It's not exactly a nice move to link to the download folder before the main website has been updated, because as you might notice this has resulted in a lot of confusion from normal HN users who don't follow the Blender mailing lists/developer forums closely. The release is in fact today, the 30th of July, but possibly several hours from now, as many developers are currently at SIGGRAPH in California.
Even if the link is changed to https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-80/ (which it probably should be), that page hasn't been updated since RC3, which will possibly just confuse more people.
It would probably be better for the Blender community to not jump the gun and wait until the website is updated.
A probably paranoid note of caution: it isn't confirmed that this is correct.
RC3 was released July 24, this version was posted July 29, but currently (12h15 GMT on July 30) it hasn't been announced, either on the website or social media. But downloads for all platforms without RC* numbers have been added to the download directory (and they are not just duplicates of RC*).
The team were planning to build the final version yesterday for release today. So that does check out. But until they announce, it might be worth being patient for a couple of hours.
It is SIGGRAPH this week, so the team has been busting a move to get 2.80 out. Particularly after a couple of weeks of really impressive announcements on funding. So it is likely this is the final version, waiting for a formal launch later today. But it could just be a temporary thing.
If this is the real 2.8 (not rc3) this is great! Admittedly the beta was quite stable and usable, so no big change but for the symbol.
Having played with 2.8 for the last few months, it's really a massive overhaul. Combined with important investments from big studios like ubisoft [1], it's seem Blender is moving in an interesting direction.
I've been using blender 2.8 over the last few days and I've been liking it quite a bit.
The change from 2.7 is both big and small depending on the perspective.
Going in I was worried that I would need to relearn a lot of things, but while there were some big changes (like the ui, scripting, eevee, etc) I was still able to navigate things easily with only occasionally needing to look something up. I still think the old ui got way too much criticism, but this new ui is better so hopefully this will please everyone. All in all, a really good .x update, but definitely not a major one like 3.0 will be.
I am also kind of struggling with the new rendering engine. While it's way way faster, the renders are different enough especially with certain things like shadows and transparency from cycles that I am on the fence about what my future workflow will look like.
Blender is such an amazing piece of software and probably one of the most successful oss applications out there. This is another really big step forward for it.
Everything on that page suggests that it isn't ready yet.
Downloads still default to 2.79 or alternatively the release candidate.
edit: not sure if I clicked the wrong link or something but I was directed to blender.org and not the current link that goes to the files directly ( https://download.blender.org/release/Blender2.80/ ).
It's not exactly a nice move to link to the download folder before the main website has been updated, because as you might notice this has resulted in a lot of confusion from normal HN users who don't follow the Blender mailing lists/developer forums closely. The release is in fact today, the 30th of July, but possibly several hours from now, as many developers are currently at SIGGRAPH in California.
Even if the link is changed to https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-80/ (which it probably should be), that page hasn't been updated since RC3, which will possibly just confuse more people.
It would probably be better for the Blender community to not jump the gun and wait until the website is updated.