| Ubuntu "Feisty Fawn" betas arrive |
Mar. 23, 2007
 The Ubuntu project today released the first betas of Ubuntu 7.04 (GNOME-based) and Kubuntu 7.04 (KDE-based) -- aka "Feisty Fawn." Among other enhancements, the eagerly awaited distro-duo boasts a "ground-breaking" Windows migration assistant, new wireless networking content- and services-sharing capabilities, and a 2.6.20 Linux kernel.
"Ubuntu/Kubuntu 7.04 is the most user-friendly Ubuntu to date," developer Tollef Fog Heen said in the release announcement. "Desktop highlights include a new Windows migration tool, easy-to-install codec wizards, plug-and-play network sharing using Avahi, and others."
The Windows migration tool recognizes Internet Explorer bookmarks, Firefox favorites, desktop wallpaper, AOL IM contacts, and Yahoo IM contacts, and imports them into Ubuntu during installation, added Fog Heen. "This offers easier and faster migration for new users of Ubuntu and individuals wanting to run a dual-boot system," he said.
A new guided wizard for installing codecs not shipped with Ubuntu is said to give users a safe way of installing codecs they can legally use to view multimedia content.
Plug-and-play network sharing with Avahi allows users to automatically discover and join a wireless network to share music, photos, and video, and find printers, the team said. Avahi is a freely downloadable system that facilitates service discovery on a local network.
Key standard features, according to the team, include:- GNOME 2.18 desktop (Ubuntu); KDE 3.5.6 (Kubuntu)
- OpenOffice.org 2.2.0rc3 and KOffice 1.6.2 office (Kubuntu) suites
- X.org 7.2 window manager
- Thunderbird 1.5.0.10 email client
- MySQL 5.0.32 database
- AmaRok 1.4.5 media player
Ubuntu is a complete, freely-available desktop Linux operating system that offers both community and commercial support. The Ubuntu distribution, which is built on top of Debian Linux, is perhaps the most popular free Linux distribution at this time. It is offered in a growing range of versions, including Ubuntu itself (based on GNOME), Kubuntu (based on KDE), Xubuntu (based on XFce), and Edubuntu, a version aimed at schools.
You can download a free copy of Ubuntu 7.04 Beta from the main site, here. Alternatively, ISO images can be downloaded directly from here (for i386 machines) and here (for AMD 64-bit machines).
Screenshots can be found here, courtesy of LinuxQuestions.org.
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