The Ubuntu team is proud to announce the release of Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS, the first maintenance update to Ubuntu’s 8.04 LTS release.

In all, over 200 updates have been integrated, and updated installation media has been provided so that fewer updates will need to be downloaded after installation. These include security updates and corrections for other high-impact bugs, with a focus on maintaining stability and compatibility with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS.

To Get Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS
To download Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS, or obtain CDs, visit: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download.

Beginning with this maintenance release, users of Ubuntu 6.06 LTS will be offered an automatic upgrade to 8.04 via Update Manager. As always, upgrades to the latest version of Ubuntu are entirely free of charge. For further information about upgrading, see http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/upgrading.

We recommend that all users read the release notes, which document caveats and workarounds for known issues. They are available at http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/804.

About Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS
This is the first maintenance release of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, which continues to be supported with maintenance updates and security fixes until April 2011 on desktops and April 2013 on servers.

Since its release, Ubuntu 8.04 LTS has seen widespread use in a variety of desktop and server deployments, and received a great deal of feedback from users. The Ubuntu team has focused their efforts on resolving issues reported by people deploying Ubuntu out in the real world, including:

• Firefox has been upgraded to the final 3.0 release from Mozilla, correcting a number of issues discovered during their beta test. (#237690)
• The Samba client allows LANMAN authentication again, correcting problems connecting to some NAS and older Windows servers (#209520).
• Various problems with the FUSE interface to GNOME’s new virtual file system have been fixed, correcting certain problems accessing network file shares (#211205, #212789).
• The behaviour of the timezone map in the live CD installer has been improved, making it simpler to understand and use (#203423).
• The “Hardware Drivers” application no longer reports the proprietary nVidia driver as being enabled when it isn’t installed (#216650).
• The Transmission menu item is now called “Transmission BitTorrent Client” to clearly explain its purpose (#184238).

While we have fixed a number of audio-related issues, including a scheduler problem that caused audio stuttering under load (#188226), other audio playback problems may still exist, because so far we have been unable to verify a targeted fix that does not cause regressions for other users. We will continue to investigate this, and would welcome people with problems to provide feedback on Luke Yelavich’s test packages. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/191027 for details.

Updated images have also been released for members of the Ubuntu family which do not carry the LTS (Long-Term Support) label, namely Kubuntu, the Kubuntu KDE4 remix, Gobuntu, Xubuntu, and Ubuntu Studio, with images for Mythbuntu to follow soon. These additional images are provided to the community in response to USN-612-1, a major security vulnerability identified earlier in the Ubuntu OpenSSL packages, to ensure that secure installation images are available to all users in the Ubuntu family. For more information about this security vulnerability, please see: http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-612-1

See http://www.ubuntu.com/usn for a full list of Ubuntu security updates. As of 2008-07-02, all updates affecting packages on the CD have been applied.

A summary of notable updates is available here. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu for specific information about a particular bug number.