Introduction

The Ubuntu developers are moving quickly to bring you the latest and greatest software the Open Source Community has to offer. This is the Ubuntu 9.04 beta release, which brings a host of excellent new features.

Note: This is a beta release. Do not install it on production machines. The final stable version will be released on April 23rd, 2009.

Download

Get it while it's hot. ISOs and torrents are available at:

• http://releases.ubuntu.com/releases/9.04/ (Ubuntu Desktop and Server)
  http://releases.ubuntu.com/releases/edubuntu/9.04/ (Ubuntu Education Edition)
  http://releases.ubuntu.com/releases/kubuntu/9.04/ (Kubuntu)
  http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/9.04/beta/ (Ubuntu Netbook Remix and Ubuntu MID)
  http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/9.04/beta/ (Xubuntu)
  http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/9.04/beta/ (UbuntuStudio)
  http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/mythbuntu/releases/9.04/beta/ (Mythbuntu)
  

Local mirrors are also available:

• FIXME: import mirror list automatically

Upgrading from Ubuntu 8.10

To upgrade from Ubuntu 8.10 on a desktop system, press Alt+F2 and type in "update-manager -d" (without the quotes) into the command box. Update Manager should open up and tell you: New distribution release '9.04' is available. Click Upgrade and follow the on-screen instructions.

To upgrade from Ubuntu 8.10 on a server system: install the update-manager-core package if it is not already installed; edit /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades and set Prompt=normal; launch the upgrade tool with the command sudo do-release-upgrade; and follow the on-screen instructions.

New features since Ubuntu 8.10

These features are showcased for your attention. Please test them and report any bugs you find on Launchpad:

• http://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu

GNOME 2.26

Ubuntu 9.04 Beta includes the latest GNOME 2.26 desktop environment with a number of great new features, including:

• brasero, developed by Philippe Rouquier and Luis Medinas, as an all-in-one CD burning application

• Improved handling of multiple monitors with an updated gnome-display-properties by Federico Mena Quintero.

X.Org server 1.6

The latest X.Org server, version 1.6, is available in Jaunty. A number of video cards have been transitioned to free drivers as part of this update.

New style for notifications and notification preferences

Included in Jaunty is a simple menu which can be used to set preferences for notification icons, such as where they pop up on the taskbar. Ubuntu 9.04 beta also includes a whole new notification system, as shown in the Flash movie here:

http://www.markshuttleworth.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/jaunty904_notifications_example1_web_092.swf

Boot performance

A number of improvements to the Ubuntu start-up process bring significantly improved boot performance to Ubuntu 9.04 Beta.

Linux kernel 2.6.28

Ubuntu 9.04 Beta includes the 2.6.28-11.37 kernel based on 2.6.28.8.

Ext4 filesystem support

Ubuntu 9.04 Beta supports the option of installing the new ext4 file system. ext3 will remain the default filesystem for Jaunty, and we will consider ext4 as the default for the next release based on user feedback. There has been extensive discussion about the reliability of applications running on ext4 in the face of sudden system outages. Applications that use the conventional approach of writing data to a temporary file and renaming it to its final location will have their reliability expectations met in Ubuntu 9.04 beta; further discussion is ongoing in the kernel community.

Ext4 support in GRUB was provided by Colin King. If you choose to upgrade your / or /boot filesystem in place from ext2 or ext3 to ext4 (as documented on the ext4 wiki), then you must also use the grub-install command after upgrading to Ubuntu 9.04 Beta to reinstall your boot loader. If you do not do this, then the version of GRUB installed in your boot sector will not be able to read the kernel from the ext4 filesystem and your system will fail to boot.

Ext4 support in gparted has been provided by Curtis Gedak.

Cloud computing

The Ubuntu Server Edition 9.04 Beta includes a technology preview of Eucalyptus, giving users the ability to deploy Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)-compatible clouds in their own data centers.

Turn-key mail servers

The dovecot-postfix package in Ubuntu 9.04 Beta provides an easy-to-deploy mail server stack, with support for SMTP, POP3, and IMAP with TLS and SASL.

dovecot-postfix was packaged by Ante Karamatić.

Testing wanted

There are a number of specific areas of focus in Ubuntu 9.04 where the developers could use from more feedback from users. Read on to find ways that you can use the beta to help to improve the Ubuntu 9.04 final release.

Suspend/resume testing

The Ubuntu kernel team has been gathering information about what laptops do and don't suspend and resume correctly. If you are running Ubuntu on a laptop and would like to participate to help make sure the kernel team has accurate information about Ubuntu's support for your hardware, please see KernelTeam/SuspendResumeTesting.

Hotkey testing

Hotkey handling has been a source of difficulty in the past two Ubuntu releases. Significant improvement has been made to the range of hotkeys supported in Ubuntu 9.04, but more user feedback is still needed, to help identify those hotkeys that are not yet supported. If you have a keyboard with a hotkey that doesn't function as you expect, please see Hotkeys/Troubleshooting for directions on reporting this problem in the right place.

Kerneloops

With the Ubuntu 9.04 Beta release, we invite you to install and test the kerneloops package. kerneloops is a daemon that collects kernel crash information and then submits the extracted signature to the kerneloops.org website for statistical analysis and presentation to the Linux kernel developers. Additionally, a bug report regarding the crash in question will be filed within Launchpad for tracking purposes.

Known issues

As is to be expected at this stage of the release process, there are several known bugs that users are likely to run into with Ubuntu 9.04 Beta. We have documented them here for your convenience along with any known workarounds, so that you don't need to spend time reporting these bugs again:

• A bug in an Ubuntu-specific patch to X server logging code will cause X sessions to crash after they have been running for longer than a day. Users encountering this bug should upgrade to the latest version of the xserver-xorg-core package, which will be available immediately after the beta release. 328035.

• Users of Intel i8x5 video chipsets are unable to load X, getting an error message of "Fatal server error: Couldn't bind memory for BO front buffer". As a workaround, use the VESA driver by logging into a text console, running "sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf", and adding the line Driver "vesa" to the Device section. If in doubt, please do not upgrade to Ubuntu 9.04 Beta yet. 304871

• Ctrl-Alt-Backspace is now disabled, to reduce issues experienced by users who accidentally trigger the key combo. Users who do want this function can enable it in their xorg.conf, or via the command dontzap --disable.

• Ubuntu 8.10 systems installed from the desktop CD mistakenly had the lilo package installed as well as grub, although grub was used for booting. If you use the recommended Update Manager upgrade method, then the lilo package will be removed if it does not appear to be used. If you upgrade using some other method and are sure that you only use the GRUB boot loader, then we recommend that you remove the lilo package manually. 314004

• If any filesystems are mounted when starting the desktop CD installer, then a dialog labelled "Unmount partitions that are in use?" will be presented. Unfortunately, the buttons on this dialog box are poorly named: "Continue" attempts to unmount filesystems and then repeats, which will often just display the same dialog box again, while "Go Back" ignores this condition and continues. This will be corrected for the final release. 346589

• On desktop installations from USB disks, such as typical Ubuntu Netbook Remix installations, the installer displays a warning about the fact that the installation medium itself (often /dev/sdb) is mounted. This warning is unnecessary, because the fact that it is mounted is completely normal, and does not interfere with the user's ability to install the system to devices other than the USB disk itself. You should ignore this warning; note that in order to do so you will need to select "Go Back", due to the issue above. 347916

• In some cases, the "Prepare Disk Space" screen in the desktop installer displays obviously incorrect partition sizes in its graphical disk previews. This is only an error in the preview and does not reflect a problem with the partitioning changes that will actually be applied. 336203

• The mythtv frontend in mythbuntu fails to render fonts correctly when using video drivers other than the Intel or closed-source nVidia drivers. This issue is expected to be resolved for the final 9.04 release. 314898

Reporting bugs

It should come as no surprise that this beta release of Jaunty Jackalope contains other bugs. Your comments, bug reports, patches and suggestions will help fix bugs and improve future releases. Please report bugs through the Ubuntu bugtracker

If you want to help out with bugs, the Bug Squad is always looking for help.

Participate in Ubuntu

If you would like to help shape Ubuntu, take a look at the list of ways you can participate at

• http://www.ubuntu.com/community/participate/

More information

You can find out more about Ubuntu on the Ubuntu website and Ubuntu wiki.

To sign up for future Ubuntu development announcements, please subscribe to Ubuntu's development announcement list at:

• http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-announce