Mozilla has now “officially” released Firefox 3 beta 1 to the public. I say officially because the link to directly download from the Mozilla FTP servers has actually been on sites like Digg for a couple weeks now (though Mozilla tried to ask nicely that you not download it).

CNET has a good overview of some of what’s new as well as a quick test of a few functions/sites that work/don’t work with the beta. If your itching to see what all the fuss has been about over the bugs and just how stable Firefox 3 is, now is your chance.

Mashable thinks the final Firefox 3 could be ready to go in a month or so given Firefox 2’s beta timetable. I know even now Mozilla is a few months behind their stated schedule for FF3, but I’m really not sure what the rush is. Firefox 2 came out just a little over a year ago and thanks to Microsoft the public is now used to a solid 5 years between browser iterations. But hey, if it’s ready, it’s ready, we’ll see… Let’s at least hope the speed has improved with the Gecko 1.9 engine.

The beta is available for Windows, OS X, and Linux in over 20 languages. Download it here.