ltd. announced the upcoming availability of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Desktop Edition for free download on Thursday 24 April. In related news, Canonical also announced the simultaneous release of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server Edition.

Aha! So it is a Thursday release! So if you see the press release (or some unfortunate mis-informed press story on it) and think that you can get the full GA version of Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 today...cool your heels for a few days until Thursday. There is however a release candidate that you can get today, but with a full version out in a few days, it's likely a smarter move just to wait.

Certainly Ubuntu isn't the only software vendor to pre-announce availability of software. However to state in a headline that something is released - when it's not - is not something that I think is a good thing.

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4 Comments

Pandemic said:

I do believe April 24th has been the release listed on the HardyReleaseSchedule page of the Ubuntu Wiki for quite some time now...

April 21, 2008 3:45 PM
matthews said:

I ran it mostly to see firefox 3 left firefox open a night and a day to see if it would eat memory like it does now it looks much better. The Ubuntu looks pretty good too the release candidate probably confused someone into thinking release. Thats what a release candidate should do thought it means the developers have done all they can without user feedback.

April 21, 2008 4:01 PM
wjl (Wolfgang Lonien) said:

> ... but with a full version out in a few days, it's likely a smarter move just to wait.

Hum - I don't know; really.

From Thursday on, you can bet that the poor servers will ache under the load generated by sentences like yours.

Plus: Ubuntu is Debian, after all - so you can install once, and then forget about it. You'll get the upgrades automagically, so on Thursday, you'll have "the release".

This is even true if you have Gutsy now - just change every instance of the word "gutsy" in your /etc/apt/sources.list to "hardy", then aptitude update, and aptitude dist-upgrade, and voila - you'll have Hardy.

Release candidate? Come on - this will be history, even if you upgrade now. On Thursday, that won't differ from the release.

Just my two (Euro-) Cents...

cheers,
wjl

April 21, 2008 5:20 PM
Jim said:

better yet, just run on your terminal:

sudo update-manager -d

and gutsy 7.10's automatic update manager will show you a button with an option to update you to the latest hardy heron 8.04.

April 22, 2008 8:49 AM

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