I installed the Elementary OS Freya Beta tonight. The filename says August 10, 2014 on it. I installed it as a virtual machine in Virtual Box. I currently use Elementary OS – Luna everyday in Virtualbox. The settings are 1 core and 2 gigs of RAM. I’ve also allocated 15 GB. Last time 15 GB wasn’t enough for all my extra stuff.
On first boot after install I got the blue background and on the top was Applications, the date and time, and network and power buttons. The launcher on the bottom didn’t appear so after a reset it shows now. I’ll need to figure out if I can install guest additions and get the screen looking better. First impressions is that this is much easier on the eyes than Luna was.
I pulled up software center to install chromium and can’t even find a search box. I’m guessing it is hidden due to the large view I am seeing in my little window. I did eventually find chromium but I would prefer to have searched for it. Also, before it downloaded it asked what source I wanted to use. The only source available was universe. I just don’t remember that from last time.
I”m going to post some more about it tomorrow. I know it is in beta but its had several months to mature since Ubuntu 14.04 was released.