TechnicalOverview

Revision 133 as of 2009-04-15 12:12:26

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Introduction

The Ubuntu is happy to bring you the latest and greatest software the Open Source community has to offer. This is their latest result, the Ubuntu 9.04 release candidate, which brings a host of excellent new features.

For information about Kubuntu, see https://wiki.kubuntu.org/JauntyJackalope/RC/Kubuntu

Download

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

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

GNOME 2.26

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

  • brasero, version 2.26.0, developed by Philippe Rouquier and Luis Medinas, as an all-in-one CD burning application. Brasero is now the default disc burning utility in Nautilus.

brasero.png

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

gnome-display-properties.png

X.Org server 1.6

The latest X.Org server, version 1.6, is available in Jaunty. The latest Mesa 3D DRI, version 7.4, is also available. A number of video cards have been transitioned to free drivers as part of these updates.

The -ati driver has received numerous fixes and performance improvements. It now uses the EXA acceleration method by default. 2D acceleration support for the newest R6xx/R7xx family of cards is also available. 3D support is available up to R5xx cards for -ati. An updated -fglrx proprietary driver is available for R6xx/R7xx users who need 3D support.

The -intel driver now uses GEM for memory management. The new UXA acceleration architecture and DRI2 is available as an option.

Wacom tablet hotplugging

Wacom tablets now are enabled automatically when attached, no longer requiring xorg.conf modification. Button mapping configuration is not yet supported, but can be set manually by adding an fdi file to /etc/ha/fdi/policy/.

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 RC. Please open bugs if you experience any degradation, and tag them with boot-performance.

Linux kernel 2.6.28

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

Ext4 filesystem support

Ubuntu 9.04 RC 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 RC 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

Ubuntu 9.04 Server Edition makes it easy to experiment with cloud computing. Eucalyptus, an open source technology which is included in Ubuntu as a technology preview, enables you to use your own servers to deploy, experiment and test your own private cloud that matches the Amazon EC2 API. You can dynamically create virtual machines, configure multiple clusters into a single Cloud and even provide an EBS (elastic block storage) equivalent and an S3 compatible storage manager.

Turn-key mail servers

The dovecot-postfix package in Ubuntu 9.04 RC 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 RC 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

There are a small number of known bugs that users may run into with Ubuntu 9.04 RC which will be fixed before the final release. We have documented them here for your convenience along with any known workarounds.

For a full list of errata for Ubuntu 9.04, please see the Ubuntu 9.04 release notes.

  • Users of Intel video chipsets have reported performance regressions in Ubuntu 8.10 compared with previous releases. (252094) Many of the issues have been resolved in Ubuntu 9.04, but some remain.

    • Some users have found improved performance by using the "greedy" migration heuristic. This can be done by running "sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf", and adding Option "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy" to the Device section of your xorg.conf.

    • Alternately, a new experimental acceleration architecture option, "DRI2/UXA", is available for Intel graphics users which our testing has found provides significant performance improvements in some cases, but has also shown risk of severe stability problems. You can opt-in to enable this by running "sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf", and adding Option "AccelMethod" "UXA" to the Device section of your xorg.conf. Users wishing to maximize stability should stay with the standard default acceleration method, "EXA".

    • If none of the above helps, some users reported success with using an older driver version.

  • 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

  • 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. 341898

  • Users who were running eCryptfs on the Jaunty Alpha milestones are advised to re-encrypt any encrypted files. An upstream 2.6.28 kernel bug caused random kernel memory to be written to eCryptfs encrypted file headers. The fix has been applied and deployed to Ubuntu users in the Jaunty RC kernel. Ubuntu eCryptfs users running this kernel should re-encrypt each encrypted file using /usr/bin/ecryptfs-rewrite-file. For more information, please see ecryptfs-rewrite-file(1). See 345544.

Participate in Ubuntu

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

Help Spread the Word About Ubuntu 9.04

New banners are available for counting down the days until the Ubuntu 9.04 release:

You can add the countdown banner to your website to help build excitement for the new release as the date approaches.

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: