With the release of Hardy Heron only 5 days away, Canonical has announced the Hardy Heron 8.04 Long Term Release Candidate. Long term releases are releases that Canonical will support for three years on the desktop, and five years on servers.

One of the great services that Canonical offers with Ubuntu is shipping free installation disks to anyone who requests them. With 8.04 “Hardy Heron” going into final release, they have started accepting pre-orders for CD’s at Shipit. If it’s difficult for you to do large downloads, or you’re just someone who would appreciate a shiny pressed CD of Ubuntu, head over and put in your request!

Contrary to recent rumors, Dell has no plans to introduce Ubuntu pre-loads on its servers, according to The VAR Guy, our sister Web site. Details here.

Installing Ubuntu Linux onto a laptop ranges from simple to challenging, depending on the hardware you choose. What is that experience like? Here is how it went for me and where I found the support to do it.

The Everex Cloudbook is one of the more recent entries into the realm low-power portable computers that come pre-loaded with Linux. In the case of the Cloudbook, it comes with gOS “Rocket,” which is based on Ubuntu. It is the perfect companion to the Sager laptop I recently purchased and reviewed, in that it virtually everything that the Sager isn’t. Small, light, and virtually pocketable. All while being powerful enough for most of the day-to-day tasks that come up while I’m out and about.