Introduction

The Ubuntu developers are moving quickly to bring you the absolute latest and greatest software the Open Source community has to offer. The Oneiric Ocelot Beta 1 Release of Ubuntu 11.10 gives a preview of the next version of Ubuntu.

Get Ubuntu 11.10

Upgrading from Ubuntu 11.04

To upgrade from Ubuntu 11.04 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 '11.10' is available. Click Upgrade and follow the on-screen instructions.

To upgrade from Ubuntu 11.04 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.

Download the Beta 1

Beta 1 images can be downloaded from a location near you:

• http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/download (Ubuntu and Ubuntu Server) .

In addition they can be found at the following links:

• http://releases.ubuntu.com/oneiric/beta-1/ (Ubuntu, Ubuntu Server)

• http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/oneiric/beta-1/ (Ubuntu Cloud Images)

• http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/oneiric/beta-1/ (Ubuntu DVD, source)

• http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/netboot/11.10/beta-1/ (Ubuntu Netboot)

• http://releases.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/oneiric/beta-1 (Kubuntu)

• http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/oneiric/beta-1/ (Kubuntu DVD, preinstalled ARM images)

• http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/oneiric/beta-1/ (Xubuntu)

• http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/edubuntu/releases/oneiric/beta-1/ (Edubuntu)

• http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/oneiric/beta-1/ (Ubuntu Studio)

• http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/mythbuntu/releases/oneiric/beta-1/ (Mythbuntu)

• http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/lubuntu/releases/oneiric/beta-1/ (Lubuntu)

New features in Oneiric

Please see the Oneiric 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 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot.

For a list of all packages being accepted for 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot, please subscribe to oneiric-changes: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/oneiric-changes

Some of the key packages in this Beta 1 release are:

• Linux Kernel 3.0

Ubuntu Kernel

Beta 1 includes the 3.0.0-9.14 Ubuntu kernel which is based on the mainline v3.0.1 kernel. Some of the most notable changes since Ubuntun 11.04 with respect to the kernel include:

• Adopted a 3 digit kernel version, eg 3.0.0-x.y
• Rebase to upstream v3.0 final kernel
• Enable Overlayfs
• Enable Realtek RTL8192CU/RTL8188CU wifi driver
• Enable support for rt53xx wireless chipset family
• Enable Intellimouse mode for Lenovo Zhaoyang E47
• Numerous config updates

Ubuntu Desktop

A new release of compiz and unity has been included with this milestone. Highlights of this release are:

• A new alt + tab switcher.
• The restructuring for getting some new features has been done. Known bugs and regressions are documented below.
• Better performances of launchers and panel, port to GTK 3 and GTK 3-based indicator stack.

Unity 2D reduced the delta with Unity, share more codes with it and had almost full accessibility support. See known issues for the missing accessibility bits.

Thunderbird is included as default email client including menu and launcher integration.

Déjà Dup is included as the default backup tool, making it easy to upload backups to Ubuntu One.

The new gwibber landed in Oneiric bringing improved performances and a new interface using the most recent GNOME technologies.

GNOME got updated to current unstable version (3.1.5) on its way to GNOME 3.2

LightDM now uses the new Unity greeter by default.

The indicators got a visual refresh which includes a refactoring of the session indicator and a new power indicator.

The Ubuntu Software Center adds new "top rated" views to the main category page and all subcategory pages, now allows you to edit or delete your own reviews, and has had a significant speedup for standalone deb file installations (gdebi functionality).

Ubuntu Core

Ubuntu Core is a new minimal rootfs for use in the creation of custom images for specific needs. With the release of Oneiric Ocelot, developers will be able to use Ubuntu Core as the basis for their application demonstrations, constrained environment deployments, device support packages, and other goals. More information is available on the Ubuntu Core wiki page.

Ubuntu ARM

Server images now implement pre-installed pool support which allows a complete server installation to be done without internet access.

Ubuntu Server

All references to UEC have been changed to "Ubuntu Cloud". If the term UEC is discovered in this milestone, it should be considered a bug and raised accordingly.

Former UEC components (including Eucalyptus), is no longer part of the CD image, and should be demoted to Universe shortly.

Ubuntu Server Cloud images

The images have been formally renamed to 'Ubuntu Cloud Images' (or cloudimg as short form). The images should now be found at the new address: https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com

Kubuntu

Plasma and KDE Applications 4.7

The latest stable release of KDE's Plasma Workspaces and Applications brings new features and improvements all around. Highlights include:

Visual updates include a new Oxygen icon theme A cleaner default look to Dolphin Gwenview's new ability to compare two or more images New breadcrumb feature in the Kickoff menu that simplifies navigating submenus More improvements in the Network Management widget

KDEPIM 4.7

Along with KDE 4.7, 11.10 also introduces the new KDEPIM suite, which includes the new Kmail 2. The look and feel is familiar, but under the hood, most of the PIM suite is now fully migrated to the Akonadi storage service.

IMPORTANT: Do note that this is a major upgrade to the mail, calendar and addressbook systems, and as such still needs usage and migration testing. It is, even more highly than usual, highly recommended to back up all important data, mail, contact information, and calendars if you plan to test upgrading to 11.10.

Amarok 2.4.3

The Amarok folks have just released the latest version of the popular music player. Work has been done to improve the interface, drag-and-drop inside of collections, and dynamic playlists are some of the new things to be found.

Muon Software Center

Kubuntu has switched to providing the Muon Software Center and Muon Package manager by default. The Muon package management suite is tightly integrated with the Debian package management system (all Ubuntu flavors use under the hood) for better performance and more reliable results.

Additional information about this release of Kubuntu can be found here.

Xubuntu

TODO

Edubuntu

Edubuntu switched from using the old gobby to using gobby-0.5/infinote.

The default desktop environment is now Unity with fallback to Unity 2D when the hardware doesn't support running the 3D version. Gnome 3 Fallback (which uses an updated gnome-panel) is available for those who want it through an option in the installer.

One of our goal for this release is to improve our translation support. Oneiric Ocelot Beta 1 is the first release of Edubuntu to feature a fully translated installer. If it's not accurate for your language, please help translating it!

To learn more on Edubuntu and download a stable version of it, go to: http://www.edubuntu.org

Mythbuntu

Mythbuntu oneiric has transitioned over to the quicker lightdm desktop manager and brings updated builds of MythTV. Still on the 0.24 series, but growing more and more stable with each new build.

Lubuntu

Lubuntu is a flavor of Ubuntu based on the LXDE desktop environment. The goal is to provide a very lightweight distribution, with all the advantages of the Ubuntu world (repositories, support ...). With many LXDE components, Lubuntu also uses well-known applications, such as Chromium, Openbox, Pidgin ... (More informations on applications used or on the Lubuntu project are available on the wiki.).

Ubuntu Studio

TODO

Known issues

As is to be expected, at this stage of the release process, there are still some significant known bugs that users may run into with the Oneiric Beta 1 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:

Boot, installation and post-install

• usb-creator is currently unable to create EFI-bootable USB sticks. (702283)

• In some cases, booting the live system takes a long time until the desktop starts. (791139)

• When overwriting an existing installation in the Ubiquity desktop installer, it creates a new swap partition instead of re-using the already existing one. (782507)

• Ubiquity desktop installer proceeds to use free space without warning, if sufficient free space exists, and "install alongside" is selected, then clicking on the forward button just begins the installation without warning. (766265)

• ARM Desktop installations sometimes crash during the OEM configuration step or upgrades, due to a race condition in flash-kernel. (779410)

• omap3 netboot images are known to be broken with the Beta 1 release (820621)

• Selecting "Configure encrypted volumes" in the alternate/server installer initialises encrypted volumes from scratch, and will destroy any encrypted data that was previously present. There is no way to reuse an existing encrypted volume at installation time at the moment, although we do consider this a bug that will be fixed in a future release. (420080)

Upgrades

• During upgrade a debconf prompt about DM to use is displayed (806559)

• Ubuntu 11.10 has migrated away from /var/run, /var/lock and /dev/shm and now uses /run, /run/lock and /run/shm instead (respectively). While the Ubuntu AppArmor packages and shipped policy have been adjusted for this, custom policy may need to be updated. The following my be used to aid in migration (it allows both the old an the new paths):

  $ sed -i -e 's#/var/run#/{,var/}run#' -e 's#/var/lock#/{run,var}/lock#' -e 's#/dev/shm/#/{dev,run}/shm/#' <profile>

Graphics and Display

• We had to revert from unity-window-decorator to gtk-window-decorator for performance reasons. This means that the "1 px border" for resizing window is back temporarily.

• Unity 2D is not working on KVM with xen and cirrus video devices. As a workaround, use the -vga vmware option. (759803)

Since Unity is in active development right now, please check the unity bug reports before filing new bugs.

Desktop

Kernel

• Sandy Bridge power regression from kernel 3.0.0-6 to 3.0.0-7 (30% more power at idle) (818830)

Ubuntu Server

• When running an i386 system under a virtual machine without enough memory allocated a kernel error is detected during installation. (790712)

Ubuntu Cloud

Kubuntu

• Shutdown in the live session under VirtualBox sometimes does not work and seems to just hang on the desktop. Just restart the computer with the power button in that case, there is no possibility of data loss. (805906)

Xubuntu

• casper doesn't configure autologin for lightdm properly; to login to the live session:

  • Click 'Other...'
    

    Enter username 'ubuntu', hit enter
    

    tab to session, select the second Xubuntu session
    

    tab to login, hit enter
    

  (819624)

Edubuntu

Ubuntu Core

• DRM libraries are always installed, even for users who are not enabling graphical environments (819802)

Lubuntu

• Generic icon for network-manager (819617)

• Generic icon for jockey (819542)

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

Reporting bugs

It should come as no surprise that this Beta 1 release of Oneiric Ocelot 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