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The ubuntu developers just announced the first alpha release of the next Ubuntu version - 8.04 (codenamed “Hardy Heron”). major changes include:

• The latest Xorg version - Xorg 7.3, with an emphasis on better autoconfiguration without config files.
• Massive merge from Debian - every release cycle brings lots of updates and new packages from debian

More information.
Now go get it, test and bug report

Edit:
yep, it’s definitely not 8.10

The latest ubuntu, codenamed “Gutsy Gibbon”, was released today. It has some very interesting features Release notes and is definitely the best one so far.

After skipping the one version and not having my vmware image updated for ubuntu 7.04 server, i am at least releasing the new version early. I didn’t dedicated much time to testing, so feel free to contact me for bug reports or any questions.

Get it here: VMware - Ubuntu Server 7.10

Liferea is an aggregator for online news feeds. There are many other news readers available, but these others are not available for Linux or require many extra libraries to be installed. Liferea tries to fill this gap by creating a fast, easy to use, easy to install news aggregator for GTK/GNOME.

After using it, the first thing i did was to uninstall my firefox news feed plugins, as i won’t ever use them again (at least not on linux)

Some of the cool features i like, among others:

• Easy to use
• Searching feeds for content, and permanent search folders
• Can stand in the system tray, and show the ammount of new (unread) items
• Supports browser tabs inside the Lifearea application
• Complete set of preferences

You can read more about other functionality in the docs page, or even visit the lifearea blog wich has some updates on the development branch.

Main interface

Installing
Installing Lifearea on ubuntu is as easy as going to the “Applications” menu, “Add/Remove…” and select “Internet” - you can type “feed” on the search box to show only news readers - check “Lifearea Feed Reader” and press OK.

I haven’t tried installing it on any other distro because i’m only using ubuntu at this time, but i believe it shouldn’t be much harder.

Linux Kernel 2.6.21 has just been announced by Linus Torvalds.
2.6.21 improves the virtualization features merged in 2.6.20 with VMI (http://lwn.net/Articles/175706), a paravirtualization interface that will be used by Vmware (and maybe -probably not- Xen) software.
KVM does get initial paravirtualization along with live migration and host suspend/resume support (http://lwn.net/Articles/223839).
2.6.21 also gets a tickless idle loop mechanism called “Dynticks” (http://lwn.net/Articles/223185), a feature built in top of “clockevents” which unifies the timer handling and brings true high-resolution timers.
Other features are: bigger kernel command-line, optional ZONE_DMA; support for the PA SEMI PWRficient CPU, for a Cell-based “celleb” architecture from Toshiba, better PS3 support: support for NFS IPv6, IPv4 <-> IPv6 IPSEC tunneling support, UFS2 write support, kprobes for PPC32, kexec and oprofile for ARM, public key encription for ecryptfs, Fcrypt and Camilla cipher algorithms, NAT port randomization, audit lockdown mode, many new drivers and many other small improvements.

Envy is an application for Ubuntu Linux written in Python and PyGTK which will:

1. detect the model of your graphic card (ATI and Nvidia cards are supported). However “Manual installation” is also available
2. download the right version of the proprietary driver for your ATI or Nvidia card from ATI or Nvidia’s websites
3. handle the dependencies (compilers, OpenGL, etc.) (according to your OS version and kernel) required to build the module
4. install/uninstall the driver
5. set up your xorg.conf (i.e. the configuration file of the Xserver) for you (according to your system specifications)
6. restart the Xserver for you (if you wish so) (this feature is available only in the textual interface)

Interested? Visit Alberto Milone’s blog (the author) for the latest news about envy, or head on to the project’s page to grab it. (packages available for Ubuntu Feisty Fawn 7.04 and Ubuntu Edgy Eft 6.10)