Thread: Ubuntu 8.04

UBUNTU IS GETTING increasingly popular, and this new version does not break that trend. It has taken further strides towards being the Linux distribution that you would recommend for the family's desktop Pc.

The simplified desktop environment is intuitive. You have a taskbar at the bottom, and all applica¬tions and system actions can be accessed from the drop-down menu bars on top. The rest of the screen area is your workspace. There are plenty of applica¬tions included with the base install of Ubuntu the office suite, graphics editor, Internet apps, and games, so you really don't need to pay for anything extra. Hardware support is also good, and your sound and video card, network,
printer, scanner, and DVD-writer will be detected and installed automatically, unless you have a device which is extremely specialized, in which case drivers can be got via the Internet.



Some of the new functions introduced, are an improved audio sub-system to enable mixing audio from multiple applications, the ability to add and use a second monitor, and a world clock with time and weather from multiple loca¬tions. Also updated, is the browser (Firefox 3), Bit-tor¬rent client, a movie player with a YouTube plugin, and much more.

Ubuntu's current avatar, codenamed 'Hardy Heron' is 8.04 - named for the year and month numbers of release. It is an LTS edition, meaning you get Long Term Sup¬port with updates being provided for three years, and the whole thing comes free. 64-bit editions exist as well, if you have more than 4GB of RAM.