Announcing the beginning of Ubuntu's Next Release: "Hoary Hedgehog"

In the past few weeks, users who have been following the mailing lists have heard developers saying "no" to the introduction of new features with comments like, "we'll put that on the list for Hoary." The Ubuntu development team is pleased to announce that, while still in an immature stage, "Hoary" has arrived.

With Ubuntu 4.10 'Warty Warthog' safely and successfully out the door, the Ubuntu developers have begun doing work on our next release, codenamed the 'Hoary Hedgehog.' With our six-month release schedule, it is due to be released in April of 2005.

For those of you who have missed the daily churn of new packages, Hoary is for you. It will include daily updates from Debian's development branch (sid), with Ubuntu additions and customizations where appropriate. For the next six months, it is within Hoary that Ubuntu development will be taking place and where the latest version of Ubuntu packages will always be available.

PLEASE NOTE: While up-to-date, this development snapshot is not (and not meant to be) a stable distribution. Bugs and breakage, while they will be kept under control wherever possible, *are* a reality in such a system. Pre-release versions of Hoary are *not* encouraged for anyone needing a
stable system or anyone without who is not comfortable running into occasional breakage. It *is* recommended for Ubuntu developers and those who want to help in testing, reporting, and fixing bugs.

To install Hoary, you may edit your /etc/apt/sources.list configuration file to replace all instances of 'warty' with 'hoary.' You can then go about updating and upgrading to Hoary with apt, aptitude or synaptic as you would normally.

Users who decide to upgrade to Hoary may be interested in signing up on the Ubuntu development mailing list to track major problems and discussion in the development process if they have not done so already. They may also be interested submitting any bugs they find in the Ubuntu Bugzilla:

- Bugzilla: https://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/

Finally, there is also now a mailing list that will include details *all* of the changes made in hoary (just like 'warty-changes' did for Warty). You can subscribe to it here:
http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/hoary-changes

Enjoy the ride!