Introduction

The Ubuntu developers are moving quickly to bring you the absolute latest and greatest software the Open Source community has to offer. The Natty Narwhal Alpha 3 Release of Ubuntu 11.04, is a developer snapshot to give you an early glance at the next version of Ubuntu.

Get Ubuntu 11.04

Upgrading from Ubuntu 10.10

To upgrade from Ubuntu 10.10 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 '11.04' is available. Click Upgrade and follow the on-screen instructions.

To upgrade from Ubuntu 10.10 on a server system: install the update-manager-core package if it is not already installed; launch the upgrade tool with the command sudo do-release-upgrade -d; and follow the on-screen instructions. Note that the server upgrade is now more robust and will utilize GNU screen and automatically re-attach in case of e.g. dropped connection problems.

To upgrade from Xubuntu 10.10, follow the instructions above for Ubuntu 10.10.

Download the Alpha 3

This release is for developers only.

You can download Alpha 3 ISOs from:

• http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/natty/alpha-3/ (Ubuntu Desktop and Server)
  http://uec-images.ubuntu.com/releases/natty/alpha-3/ (Ubuntu Server for UEC and EC2)
  http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-netbook/releases/natty/alpha-3/ (Ubuntu Netbook ARM)
  http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/natty/alpha-3/ (Kubuntu)
  http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/natty/alpha-3/ (Xubuntu)
  http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/edubuntu/releases/natty/alpha-3/ (Edubuntu DVD)
  http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/natty/alpha-3/ (Ubuntu Studio)
  http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/mythbuntu/releases/natty/alpha-3/ (Mythbuntu)
  

New features in Natty

Please see the Natty blueprint list for details.

Please test and report any bugs you find:

• http://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs

Updated Packages

As with every new release, packages--applications and software of all kinds--are being updated at a rapid pace. Many of these packages came from an automatic sync from Debian's Unstable branch, others have been explicitly pulled in for 11.04 Natty Narwhal.

For a list of all packages being accepted for 11.04 Natty Narwhal, please subscribe to natty-changes: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/natty-changes

Some of the key packages making their first appearance with this Alpha 3 release are:

• Linux Kernel 2.6.38-rc6.

• LibreOffice 3.3.1

Linux kernel 2.6.38

Alpha 3 includes the 2.6.38-5.32 kernel which is based on the latest mainline kernel release candidate at kernel milestone freeze, 2.6.38-rc6. This is a major update from the v2.6.35 in Maverick, and a significant update from the 2.6.38-rc2 shipped with Alpha 2. The kernel is expected to be based on v2.6.38 for release.

This kernel update brings little new functionality but an array of bug fixes. There are major updates for Intel, ATI Radeon, and Nvidia graphics clearing up a number of black screen on boot issues. It also brings a number of fixes for widespread suspend/resume issues.

TO DO - apw - please update status of omap4 kernel

add in any other new packages here...

TO DO: - dpkg, ?? get list of new packages and comb through, as well as FFEs Alpha 3 includes

Upstart ??

TO DO: put in summary of new upstart features here and where to find how to use them - jhunt

Python 2.7

All main packages have now been built and and are installable with Python 2.7. If any incompatibilities are detected during runtime, please report them on the broken package in Ubuntu, and add the official tag 'python27' on the bug.

Ubuntu Desktop Edition

Unity is now the default Ubuntu Desktop session. If you encounter a problem with Unity, and it is not mentioned in the known bugs below, please follow the directions for filing a Unity bug.

The Unity Launcher is used to launch applications that are pinned to it, and switch between running applications. It supports Quick lists in its context menu as well as shortcuts activation. Finally, it also has full keyboard navigation and support for drag and drop to reorder Launcher icons.

There is a full Places implementation for Applications and files now, in addition to the "Dash" homepage (which you get when clicking on the Ubuntu logo) for most common actions. Search is functional as well. The icons can be dragged and dropped (with a black square image, still work in progress) from the Dash to be added to the Launcher.

Network Manager applet has been patched to use appindicator. Putting NM-Applet through as many test scenarios as possible is appreciated! Classic Gnome panel applets are not supported in Alpha 2, only Indicators.

There are now three session types available in gdm: "Ubuntu Desktop" will run Unity by default, "Ubuntu Classic Session" will run GNOME with gnome-panel. Ubuntu Classic supports all video hardware and video drivers, Ubuntu Desktop requires 3D driver support. Finally, you can force a "2D mode only" with "Ubuntu Classic Session (no effect)" which has the same interface than the Ubuntu Classic session.

If you install Unity 2D and you can't run Unity 3D, the fallback will be Unity 2D instead of the classic GNOME session.

Ubuntu Netbook Edition

In Natty the dedicated Ubuntu Netbook edition is only used on the preinstalled OMAP3 and OMAP4 armel images. On all other architectures the Ubuntu Netbook Edition has been merged with the Ubuntu Desktop Edition.

TO DO: ogra/davidm - please update the description below with what can be expected in A3 based on the the 3/1 images The ARM version uses Unity 2D, as there are no free 3D drivers available in a default installation.

It is still using a 2.6.35 kernel as a 2.6.38 kernel is not yet available for OMAP 4. TODO: check

Software Center

TO DO: joshuahoover - any new features for A3, or should I just remove this, this time around?

The ‘Ratings and Reviews’ feature landed in the Software Center, allowing anyone with an Ubuntu Single Sign On/Ubuntu One account to submit ratings and reviews for applications. Users can also optionally share reviews via integration with social networking services added into Gwibber.

Ubuntu Server

Provisioning servers have been made a bit more easier with cobbler and mcollective now available.

Powernap has been updated to 2.0. Powernap uses a new method to reduce power consumption, seen power savings of around 14% in most cases. It can now monitor user activity (Console, Mouse, Keyboard), system activity (load, processors, process IO), and network activity (wake-on-lan, udp ports tcp ports)

Default dhcpd server updated from dhcp3 to isc-dhcp (version 4).

Eucalyptus is now the latest stable point release (2.0.2) with security and efficiency fixes. (Known bug against the dhcpd server)

OpenStack (nova) in Universe is a technology preview, with a recent snapshot of 2011.2 (Cactus) release.

libvirt is updated to 0.8.8 with new features and bug fixes (see upstream changelog for full information 0.8.3->0.8.8)

The Alpha installs in most sceneries on both bare hardware and in virtual environments. Testing of the platform server, and additional server tasks is welcomed.

Ubuntu Server Cloud images

Running images in EC2, t1.micro is currently limited to arch amd64.

Images are now available in OVF format, and requires further testing.

cloud-init has been updated to 0.60, new features. This feature includes support resizing of / at first boot, adds minimal OVF transport (iso) support and allow setting of hostname when first booting.

The Ubuntu Server cloud have a newer kernel inside. See the kernel section for more information.

Kubuntu

TO DO: Riddell, please update to the highlights for A3

Kubuntu Natty Alpha 2 features:

• Plasma and KDE Applications 4.6
• Phonon GStreamer backend
• GTK Oxygen Theme
• Games on the CD
• udisks/upower replaces hal

For details see the Kubuntu Alpha 2 release page.

Kubuntu will not be shipping an armel port, with the Alpha 2 release.

Xubuntu

TO DO: get update from charlie-tca

The new gtk and xfwm4 theme for Xubuntu is now in Natty Narwhal. It is called "greybird". There is a new panel layout, including a launcher panel is in this release. The launcher panel is hidden at the bottom of the screen. The elementaryXubuntu icon theme has been updated. Xubuntu is using the Droid font for default, since it is a lightweight, good visibility font.

Xfce 4.8 is released and has been included:

• "The Xfce open source desktop is out with its first major update in two years this week. Xfce 4.8 brings the low-resource desktop into the modern era and provides usability improvements across the board. Xfce 4.8 is our attempt to update the Xfce code base to all the new desktop frameworks that were introduced in the past few years," The Xfce development team wrote in a statement. "We hope that our efforts to drop pieces like ThunarVFS and HAL with GIO, udev, ConsoleKit and PolicyKit will help bringing the Xfce desktop to modern distributions."

Menus in Xfce 4.8 are now editable with any menu editor that meets the freedesktop.org standards. Suggested editor is "alacarte".

Edubuntu

Ubiquity now has an additional step allowing users to fine-tune which applications should be installed on the final system.

QCad is now replaced by LibreCad.

The Unity session in Edubuntu is still work in progress, it's recommended to test using the Ubuntu Classic Desktop from the login screen instead.

For more details on what has changed in Edubuntu 11.04, please refer to: http://edubuntu.org/2011-03-02/edubuntu-1104-alpha-3-released

Ubuntu Studio

TO DO: get A3 update from Scott Lavender Unity: A patch has been created that will set the default xsession as gnome-classic instead of unity. Unfortunately, this patch hasn't been uploaded to the repositories in time to include with this image. Look for it on one of the daily images shortly after Alpha 3.

Therefore, please make sure after you have selected your login name that you change the session from "Ubuntu Desktop Edition" to "Ubuntu Classic Desktop" at the bottom of the login screen.

Kernel: Currently, Ubuntu Studio is shipping the -generic kernel. We are working with the Ubuntu Kernel Team to get a -lowlatency kernel into the archives which will then ship, in addition to the -generic kernel, in Ubuntu Studio. An interim -lowlatency kernel is available in Allesio Bogani's PPA.

If possible please report any testing results comparing the -generic kernel performance compared to the -lowlatency kernel performance at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RealTime#Natty%20Benchmarks.

Package Selection: The installed packages have changed. The packages shipped in Ubuntu Studio are more focused to support identified tasks and their derived work flows. Please note that this is a work in progress. If your favorite package is not include, please inform us about it and consider updating the task/work flows wiki page.

Network: Due to continuing problems, network-manager will replace gnome-network-admin. If performance degradation is experienced, please contact the Ubuntu Studio developer via email email or on IRC (#ubuntustudio-devel on freenode).

Installation Tasks: The task selections during installation have been updated. The audio tasks have been parsed into two groups: generation and recording. The 'generation' task selections is focused more on synthesizers and sequencers (i.e. tone generation) and the 'recording' task focuses on recording live musician performances.

Mythbuntu

TO DO: get summary of features in A3 from Mario Limoncello

Bare: The Mythbuntu-bare (Backup and Restore for the database and configuration files) Mythbuntu Control Centre plugin now has the ability to schedule backups on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

Known issues

As is to be expected, at this very early stage of the release process, there are some significant known bugs that users may run into with the Natty Alpha 3 Release. The ones we know about at this point (and some of the workarounds), are documented here so you don't need to spend time reporting these bugs again:

Graphics and Display

• The binary video drivers -fglrx and -nvidia do not have XServer 1.10 compatibility, so do not function in Alpha 3. We anticipate receiving an updated driver with this support from NVIDIA in the coming weeks, and an updated -fglrx from AMD at some point prior to Natty's release, but do not know their exact ETAs.
• The -nouveau video driver has had an ABI change but lacked a version number increment. Following Debian we're versioning it as 'libdrm-nouveau1a'. Be aware this can cause difficulties in upgrading/downgrading from PPAs that include libdrm packages.
• The -synaptics driver has received a new acceleration mechanism. Trackpad users may notice a significant decrease (or increase) in acceleration as a result. We are investigating configuration options for this new behavior.

• Windows sometimes don't appear or you can have the feeling that the interface is stuck (no mouse input) but still responsive to the keyboard. This is due to (709461) and is under investigation

• In focused dialog, alt-leftclick-dnd doesn't always work, it selects text like if alt was not pressed. (711911)

• Some people are reporting issues with LibreOffice interacting with unity.(709138)

• On some card, drag and drop on the launcher is showing an one pixel map when dragging (727647)

• Drag and drop from a place shows a black square (this is work in progress)

Since Unity is in active development right now, please check the unity bug reports before filing new bugs. If you encounter a bug and it is not mentioned in the unity bug reports, please follow the directions for filing a Unity bug.

Common Desktop applications

• Jockey sometimes reports a crash on startup. (711225)

Boot, installation and post-install

• In dual boot installs, side-by-side partitioning can be overridden by the user, resulting in data loss. After selecting the "Install alongside other operating systems" option, clicking on either the "Use entire partition" of "Use entire disc" buttons will override the side-by-side partitioning and result in a loss of data. (655950)

• If you are using the live-CD images, and do not have the 3D drivers installed for your hardware, you may see a message like "Sorry you don't have 3D support, install it for your graphic hardware to get Unity or please reboot and select "Classic Session" at startup.

• On some systems, Ubuntu fails to install under WUBI. (711562)

• Ubuntu desktop from usb stick freezes when the display switch from plymouth to X. (712173)

• On Ubuntu Alternate, LTSP won't work due to a nbd-client issue and a gnome-session issue. A workaround exists by removing /opt/ltsp/<arch>/usr/share/ldm/rc.d/I01-nbd-update from the chroot and running "sudo ltsp-update-image". Once that's done, make sure to always select "Classic Desktop" as session type or login will fail.

• Ubuntu Desktop i386 will occasionally not reboot after completing the installation and clicking 'Reboot Now' (712654)

• After installing from an Ubuntu or Xubuntu Alternate , when clicking on the update-notifier icon on the notification area, the updates are installed but then it crashes. This can be avoided, by doing a full shutdown after the first login after the installation, before running the update manager. (712346)

Migration

• During migration from 10.10, package xserver-xorg-core not installing/reinstalling. (711896)

• Natty sudo upgrade prompts for conffile update and potentially removes %admin from /etc/sudoers. (690873)

Kernel

• ?

Software Center

• ?

Ubuntu server edition

• In a small number of cases some instances not reachable via ssh. (712026)

• Eucalyptus is currently incompatible with the shipped dhcpd server, meaning instances do not achieve networking. (717166)

Kubuntu

• When restarting Kubuntu Live CD, in a language other than english, errors may be seen on screen before desktop starts. (656486)

• Kubuntu mobile images fail to load. (712061)

Edubuntu

• blinken, gcompris, icedtea6-plugin, nanny, ubuntu-edu-preschool, ubuntu-edu-primary were removed in error when upgrading from Maverick to Natty. (711904)

Xubuntu

• There is a bug in the "session-menu" plugin in Xfce4. To reboot or shutdown from VirtualBox, you must logout, then reboot or shutdown from GDM. (711571)

Mythbuntu

• The toolchain produces internal compile error for arm/xscale. (721021).

Other

For a listing of more known issues, please refer to the Natty Narwhal bug tracker in Launchpad.

Reporting bugs

It should come as no surprise that this Alpha 3 release of Natty Narwhal contains other bugs. Your comments, bug reports, patches and suggestions will help fix bugs and improve the quality of future releases. Please report bugs using the tools provided.

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