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Hardy Heron - Linux getting better!

A few months back, I had requested Canonical to dispatch me (they still do it for free!) a CD of Ubuntu Linux 8.04 LTS (hardy heron). I was still running an older version of the same distro for quite some time and this was an opportunity to change. I had installed the newer OS and these are a few observations:
  • Display is much better, with my ancient VIA chip-set getting recognized with 3D acceleration too. Now, I can play most of the 3D games (tuxkart, supertux, billards GL) and a few non 3D games (chromium) in full glory.
  • Wireless is still a problem. My netgear wireless adapter was able to recognize my ADSL router among the other routers in range in my neighborhood, but fails to connect frequently. But once connected, they blaze through at 200kbps. I have not been able to see this kind of speed on a windows machine though...
  • Audio CDs are mounted properly. This happened to be a problem with 7.04 when only data CDs were recognized.
  • Video / audio codecs are easier to download from the main application installer.
I happened to find more applications available on the Linux platform, especially for kids compared to windows. TuxPaint, TuxMath, celestica, GCompris are some must haves. And my son's current favorite is Pingus (a lemmings clone where you deal with penguins instead).

Of couse, you have the standard suite of tools for regular work (open office), CD burning, browsing (FireFox), e-mail (Evolution) and all this happened to work well on my 4 year old Athlon with 384 megs of RAM!

Keep watching... I'll post in a few screen-shots.
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