Alpha1

Introduction

The Ubuntu developers are moving quickly to bring you the absolute latest and greatest software the Open Source community has to offer. The Precise Pangolin Alpha 1 Release of Ubuntu 12.04 is a developer snapshot to give you a very early glance at the next version of Ubuntu.

Get Ubuntu 12.04

Upgrading from Ubuntu 11.10

To upgrade from Ubuntu 11.10 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 '12.04' is available. Click Upgrade and follow the on-screen instructions.

To upgrade from Ubuntu 11.10 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.

Download the Alpha 1

This release is for developers only. The Ubuntu Desktop i386 image is oversized; you can use either a DVD or USB for installation instead of a CD.

You can download Alpha 1 ISOs from:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/precise/alpha-1/ (Ubuntu Desktop and Server)
http://uec-images.ubuntu.com/releases/precise/alpha-1/ (Ubuntu Cloud Server)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/netboot/precise/ (Ubuntu Netboot)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/precise/alpha-1/ (Xubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/lubuntu/releases/precise/alpha-1/ (Lubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/edubuntu/releases/precise/alpha-1/ (Edubuntu DVD)

New features in Precise

Please see the Precise blueprint list for details.

Please test and report any bugs you find:

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 testing branch, others have been explicitly pulled in for 12.04 Precise Pangolin.

For a list of all packages being accepted for 12.04 Precise Pangolin, please subscribe to precise-changes: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/precise-changes

Linux kernel 3.2

Alpha 1 includes the 3.2.0-2.5 Ubuntu kernel which is based on the latest mainline v3.2-rc3 kernel. This is an update from the v3.0 kernel in Ubuntu 11.10. Another noticeable change is the consolidation of the amd64 server flavor into the generic flavor. This will help minimize the maintenance burden over the life of this LTS release. The Alpha 1 kernel also adds support for additional ALPS touchpads, contains an updated seccomp patch set, and numerous config changes such as CONFIG_PANEL_DVI=y on omap, CONFIG_EXT2_FS=m, and CONFIG_SATA_AHCI=y.

General

Until Ubuntu 11.10, the Unix group for administrators with root privileges through sudo had been admin. Starting with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, it is now sudo, for compatibility with Debian and sudo itself. However, for backwards compatibility, admin group members are still recognized as administrators.

Automatic Apport crash reporting has been enabled by default again to catch problems early on. It now checks for duplicates on the client side, which will avoid uploading debug data and creating Launchpad bug reports unnecessarily in many cases now.

Ubuntu

The default music player has been switched to Rhythmbox. There is no UbuntuOne Music Store yet, this still needs to be ported to GTK 3.

Ubuntu ARM

In the Ubuntu ARM world the automatic building of hardfloat packages for the newly indroduced armhf architecture has started which should gain a good performance increase for floating point operations. At feature freeze time it will be decided if the builds progressed enough to switch to this architecture by default for the 12.04 release. If you are a developer and encounter problems with your package builds on armhf, please contact the ubuntu-arm team in the #ubuntu-arm channel on freenode or drop a mail to the ubuntu-devel mailing list.

Ubuntu Server

There are many general package updates. Some that are noteworthy are:

  • squid package now installs squid3 rather than squid 2.7.
  • cobbler is now based on upstream 2.2.2 release.
  • Openstack components (nova, glance, swift, keystone, opestack-dashboard) are based off Essex 2 release.

Ubuntu Server Cloud images

There are no significant changes in Alpha 1, only general package updates.

Xubuntu

Ristretto 0.3.0 uploaded in Precise, should fix all open bugs and issues reported

Edubuntu

Edubuntu Precise alpha-1 is pretty similar to Ubuntu 11.10. Edubuntu kept in sync with Ubuntu, so gbrainy, tomboy are now gone and rhythmbox replaces banshee.

Lubuntu

Lubuntu switched to Lightdm for the standard display manager.

Known issues

As is to be expected, at this very early stage of the release process, there are some significant known bugs that developers may run into with the Precise Alpha 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

  • Sometimes the installer crashes in the middle of copying files to the target system. This mostly seems to happen with installation in virtual machines such as KVM, VMWare, or VirtualBox, but it has been observed on real hardware as well. The workaround is to just re-attempt the installation. (894768)

  • On the pre-installed ARM images, sometimes the installer packages are not removed after first-boot setup, which will cause the first-boot setup to be re-run after next boot. The workaround is to manually remove the packages ubiquity oem-config oem-config-gtk jasper. (871785)

  • There is no network support on some Beagle board versions. (838200)

  • Boot failure on Geode LX. A patch has been proposed upstream and a test kernel is available in the bug report. (892615)

  • Repeated DMAR fault messages on Dell Latitude E6410 with Ricoh FireWire Host Controller. Current workaround is to boot with "intel_iommu=off". (894070)

  • Failure to discover Apple MacIO ATA devices when testing Ubuntu powerpc images results in unbootable/uninstallable images. (Fix is queued).

  • WUBI is not available with Alpha 1, but will be available with the daily live cd images shortly after release.

  • Users of VMWare Workstation 8 or VMWare Player may experience boot problems. (858122)

Graphics and Display

  • On Intel N10 Graphics, plugging in external monitor to VGA port makes both displays corrupted with thick slanted lines. (830949)

  • Remote Desktop does not work with the -fglrx video driver, nor with the legacy nvidia drivers. You can establish a connection but the remote screen does not update. As a workaround use Unity2d, or switch to the free drivers or nvidia-current. (772873)

  • The Onboard window in Unity2d when maximized puts the window on top of everything and has no window controls when maximised as it refuses focus, and you can't double click the title bar to restore it. Once maximised your only real option is to switch to another workspace using a hard keyboard ctrl+alt+arrow keys then run gconf-editor and in the apps\onboard section change the height, or reboot into Unity3d and double click or drag down the top panel. (859288).

  • Maximized windows can be accidentally closed from wrong monitor.(865701)

  • For languages that are read right to left (arabic, hebrew), there is some inconsistency in display between the login screen (lightDM) and the desktop environment (unity). (871764)

Desktop

  • The background image of the login greeter still says "Ubuntu 11.10". (892394)

  • Sometimes on Unity-2D gedit fails to start, this can be worked around by retrying to start it. (873027)

  • Sometimes when locking the screen, a "num lock is on" warning may appear even though num lock isn't actually on. (841541)

Kernel

  • See boot related issues noted above.

  • If your system hangs and errors at /build/buildd/linux-3.2.0/arch/x86/kernel/apic/ipi.c:113 default_send_IPI_mask_logical+0xdc/0xf0(), this can be worked around by running the following command to disable CPU control in powernap: chmod -x /etc/pm/power.d/01cpu_online (898127)

  • Sandy Bridge power regression still present (30% more power at idle) (818830) -- Platforms affected by this power consumption regression are sixth generation i915 GPUs having the following PCI identifiers: 8086:0102, 8086:0112, 8086:0122, 8086:0106, 8086:0116, 8086:0126, 8086:010A.

Ubuntu Cloud

  • Images time out too quickly on heavily loaded Openstack (894279)

  • Images contain linux-image-extra package to support popular virtual ethernet devices, resulting in larger than normal downloads (897795)

Ubuntu Core

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

Edubuntu

  • As Edubuntu includes a standard Ubuntu desktop, most of the issues above also apply to Edubuntu.

  • Advanced package selection doesn't appear in some languages. As a workaround, simply remove the packages you don't want once your system is installed. (872727)

Xubuntu

  • When using the new plymouth splash screen, occasionally using the desktop cd to install, the message "hit any key to continue" does not appear. Should you get a black screen with text and the sliding throbber, when the throbber stops moving and the cd ejects, remove the cd and hit enter on the keyboard to continue.(872472)

Lubuntu

  • Ubiquity requires more than 4 Gb of free space to install, please use alternate ISO if you are in this case (775124)

  • Keyboard layout can't be saved using LXKeymap. Please run "sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration" (729880)

  • In persistent mode, items created on the desktop are not displayed until next reboot. (837470)

  • Lubuntu xfce4-power-manager displays a "broken" icon in lxpanel. (871553)

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

Reporting bugs

It should come as no surprise that this Alpha 1 release of Precise Pangolin 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

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:

PrecisePangolin/TechnicalOverview/Alpha1 (last edited 2011-12-01 15:50:17 by 99-191-111-134)