Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) Beta has been 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

About Ubuntu
------------

Ubuntu is a Linux distribution for your desktop, laptop, thin client and server, with a fast and easy install. The Ubuntu project makes no separation between our free edition and our enterprise edition - this is our best work and it is freely available.

Used by businesses, home users, schools and governments around the world, Ubuntu offers regular releases, a tight selection of excellent packages installed by default and professional commercial technical support from Canonical Ltd and hundreds of other companies.

Ubuntu 7.04 will be supported for 18 months on both the desktop and on the server. Upgrades to new releases will always be free of charge.

To Get Ubuntu 7.04 Beta
-----------------------

Download Ubuntu 7.04 Beta here (choose the mirror closest to you):

Europe:

http://se.releases.ubuntu.com/7.04 (Sweden)
http://es.releases.ubuntu.com/7.04 (Spain)
http://nl.releases.ubuntu.com/7.04 (The Netherlands)
http://ftp.snt.utwente.nl/pub/linux/ubuntu/7.04 (The Netherlands)
http://ie.releases.ubuntu.com/7.04 (Ireland)
http://it.releases.ubuntu.com/7.04 (Italy)
http://pl.releases.ubuntu.com/7.04 (Poland)
http://de.releases.ubuntu.com/7.04 (Germany)
http://bg.releases.ubuntu.com/7.04 (Bulgaria)

Australia:

http://au.releases.ubuntu.com/7.04

Africa:

http://za.releases.ubuntu.com/7.04 (South Africa)

Rest of the world:

http://releases.ubuntu.com/7.04 (Great Britain)

Please download using Bittorrent if possible.

To upgrade from Ubuntu 6.10 to Ubuntu 7.04 Beta, follow these instructions:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FeistyUpgrades

The final version of Ubuntu 7.04 is expected to be released in
April 2007.

Known Bugs
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* Resizing ext2/ext3 file systems may fail unless a full file system check has just been run. To work around this, run 'e2fsck -f DEVICE' (where DEVICE is the name of the device in question, such as /dev/sda1) and retry the resize operation after that completes. When using the desktop CD, you can run this from a terminal window; when using the alternate install CD, you can press Alt-F2 to get to a terminal, and Alt-F1 to return to the installer. https://launchpad.net/bugs/94647

* Systems with JMicron IDE(PATA) chipsets may experience a crash on boot. This was not fixed in time for beta release, but a planned kernel upload just after release will rectify the problem. A work around has not been tested, but would involve blacklisting the `generic` kernel module. https://launchpad.net/bugs/84964

Feedback and Helping
--------------------

If you would like to help shape Ubuntu, take a look at the list of ways you can participate at

http://www.ubuntu.com/community/participate/

Your comments, bug reports, patches and suggestions will help turn this Beta into the best release of Ubuntu ever. Please report bugs through the Launchpad bug tracker:

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/feisty/+bugs

If you have a question, or if you think you may have found a bug but are not sure, first try asking on the #ubuntu IRC channel on FreeNode, on the Ubuntu Users mailing list, or on the Ubuntu forums:

http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/

More Information
----------------

You can find out more about Ubuntu and about this preview release on our website, IRC channel and wiki. If you are new to Ubuntu, please visit:

http://www.ubuntu.com/

To sign up for future Ubuntu announcements, please subscribe to Ubuntu's very low volume announcement list at:

http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-announce