The first alpha release of Ubuntu 9.04 is now available:

Welcome to Jaunty Jackalope Alpha 1, which will in time become Ubuntu 9.04.

Pre-releases of Jaunty are *not* encouraged for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even frequent breakage. They are, however, recommended for Ubuntu developers and those who want to help in testing, reporting, and fixing bugs.

Alpha 1 is the first in a series of milestone CD images that will be released throughout the Jaunty development cycle. The Alpha images are known to be reasonably free of showstopper CD build or installer bugs, while representing a very recent snapshot of Jaunty. You can download it here:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/jaunty/alpha-1/ (Ubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/jaunty/alpha-1/ (Kubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/jaunty/alpha-1/ (Xubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/jaunty/alpha-1/
(Ubuntu Studio)

See http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Mirrors for a list of mirrors.

The primary changes from Intrepid have been the re-merging of changes from Debian. We've also been spending some time getting the new ARM port up and running (http://www.ubuntu.com/news/arm-linux), although its build daemons are still catching up so installable images will have to wait for a future Alpha release.

This is the very first roughly working set of images off the production line, and they haven't all been tested, so you should expect some bugs. Prominent among these are that some of the images are oversized and can only be tested using a DVD or a virtual machine, and that the desktop CD isn't ready yet! This release consists only of the alternate and server CDs; the desktop CD will follow in the next Alpha release.