Around the time of the release of Ubuntu 7.10, I tried out the Gnash Flash player included in that release. Because Adobe’s Flash player can not be redistributed in the default Ubuntu installation, a choice of players are offered when you visit a page in Firefox with Flash content. There are three options in Ubuntu 8.04: Adobe Flash, Swfdec (new to this version), and Gnash.

Yesterday, as if you didn’t know was the release date of Hardy Heron Ubuntu 8.04, and once the servers cooled down and the torrents where seeded it was pretty easy to get a copy. My son who is 10 was jumping at the bit to upgrade his computer, a trusty old Inspiron 5100. So I decided to let him install without any help from good ol’ dad.

Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth has been telling Reuters that Sun is in the process of certifying Ubuntu on some of its low-end and mid-size hardware. The code it’s certifying is Hardy Heron, the Ubuntu 8.04 rev that’s due out later this month. Sun told the wire service that it’s making sure its Java programming language etc work with Heron.

The first alpha release of Ubuntu 8.04 (codenamed Hardy Heron) was scheduled to be released today, but the official release has been pushed back until tomorrow. However, a preliminary CD image of this first alpha release for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS has surfaced today on the Internet.

Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, like Red Hat with Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Novell with openSUSE and SUSE Linux, releases both a community version and a version for businesses or individuals who want to rely on a distribution with long-term technical support. Unlike Red Hat and Novell, though, Canonical doesn't separate the two versions with different names.