Kubuntu

New Features in Kubuntu

This release of Kubuntu is a 5 year Long Term Support release that has been developed with a focus on stability features.

Changes for Kubuntu 12.04.4

KDE SC has been updated to version 4.8.5, which brings a number of minor fixes and updates. More details can be found here, here, and here.

Major bugs fixed since 12.04:

  • 963895 kmix is crashing after multiple volume changes

Plasma Desktop

  • The power management configuration interface has been redesigned, and is now multi-screen aware: settings can be customized for each Activity.
  • KDE's window manager has significant performance improvements and the Window Switcher now has a choice of 6 layouts, providing a better experience for those not using desktop effects.
  • A new Plasma panel option, Icon Tasks, provides an alternative icon-only taskbar.

KDE Applications

  • File manager Dolphin has a new display engine which greatly speeds up file browsing, and an improved layout improves its appearance.
  • Image viewer Gwenview adds a new navigation area which appears when an image is zoomed so scrolling is easier.
  • KDE's document viewer, brings advanced text selection features.
  • Web browser Rekonq has been updated to provide more speed and stability for your web browsing needs.
  • Amarok has added an MP3 shop and integration with GPodder, an online personal podcast archive.

Kubuntu Applications

  • Package management Muon Suite is now more robust and faster than ever. The Muon Update Manager has received a facelift, making keeping your computer up-to-date a snap. For the power user who wants to control the details of his or her updates, the Muon Package Manager is still available to handle all your update needs, giving you full control. Additionally, the Muon Package Manager now gives you more explicit notification of what extra dependencies will be installed when you mark packages for installation.
  • Oxygen-GTK 3 helps integrate apps written with GTK 3. We have packaged the theme to neatly integrate with KDE's Oxygen.

As an LTS we keep applications changes to a minimum but while not part of a default Kubuntu installation, we provide some interesting new packages for you to try. These are available for download using Muon Software Center.

  • Instant Messaging has changed and so has our software with Telepathy KDE. You can easily set it up to talk on GTalk or Facebook as well as MSN and many other protocols.
  • Calligra: a new life for the old KOffice suite brings the document and creativity suite to a new audience. Now with much improved MS Office file import filters.

  • The OwnCloud self-hosted cloud solution sees a major upgrade to version 3.

Kubuntu Active

Kubuntu Active is a new Ubuntu flavour for tablets. It uses Plasma Active and the new UIs designed for tablets. This preview release is currently avilable for i386 only at this time as an image to put on USB keys.

Download Kubuntu Active from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu-active/releases/precise/

Desktop Infrastructure

  • DNS resolution is now done through dnsmasq, which should help split-DNS VPNs and faster DNS resolution.

Common Infrastructure

  • Up until Ubuntu 11.10, administrator access using the sudo tool was granted via the "admin" Unix group. In Ubuntu 12.04, administrator access will be granted via the "sudo" group. This makes Ubuntu more consistent with the upstream implementation and Debian. For compatibility purposes, the "admin" group will continue to provide sudo/administrator access in 12.04.

  • Hibernate (suspend to disk) has been disabled by default, as it was found to be unreliable, very slow and confusing to have two suspend modes. See bug 812394 for details. If you want to re-enable it, please follow this recipe.

  • pm-utils now has two new scripts to power down USB and various PCI devices in battery mode. A number of desktop packages were fixed to wake up less often. Both of these reduce power consumption and thus improve battery lifetime.

  • resolvconf is now used to manage /etc/resolv.conf on all Ubuntu systems. You can learn more here

  • Backports are now more easily accessible -- to enable users to more easily receive new versions of software, the Ubuntu Backports repository is now enabled by default. Packages from backports will not be installed by default — they must explicitly be selected in package management software. However, once installed, packages from backports will automatically be upgraded to newer versions.
  • DVD Images -- the DVD images have been cleaned up significantly reducing their size to around 1.5GB to ease consumption. The remaining software remains available via download.
  • As of 12.04.2, it is possible to install on UEFI systems with Secure Boot enabled (using signed versions of Shim, GRUB, and the Linux kernel). This is only currently set up for Ubuntu (desktop, alternate, and server) and Edubuntu images due to pressures of time.

  • Both the 3.2 and 3.5 versions of the Linux kernel included as part of the 12.04.2 release have a workaround for 1040557, which bricked some models of Samsung laptops when installing Ubuntu in UEFI mode. (The underlying problem is a firmware bug, and may still be triggerable in other ways.)

Ubuntu Kernel 3.11

By default, the 12.04.4 point release will ship with a newer 3.11 Ubuntu kernel from Ubuntu 13.10, and a matching X.org stack. This is based on the 3.11.0 Extended Upstream Stable Kernel Release. The purpose of providing a newer kernel in the 12.04.4 point release is for hardware enablement. For more information regarding the 12.04.4 LTS Hardware Enablement Stack, please refer to:

Upstart 1.5

Upstart has been updated to version 1.5. More details are available in the Upstart Technical Overview.

GNU Toolchain

Ubuntu 12.04 is distributed with a default toolchain that includes: GCC 4.6.3 (and changes from Linaro GCC 4.6-2012.02), binutils 2.22, eglibc 2.15, and Linaro gdb 7.4-2012.04.

Compared to the 11.10 release, the toolchain saw only incremental changes and bug fixes; comparing to the 10.04 LTS release, GCC updates include

  • Updated frontends for better standards support (Ada 2012, Objective-C 2.0, improved experimental support for the upcoming C++0x ISO C++ standard, Fortran 2003 and 2008 improvements, new Go frontend)
  • Improved optimizations, including better inter-procedural optimizations, and link time optimization (LTO).

Further information can be found upstream (GCC-4.6, GCC-4.5, binutils, gas, ld, gdb).

Python Toolchain

  • Ubuntu 12.04 includes Python 2.7.3 and Python 3.2.3. Python 2.6 is no longer available for install.

  • There is expanded support for Python 3 in this release, with Python 3 ports of python-dbus, python-feedparser, germinate, lazr.ui, wadllib, python-defer, python-keyring, and python-qt4 now included, among others.

Java Toolchain

The default run time for Java is OpenJDK 6b24 (IcedTea 1.11.1). OpenJDK 7u3 (IcedTea 2.1) is available in the archive as well.

Installation

Overview

Preparing your computer for Kubuntu is now much simpler, with a wider range of disk setup options. Each of these are detailed at length to provide you with a clear understanding of the actions that will take place with your selection.

You can now reinstall or upgrade an existing copy of Kubuntu with the Desktop CD installer, provided that your computer is connected to the Internet.

Download

Kubuntu 12.04.4 images can be downloaded from:

System Requirements

The minimum memory requirement for Kubuntu 12.04 is 384 MB of memory for Kubuntu. Note that some of your system's memory may be unavailable due to being used by the graphics card. If your computer has only the minimum amount of memory, the installation process will take longer than normal; however, it will complete successfully, and the system will perform adequately once installed.

Systems with less memory may be able to select "Install Kubuntu" from the boot menu to run just the installer, rather than the whole desktop, or may be able to use the alternate install CD.

Upgrading

Upgrading from Kubuntu 11.10

To upgrade from Kubuntu 11.10 on a desktop system, run "muon-updater" and upgrade to the latest packages, reboot the computer and you will be prompted to upgrade at next login.

Upgrading from Kubuntu 10.04 LTS to Kubuntu 12.04 LTS

To upgrade from Kubuntu 10.04 LTS on a desktop system run KPackageKit, select Software Updates and click the link to "Upgrade to 12.04 LTS".

Do note that LTS upgrade notifications will not show until the first 12.04 maintenance release. Instructions to manually begin the process before this are found in the upgrade instructions above.

Upgrading from Other Releases

Users of other Kubuntu releases need to upgrade first to 11.10, and then to 12.04.

For further information on upgrading to 11.10, please see the Kubuntu Oneiric upgrade instructions.

Known Issues

KDM login manager

  • After a new user is created in Kubuntu systemsettings, they will be prompted to change their password when they log in for the first time. There is an issue that prevents the new password from being entered. In order to avoid this problem, the X server needs to be restarted before the new user logs in. After logout, click on the red logout button on the KDM screen and then click on "Restart X Server". Once the KDM login screen returns, the new user should be able to log in normally. (641712)

Applications

Boot, Installation and Post-Installation

  • Importing of existing Windows user accounts fails in some cases. (987902)

  • Wubi (the Ubuntu installer for Windows) is not available as an option on the Ubuntu Desktop/DVD any more. Instead, it is now a separate download.

  • A bug in the firmware on certain Samsung laptop models leaves these machines at risk of being rendered inoperable ("bricked") when booted in UEFI mode. Steps have been taken with the kernel in 12.04.2 to mitigate this problem, but only a future firmware update from Samsung will resolve this issue with 100% reliability. It is therefore recommended that users boot their systems in CSM ("compatibility support module") mode to avoid this issue. (1040557)

  • Performing automatic encrypted LVM installation using Kubuntu and Xubuntu 12.04.4 alternate installer images results in a failure to configure encrypted volumes. Please either use manual partitioning to create encrypted volumes with any non-default "IV algorithm" setting or use 12.04.3 media to complete the installation. (1276739)

Upgrades

  • If you have overridden the value of APT::Cache-Limit in /etc/apt/apt.conf or /etc/apt/apt.conf.d, you should remove these settings before upgrading. The release-upgrader-apt used by update-manager for upgrades from lucid to precise no longer has any hard coded limit on the cache size.

  • If you are running a KVM host with libvirt and are upgrading from Ubuntu 10.04 LTS to 12.04 LTS you may find that some existing virtual machines are no longer recognized (virsh list --all). A change to each guest's XML file may be needed, related to how console and serial devices are now configured. (931350)

Kernel

  • On ARM omap images, the networking support for the Beagle XM board is broken (838200)

  • On systems with an ATI Radeon 9200 graphics card the system will boot to a black screen. As a work around edit the kernel command line in the boot loader and add "nomodeset". (725580)

  • Fujitsu Siemens Amilo M 7400 and Maxdata 7000DX wireless RF kill handling triggers a kernel panic preventing wireless from operating correctly. This may be worked around by editing your kernel command line and adding "noexec=off". (979253)

  • Beagle XM systems which are capable of running at 1GHZ will be initialised at 800MHZ leading to slower than optimal performance. (771537)

  • Some EFI systems fail to boot in EFI mode. BIOS mode is advised in these situations. (721576)

Support

PrecisePangolin/ReleaseNotes/Kubuntu (last edited 2014-02-03 17:59:50 by 82-69-40-219)