TechnicalOverview

Revision 207 as of 2011-04-13 00:35:01

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Introduction

The Ubuntu developers are moving quickly to bring you the absolute latest and greatest software the open source community has to offer. Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" Beta 2 gives a preview of the next version of Ubuntu.

Naming Changes

Ubuntu Netbook Edition and Ubuntu Desktop Edition have been combined into a single Edition called simply "Ubuntu" (with no "Edition").

Ubuntu Server Edition has been renamed to simply "Ubuntu Server" (again, the "Edition" has been dropped).

Get Ubuntu 11.04

Upgrade from Ubuntu 10.10

To upgrade from Ubuntu 10.10 on a desktop system, press Alt+F2, type in "update-manager -d" (without the quotes), and press Enter. Update Manager will open up and display the message, "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 package update-manager-core if it is not already installed. Then execute the command sudo do-release-upgrade -d, and follow the on-screen instructions. Note that the server upgrade is now more robust, and thus will utilize GNU screen and automatically re-attach in case unexpected problems arise, e.g. dropped connection problems.

The same instructions apply to all other editions of Ubuntu (such as Kubuntu, Xubuntu, etc.)

Download Beta 2

Beta 2 images can be downloaded from a location near you:

In addition, they can be found at the following links:

Features new to Natty Narwhal

For complete details and plans for Ubuntu 11.04, please see the Natty blueprints list:

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, while others have been explicitly pulled in for the development of Natty Narwhal.

For a list of all packages being accepted into Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal", please subscribe to natty-changes:

Some of the key updated packages in Ubuntu 11.04 Beta 2 release are:

  • Linux kernel 2.6.38
  • LibreOffice 3.3.2

  • GCC 4.5
  • Python 2.7
  • dpkg 1.16.0
  • Upstart 0.9

Linux kernel 2.6.38

ogasawara: please update

Beta 2 includes the 2.6.38-?? kernel which is based on the latest mainline kernel, 2.6.38. This is a major update from the v2.6.35 in Maverick, and a minor update from the 2.6.38-7.39 shipped with Beta 1.

This kernel update brings little new functionality updates over the version available in Beta 1, but more bug fixes ....

As for the changes from the 2.6.35 Maverick kernel to the 3.6.38 Natty kernel, some of the highlights include upstream acceptance of AppArmor, support for Intel IPS (Intelligent Power Sharing), removal of the Big Kernel Lock, file system improvements to Btrfs, Ext4, and XFS, and of course the usual driver updates and support for new hardware.

GCC 4.5

The GNU toolchain has transitioned to be based off of gcc 4.5 for i386, amd64, ARM omap/omap4 and PowerPC architectures.

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.

dpkg 1.16.0-pre

This is a merge from the community snapshot for multiarch support. This brings us up-to-date with staged changes for the upcoming Debian 1.16.0 dpkg release, as well as pulling in the current version of the in-progress multiarch work from Raphael Hertzog, sponsored by Linaro Ltd.

Upstart 0.9

Upstart has been updated to 0.9.4-1. There are a lot of new features: its now "chroot-aware", there is support for basic job/event visualization, there are two new initctrl commands (show-config, check-config), a socket bridge is now provided, the latest D-Bus version now allows D-Bus services to be activated via Upstart, a manual job configuration stanza, and override file support is now available.

Please see Upstart Technical overview for more details.

Ubuntu

Unity

Unity is now the default Ubuntu Desktop session.

The Unity Launcher has many new features in Natty Narwhal, a few of which are:

  • drag and drop re-ordering of launcher icons
  • full keyboard navigation support

  • launcher activation through keyboard shortcuts
  • right-click context menu quick-lists
  • switching between running applications

There is a full Lens implementation for applications and files now, in addition to the "Dash" start screen (which will come up when clicking on the Ubuntu logo on the top-left of the screen) for the most common actions, such as searching. Also, icons can be dragged and dropped from Dash to the Unity Launcher.

There are now three session types available in GDM:

  • Ubuntu: it runs Unity. It requires 3D driver support.
  • Ubuntu Classic: it runs GNOME with gnome-panel. It supports all video hardware and video drivers.
  • Ubuntu Classic (No Effects): it runs GNOME with gnome-panel. It is in 2D mode only.

Classic GNOME panel applets are not supported in Unity, only indicators such as nm-applet.

If you encounter a problem with Unity, and it is not mentioned in the known issues below, please follow the directions for filing a Unity-specific bugs.

X.org/Mesa

X.org 1.10.0 and Mesa 7.10.1 are the new versions included with 11.04.

Multitouch in X.org and Qt

The X server includes a prototype of the multitouch input extension (XInput 2.1). The Qt toolkit also includes pre-release support for multitouch.

Network Manager

The Network Manager applet has been patched to use appindicator.

Putting nm-applet through as many test scenarios as possible will be much appreciated!

Banshee

Banshee 2.0 is the standard music player now and has been integrated into the sound menu.

LibreOffice

LibreOffice 3.3.2 has been included in 11.04 as the default office package.

Firefox

Ubuntu 11.04 comes with the latest Firefox 4.0 as standard web browser.

Shotwell

Shotwell has been updated to 0.9.1.

Ubiquity

Preparing your computer for Ubuntu is now much simpler, with clearly worded options detailing the exact set of actions that will take place with your choice.

Also, you can now replace or upgrade existing Ubuntu installations with the Desktop CD installer.

Ubuntu One

The Ubuntu One control panel now allows selective syncing. Note: music purchased from the Ubuntu One Music Store is not selected to sync by default.

The Ubuntu One launcher icon now displays sync progress. Important notifications will be displayed through OSD notifications.

File syncing is faster now, thanks to the improvement of scanning which files to sync.

Software Center

Ubuntu Software Center now allows users to "rate & review" installed applications, provided that they have Ubuntu Single Sign On accounts.

Users can also optionally share reviews via integration with social networking services added into Gwibber.

Ubuntu Software Center has also had improvements made in the usability (fully integrated software purchase workflow, improved feedback on install/remove, and alternate search suggestions). The startup time performance has also improved in 11.04.

Ubuntu Netbook on ARM

In Natty the dedicated Ubuntu Netbook 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's Desktop.

The ARM version is the first one to ship our new Unity 2D interface by default, as there are no free 3D drivers available initially in a default installation.

The 2.6.38 kernel for OMAP4 got many driver improvements, most notably the display driver was switched to use the HDMI port by default and auto detect the monitor resolution.

Ubuntu Headless

Ubuntu 11.04 Beta 2 release had updated the "Headless" developer image for OMAP3 and OMAP4 hardware.

This image is fully set up for the serial port and contains a minimal command line install.

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 Beta 2 installs in most scenarios on both bare hardware and in virtual environments. Testing of the platform server, and additional server tasks is welcomed.

Cloud images

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

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. Rightscale support has been added to cloud-config and cloud-init.

Webscale technologies have been packaged and included, Cassandra 0.7.0, ZeroMQ, Membase, and XtraBackup.

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

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

Kubuntu

Kubuntu 11.04 Beta 2 sports the latest KDE software including KDE Platform 4.6.1.

Kubuntu now provides a working Samba filesharing module that lets you add and manage shares from the folder's Properties dialogs.

The new Language Selector module allows you to add, remove, and manage system languages directly from System Settings.

An updated system-config-printer-kde brings a number of bugfixes to Kubuntu's printer management tool.

For more information, please refer to:

Xubuntu

As Xubuntu uses Xfce instead of Gnome Desktop Environment, Unity will not be the default.

This milestone includes the Xubuntu wallpaper for this release. The wallpaper is designed to integrate well with the new graybird theme.

The installation slideshow has been updated for Natty Narwhal, and really displays the best of Xubuntu.

There is a new panel layout including a launcher panel in this release. The launcher panel is hidden at the bottom of the screen.

The Elementary Xubuntu icon theme has been updated.

Xubuntu is using the Droid font by default, since it is a lightweight, good visibility font.

Xfce 4.8

Xfce 4.8 has been released and is included in Natty Narwhal:

  • "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. The 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.

Edubuntu 11.04 ships with the classical Gnome desktop by default but Unity is available as an option in the installer. When selecting Unity, both the 3D and 2D versions will be installed to ensure you'll get the Unity experience even on slower hardware.

You can test Edubuntu 11.04 directly from your web browser by going at http://www.edubuntu.org/weblive

WebLive is also directly integrated in the Ubuntu Software Center letting you test the most popular apps without installing them on your machine. Just click the "Test drive" button.

Edubuntu now ships with Arkose, which provides application sandboxing for downloaded apps.

New software packages in Edubuntu include Pencil, Geogebra, Calibre, LibreCAD, Freemind and Stellarium.

Theming improvements include a new LDM theme when installing LTSP from the Edubuntu installer. The text-mode boot mode now displays "Edubuntu" instead of "Ubuntu". Our ongoing menu refinements include new icons where they were missing, and more consistent case use in menu entries.

For more details on what has changed in Edubuntu 11.04, please refer to:

Ubuntu Studio

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.

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.

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).

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.

Unity:

Ubuntu Studio does not currently use Unity. As the user logs in it will default to Gnome Classic Desktop (i.e. Gnome2).

ubuntustudio-controls

We were hoping to have -controls updated for Natty but it appears to we will not be done in time. Therefore we will be removing -controls from Natty as it's functionality is either not needed or broken.

We plan to continue working on it and hopefully SRU it into Natty later.

Mythbuntu

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.

Android and iOS devices can now be used as remote controls.

MythTV 0.24 is now integrated into the builds.

Known issues

As is to be expected at this stage of the release process, there are still some known bugs. Please read the known bugs carefully and do not make duplicate bug reports.

Boot, installation and post-install

  • Installing proprietary Nvidia drivers causes Plymouth to hang on some systems. (684083)

  • On ARM platforms update-initramfs -c does not update the bootloader (701698)

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

  • Upstart chroot support is not reliable (728531).

  • On amd64 platforms iscsi root with or without auth fails to boot (728088)

  • There is a problem creating a bootable 10.04.2 or earlier USB image from Ubuntu 10.10 or 11.04 system. Booting from the USB can be made to work, but using the workaround of typing "help" and pressing Return. (645818)

  • The swap partition appears become unusable during some installations (UUID not set). This issue is under investigation. (709363)

  • The return_to_partitioning function executes and returns as normal, but seemingly fails to properly clean up after partman-commit and initialize partman. (740903)

  • On Mac/amd64 systems, appear to not be able to boot grub after installing an encrypted LVM. (745960)

  • During boot, on the cryptsetup passphrase prompt, every character typed causes a repeat of the prompt. (566818)

  • When making the keyboard layout selection from Ubiquity, cannot get the right selection. (656777, 711926, 745635)

  • After selecting "Continue testing" rather than "restart now" there is no GUI option to do the restart. (657086)

Upgrades from Ubuntu 10.10

  • When upgrading a server installation you might get an inappropriate configuration file change prompt for dovecot. (745522, Bug: 661453)

  • After the upgrade the KDE desktop might have a wrong or no background image. (712612)

Common desktop applications

  • Nautilus keeps opening when ubuntu one plugin is installed. (674876)

Graphics and display

  • The binary video driver -fglrx was updated to work with current X.org, but the "Additional Drivers" application (Jockey) does not offer to install it yet in beta-1. Please update your system to the latest packages after installation to fix this. Please not that after the upgrade, Unity and Compiz won't still work with the ATI proprietary driver (685682). A fix will be available by next week.

  • When starting the live session on a system without 3D support, the GNOME panel is not displayed. As a workaround, you can press Alt+F2 and run gnome-panel --replace. On installed systems you should pick the "Ubuntu Classic (No effects)" session in the login manager. (711378)

  • Unity currently crashes very often. ( 737792, 711996)

  • 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 NVidia-graphics-driver on 8600 GTS cards needs "NoPowerConnectorCheck" option to work. (522588)

  • The 'universal access' icon is missing from gdm login screen. (745347)

  • When switching between windows, Orca does not speak the title of the focused window. (724093)

  • The NVidia proprietary driver sometimes fails to detect a second monitor. (737349)

  • In the classic session gnome-panel sometimes fails to load applets. (716714, 744715)

  • On ARM images, the Unity 2D version crashes on various occasions. (739386)


Unity is just emerging from 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.

Trackpads, touchscreens, mice, and keyboards

  • 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.
  • The -evdev driver no longer provides middle mouse button emulation. 2-button mice that need this functionality are quite rare these days. The emulation mode causes a laggy pointer in cases where emulation is not needed, so this change improves responsiveness for all users. If you have a 2-button mouse that needs this, please see the directions for creating a 2-button mouse quirk. (710762)

  • Trackpads now have kinetic scrolling. If you flick to perform a scroll, then press a keyboard key while kinetic scroll events are generated, unexpected application behavior may result. (728643)

  • The -evtouch driver is not available anymore due to a lack of upstream support. Users are encouraged to switch to the default -evdev driver. Please file a bug report against the -evdev driver for any broken or missing functionality.

Linux kernel

  • Toshiba NB305 hangs for 5 minutes after suspend. Workaround: specify "nohz=off highres=off" as kernel parameters at boot. (508516)

  • Suspend fails on Lenovo/Thinkpad models R500/T6x/T400[s]/T500/W500/W700/X60/X200. (625364)

  • ThinkPad BIOS/EC models may have outdated firmware. (745363)

  • 802.11n support for the iwlagn driver has been temporarily disabled. Intel updated firmware is being tested. (630748)

  • On ARM omap4 platforms sound (ALSA) is not working. (746023)

  • On certain hardware, enabling power saving for the SATA link can cause disk errors and data corruption. (539467)

  • On amd64/Mac the main physical screen (iMac display) is detected by the OS radeon driver as output eDP-0, name 'Color LCD', and it is connected but not lit. (542660)

  • X will flicker, and will dmesg: "[drm:drm_edid_block_valid] *ERROR* EDID checksum is invalid". Intermittently the screen may go dark after one of these flickers. This can be worked around by 'sudo get-edid'. (712075)

  • On t1.micro server, instance hangs when installing Sun java. (634487)

  • Screenful of errors like "[drm:radeon_ttm_backend_bind] *ERROR* failed to bind 1772 pages" may be seen during a liveCD restart. (656486)

  • Samsung N150 hangs indefinitely after suspend. Workaround: specify "intel_idle.max_cstate=3" as kernel parameter at boot. (640100)

Ubuntu Software Center

  • Race condition appears to cause Software Center to crash (DatabaseModifiedError in _database_gen_postlist_iter()) after doing updates.(507836)

  • When deauthorize my computer is used, the packages are removed but the sources.list entries are not disabled. (723911)

  • In some cases, software-center crashed with "AlreadyCalledDeferred in callback()". (636429)

Ubuntu Server

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

  • Sometimes, cloud-init times out waiting for metadata service on EC2 (745930)

Ubuntu Netbook on ARM

  • flash-kernel fails to handle raw boot partitions on eMMC. (615773)

  • "update-initramfs -c" does not update the bootloader. (701698)

Kubuntu

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

  • The installer (ubiquity) might still be installed after oem-config on kubuntu netbook (745607)

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)

  • When updating Xubuntu 10.10 to 11.04 beta, the upgrade results in only one workspace on the panel when Xubuntu 10.10 has 4 workspace. (745207)

  • Thunar crashed with SIGSEGV in g_utf8_validate() (727977)

Edubuntu

  • On amd64 architecture the Trash applet crashes on load (727844)

  • Edubuntu Wallpapers are not updated on upgrade to Natty (746028)

Ubuntu Studio

  • In Ubuntu Studio, the network-manager icon is missing from the indicator area. (745549)

Report bugs

The Beta 2 release of Natty Narwhal still contains some bugs. Your comments, bug reports, patches and suggestions are welcome and will help improve the quality of future releases. Please see this page for more information:

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:

Find out more

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

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