New features for Hardy Heron
The roadmap for hardy heron has a pretty big list of features, most of them, although very important, are technical and a bit uninteresting. Some of them should have been in Gutsy but couldn't meet the schedule. Hardy Heron is going to be a Long Term Support release, so there's also going to be a lot of fixes for existing features. So without further ado, the features which I'm anticipating the most are.
Install on an existing filesystem without overwriting /home
When I moved from feisty to gutsy, I decided to do a fresh install. One of the things I had to do was back up my home folder, and when I finished installing gutsy I just copied it back onto my computer. This new feature will allow people to install the new version of Ubuntu without it overwriting their home folder.I'm sure this will come in very handy for people who like trying out different distro's.
Hardy Hardware Detection
This is more of a bug fix than a new feature. Gutsy already has excellent hardware support and the plan for hardy is even better and more robust detection of hardware. Sounds good to me.
GDM Face Browser
One of the changes I made to my gutsy is the GDM. I replaced the old one with something that allows me to just click on a picture of my username and login. This will hopefully be the default for hardy.
Auto Detection of Monitor Frequency
While I was testing gutsy beta I had to manually configure xorg.conf to get it to the right resolution. It wasn't fun. This should be a thing of the past with hardy as it will automatically detect everything for you. Huzzah!
Apt Authentication Reliability
Have you ever had an update fail for no reason? Well it actually fails because of 'transient network failures'. The aim is to make hardy more robust against these errors.
Redesign Restricted-Manager Code
They want to expand the role of the restricted manager and change it so that other distro's can share the joy.
Handling Full Disks
I've never had this problem with Ubuntu, but if your disk gets full, things can get quite ugly. They plan to add a notification and disk clean-up tool when your running low on space.
Desktop Effects
Make compiz fusion more robust and easier to use.
New Theme
Hardy Heron will be getting a shiny new theme, I hope they move away from the brown theme and choose something lighter and more fresh.
Easy File Sharing
To allow people to easily share files over a network. Not more I can say about this.
Dual/Multi Monitor Support
Currently you have to manually tweak Ubuntu if you want to use more than one monitor. They want to fix this for hardy.
Integrate Prefetch into Ubuntu
I noticed a slightly increased start up time in gutsy compared to feisty. Hardy will use file prefetch and other optimisations to speed up boot time.
Automatix-Ubuntu Team Collaboration
Automatix was extremely helpful for me in feisty. Although I don't use it in gutsy, its good that they are collaborating with the automatix team.
Single Click Install
Installing software is already pretty straightforward in Ubuntu. They want to make it even easier to install third party applications. I'm not complaining.
Apparmor Integration
This is already a part of gutsy, the plan is to increase integration to make Ubuntu even safer.
Firewall
Make it easier for users to configure their firewall.
Third Party Apt
Now when you install third party apps, you have to manually add the software repository to the sources.list. This spec makes it easy for users to install third party software and have it update automatically.
Revamped Logout Screen
They want to streamline the options you have when you click that big red button, to make things less confusing.
Better Integrated Wine
Better Wine will make it easier for Windows users to convert, thus helping to solve bug #1.
Xorg 7.3
This is one of the features that missed the gutsy deadline. This should make manual configuration of xorg.conf obsolete. Another much anticipated feature is Bullet Proof X, which will go into a graphical safe mode if anything goes wrong with X.
Slick Boot
To improve the boot and shutdown process and also make the things look nicer.
So that's my list, if there's any other features which interest you let me know.
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Hugo
Thanks! Looks like Ubuntu will become as "famous" as windows in a few years...
Bloguitar | 2008-01-06 - 14:35:11 GMT 1 #
I strongly hope that people there at work will soon recover from Temporary Insanity and definitely give up with the proposal to disable CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE by default.
The reasons ? 1) It is a feature that lasts since the very beginning of the X development cycle. So too many consolidated users RELY on its presence.
2) Assuming that an application will never, in fhe future, freeze X (making almost impossible to switch to a console, find the PID of X and Kill it as root) would be much more hazardous than the rare event of a user pressing Ctrl+Alt+Bckspc by mistake.
3) There is no way to protect users from their own improper behaviour. Why not replace the power chord with lead batteries to avoid the risk of mistakenly unplug the PC?
4) A stable system is not a system that lacks some features, but a system whose features are documented and give predictable results.
So don't switch to insanity, Just document it.
visnotjl | 2008-01-06 - 16:00:17 GMT 1 #
sorry for my englis if i make a mistake.
i think it'll be useful if you can upgrade to a supported version from a non supported version.
demil133 | 2008-01-06 - 20:06:41 GMT 1 #
actualy is not a support for the sound card sound blaster x-fi xtreme audio if you do a lspci | grep audio if recognize by other model of creative and dont work aditional creative dont have a driver for linux
hhlp | 2008-01-06 - 20:21:50 GMT 1 #
Many of features your are talking about, are not planed to be included in Hardy.
Have a look at blueprint status.
kagou | 2008-01-07 - 11:28:45 GMT 1 #
What I'd like to see is more resilience when under low disk space or low memory conditions. Not a warning when you are getting close (although this can still be handy) but rather an OS that doesn't stop and grind and become unresponsive when it runs out of either RAM or HD.
I run Ubuntu on a fairly low-spec machine and compared to both Windows and Mac operating systems, Ubuntu is the worst when I run out of RAM and almost as bad as Windows when I run out of disk space.
This isn't going to be much of a priority for computer enthusiasts who have lots of both but it should help convert people on older hardware.
Dave | 2008-01-26 - 16:17:14 GMT 1 #
Hi there. Sounds very promising indeed.
I do hope that support for Creative X-Fi sound appears soon. I can't abandon Windows yet because the family use the PC and music is one of the major attractions.
Colin McEwan | 2008-01-28 - 13:49:00 GMT 1 #
I can't wait to order those cd's and distribute them among my skeptical colleagues! (there are already some of them trying things on my computer once in a while).....
Cheers,
Maarten
Maarten Kooiker | 2008-02-02 - 11:33:27 GMT 1 #
hey,
maybe you would want to blog about ubuntu gaming and my site http://www.playubuntu.com a massive list of games for ubuntu
john | 2008-02-03 - 16:01:38 GMT 1 #
"an OS that doesn't stop and grind and become unresponsive when it runs out of either RAM or HD."
-you sir are an idiot.
ar-lock | 2008-02-11 - 01:41:45 GMT 1 #
ar-lock: "you sir are an idiot."
Care to back that statement up ?
Mac OS X doesn't stop and grind when it runs out of either RAM or disk space. The Solaris servers I use at work don't have any problems continuing to work when they run out of disk space or RAM. Windows complains so much if you are using more than 90% of your disk space that it's painful to use.
Sure, they go a bit slower but not to the point where they become so completely unresponsive that you have to cycle the power. I have never had to cycle the power on any Mac due to running out of disk space or memory and I have run out of both on several occasions in the 15 years I have been using them.
On Ubuntu, all it takes is for me to hit a page in Firefox that has 20-30 screen-sized images on it (these kinds of pages are more common than you may think) and my computer will become so sluggish that switching to my second virtual terminal, logging in and killing the process is often impossible.
Seeing as this feature is possible (as demonstrated by at least two other operating systems) and is not included in the major competitor that Ubuntu is trying to woo users away from I think it's worth trying to implement.
To back my position up, I'm going to cite the Ubuntu Wiki which says: Current disk full behaviour in Ubuntu is very poor.
Dave | 2008-02-11 - 21:39:45 GMT 1 #
I hope they do something about whatever the bug is that causes Firefox 2.0.0.x to frequently crash at a much greater frequency than with Feisty. This is not good for the old reputation.
je88484 | 2008-02-14 - 02:03:00 GMT 1 #
Thanks for ripping my content
http://www.mopedia.co.uk/2008/01/hardy-heron-features.html
mohammed | 2008-03-10 - 18:00:09 GMT 1 #
Ubuntu rlz!
Rock | 2008-03-11 - 22:19:44 GMT 1 #
myfreepaysite
Mister | 2008-05-15 - 23:01:23 GMT 1 #