Ubuntu 7.04 Beta Released

The Ubuntu team is proud to announce the beta release of Ubuntu 7.04.

Ubuntu 7.04 is the most user-friendly Ubuntu to date and includes a ground-breaking Windows migration assistant, excellent wireless networking support and improved multimedia support.

Ubuntu 7.04 server edition adds support for hardware facilities that speed up the use of virtual machines as well as other improved hardware support, making it an excellent choice as a web, database, file and print server, the fastest growing area of Linux server use.

Desktop highlights
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Windows migration tool: The new migration tool recognises Internet Explorer bookmarks, Firefox favourites, desktop wallpaper, AOL IM contacts, and Yahoo IM contacts, and imports them into Ubuntu during installation. This offers easier and faster migration for new users of Ubuntu and individuals wanting to run a dual-boot system.

Easy-to-install codec wizards: A new guided wizard for installing codecs not shipped with Ubuntu gives users a safe way of installing codecs they can legally use to view multimedia content.

Plug and play network sharing with Avahi: This new feature allows users to automatically discover and join a wireless network and share music, find printers and more.

Server highlights
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Virtualisation support: On x86 systems with the Intel VT or AMD-V extensions, Kernel-based Virtual Machine support (KVM) allows users to run multiple virtual machines running unmodified Linux. Each virtual machine has private virtualised hardware: a network card, disk, graphics adapter, and so on. We have also added VMI support, which provides optimised performance under VMWare.

Edubuntu highlights
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Thin client: Edubuntu integrates the latest thin client technology out of the box. Edubuntu Classroom Server consists of two CDs, a server image and a server add-on image with additional education applications and languages.

Improved documentation: The Edubuntu handbook with tips and best practices for educators and educational IT administrators is included.

Thin Client highlights
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Print and sound support: Jetpipe, a new printing architecture for thin clients, greatly improves on previous technologies. Sound support in applications is also dramatically improved with the PulseAudio sound server.

Thin client management: Administrators can now manage thin client connections to a server more easily.

Other
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* On the Desktop: GNOME 2.18, OpenOffice.org 2.2.0rc3, X.org 7.2

* On the Server: Apache 2.2, PostgreSQL 8.2, PHP 5.2.1, LTSP 5.0

* "Under the hood": GCC 4.1.2, glibc 2.5, Linux 2.6.20, Python 2.5

The full release notes can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FeistyFawn/Beta