The new release is out in public. It contains the following notable changes:

• ATI/AMD Catalyst 8.9
• unified hard disk/USB flash disk installer; new in this version is the hard disk installation:

• it creates three partitions on the hard disk (boot, fat32 – swap – media, ext3)

• it disables the “root” login (as per Ubuntu standards)

• it asks for the reset of the “xbmc” password

• the XBMC profile (userdata, skins, settings, etc) is saved onto the root of the USB flash disk in a directory “dotXBMC” so that it should be easier to add skins and backup settings and library databases
• the XBMC log file is saved onto the root of the USB flash disk to ease debugging

Enjoy, and come to the forums to provide feedback!