Ubuntu 8.04.2 is officially released today for Hardy Heron. This marks the second of four scheduled point releases of the Long Term Support (LTS) model of this version of Ubuntu.

Because a LTS release such as Hardy enjoys an update cycle of at least three years, the number of updates that occur since that version’s initial release date can grow quite large. Ubuntu has defined a six-month point release cycle, beginning three months after the initial release, within the LTS lifetime so that installation media can be brought up-to-date in order to lessen the burden of updating any new LTS installations. Anyone with a currently updating LTS installation will reach these point releases automatically through the update system.

You can verify that your version of Hardy has reached this point release at the command prompt, which you can reach by opening a Terminal window, and issuing the following command:
lsb_release -a

You should see output similar to:

adam@obsidian:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID:    Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 8.04.2
Release:    8.04
Codename:    hardy

As you can see from the description that my laptop’s installation is current with this last point release.

There will be two more point releases, the third happening in July of this year and the fourth taking place next year in January. That will mark the end of the point release cycle for Hardy as the next LTS version of Ubuntu, 10.04, will be available for use.

Head on over to http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download to obtain your 8.04.2 installation media.

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