It's only beta at the moment, but the open source community just kicked Ubuntu 8.04 out into the wilds. As you'd expect, the update brings an increment to Ubuntu's quaint, alphabetical naming convention. In other words, the new
Hardy Heron will supplant the current
Gutsy Gibbon as we make our way towards an October release of Intrepid Ibex. Got it? Good, now do yourselves a favor and check out Ubuntu's latest. Then decide for yourself if Hardy Heron's April 24th go-date means something special for you.
It has been a solid tick since we've seen a good FairPlay hack, so it's with great pleasure that we pass along El Tunes for Ubuntu 8.04 users everywhere. Tested to work on Hardy Heron using RhythmBox (but assumed to work on any modern Linux Distro with GStreamer and a media player that utilizes GStreamer), said plug-in enables open-source aficionados to play songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store. As for limitations, the current version has no Pause / Seek support and cannot de-authorize a machine for playback, but a future version should hopefully cure those two quirks and add support for purchased video content and audio streaming to an AirTunes device. Give it a shot and let us know how it treats ya.
