DRAFT - gather spot for Beta 2 input

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 Beta 2 release of Ubuntu 12.04 gives a preview of the next LTS version of Ubuntu.

Get Ubuntu 12.04

Upgrading from Ubuntu 11.10 or Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

To upgrade from Ubuntu 11.10 or Ubuntu 10.04 LTS 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 or Ubuntu 10.04 LTS 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 2

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/precise/ (Ubuntu, Ubuntu Server)

• http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/precise/beta-2/ (Ubuntu Cloud Images)

• http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/precise/beta-2/ (Ubuntu DVD, preinstalled ARM images, source)

• http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-core/releases/12.04/beta-2/ (Ubuntu Core)

• http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/netboot/12.04/ (Ubuntu Netboot)

• http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/precise/beta-2/ (Kubuntu)

• http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/precise/beta-2/ (Xubuntu)

• http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/edubuntu/releases/precise/beta-2/ (Edubuntu)

• http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/precise/beta-2/ (Ubuntu Studio)

• http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/lubuntu/releases/precise/beta-2/ (Lubuntu)

New features in Precise

Please see the Precise blueprint list for details.

Please test and report any bugs you find:

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

Ubuntu Kernel

• Beta-2 includes the 3.2.0-20.33 Ubuntu kernel which is based on the v3.2.12 upstream stable Linux kernel. This is an update from the 3.2.0-17.27 Ubuntu kernel which shipped in Beta-1 (based on upstream stable Linux kernel v3.2.6).

• As with Beta-1, the Beta-2 kernel no longer carries separate amd64 -server and -generic kernel flavors. These have been merged into a single -generic kernel flavor to help reduce the maintenance burden over the life of this LTS release. i386 systems have had their default kernel changed to PAE. We have also removed the non-SMP PowerPC kernel flavor to help reduce maintenance costs. Hardware coverage is essentially the same between both the SMP and non-SMP PowerPC flavors and any consumers of the non-SMP PowerPC flavor will be automatically upgraded/updated to the SMP PowerPC flavor.
• Due to concerns surrounding OverlayFS, AUFS has been re-enabled for the Beta-2 kernel. We are warning anyone relying on AUFS that we will continue to advocate dropping AUFS in favor of a sufficient upstream solution at each development cycle.

• Other notable Beta-2 changes include the addition of seccomp filter patches, an updated AppArmor patch set, misc kernel config changes and bug fixes.

Ubuntu Desktop

New Applications and Defaults

• The default music player has been switched to Rhythmbox, which again includes the UbuntuOne music store.

• LibreOffice has been updated to 3.5.1 Please report any regressions that you notice.

Interface updates

• The System Setting's "Appearance" panel now allows users to easily configure some properties of Unity.

• Nautilus quicklist support has been added to Unity launcher.

• There is a new way to quickly search and access any desktop application's and indicator's menu, called the "HUD". Tap the Alt key and enter some letters and words, and it will show the corresponding entries, including some fuzzy matching. Press enter to execute the action. This one is executed on the current focused application as well as all indicator facilities (like managing emails, sound list, quit…). Also it learns from your previous choices to make the search more and more accurate for you.

ClickPad support

ClickPad devices are trackpads where the physical button is integrated into the trackpad surface. Ubuntu Precise now has enhanced support for these devices. When the button is pressed on a ClickPad device, a second finger may be used to drag the cursor.

• ClickPad support requires extra handling that conflicts with "Click Action" support. Click Actions allow for separate actions when multiple fingers are active on a trackpad. The default Ubuntu settings enable right button behavior when two fingers are in contact with the trackpad surface and the physical trackpad button is pressed. Because of conflicting behavior, ClickPad devices do not support Click Actions in this release.

• Most Synaptics brand ClickPads are recognized out of the box. Apple MacBook trackpads are recognized as well. Support for Apple Magic Trackpads and more Synaptics brand ClickPads will follow in the next release.

Ubuntu One

• All new Control Panel provides an installer, setup wizard, ability to add/remove folders to sync, and more
• Proxy support is now fully functional
• Ubuntu One music store in Rhythmbox
• Ubuntu One contacts sync has been removed
• Nautilus ribbon with enable sync check box has been removed

Other

• 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 now checks for duplicates on the client side, which will avoid uploading debug data and creating Launchpad bug reports unnecessarily in many cases now.

• When installing new software through software-center, corresponding language support packages (translations, spell check modules particulat to that software, help files, etc.) are now installed along automatically. This removes the need to open "Language Support" after installing new software.

• 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 reduces power consumption and thus battery lifetime.

• resolvconf is now used to manage /etc/resolv.conf on all Ubuntu systems. For systems using Network Manager DNS resolution is now done through dnsmasq, which should help split-DNS VPNs and faster DNS resolution. You can learn more here

• Output from Upstart jobs is now logged to per-job files in /var/log/upstart/, unless the job specifies otherwise by setting console to something other than the default of log (see init(5)).

Ubuntu Core

• This flavor provides a minimal Ubuntu environment suitable for highly customised installs, and mainly just saw the general version upgrades for the contained packages.

• In sync with the rest of the Ubuntu ARM images, builds for the ARMv7 hard float (armhf) architecture are now available. This is the supported architecture for all ARM Ubuntu images now.

Ubuntu Server

• 12.04 Beta 2 is shipping the latest milestones of OpenStack Essex, which is currently at RC1 state. The alignment of the development cycles will mean that 12.04 Final will include the Essex Final release.

• Released maas package to improve machine deployment orchestration.

Ubuntu Server and Cloud Workloads

• Zentyal packaging available in Universe. (928501)

  • These packages are a rename of the existing ebox packages along with a new upstream release fixing known issues in current ebox packages on precise.

• Chef 0.8.16 (948437) and corresponding Ohai packages (948438) removed from precise at the request of OpsCode.

• Hadoop charm refoctored to be one charm instead of two based of BigTop packaging.

• acpid introduced to both Server and Cloud images.

• OpenMPI 1.5 for ARM available in Universe. (889644)

  • openmpi 1.5 introduces ARM support. As this is an upstream beta, we have not transitioned openmpi in the archive, but instead added a separate openmpi1.5 package for those who wish to use it.

Kubuntu

• The Kubuntu team is proud to add "Kubuntu Active" as a tech preview, the first Ubuntu flavour designed for tablet devices. It uses KDE's Plasma Active workspace and is currently available as an i386 image.

See more details at the Kubuntu Beta 2 page https://wiki.kubuntu.org/PrecisePangolin/Beta2/Kubuntu

Xubuntu

• The i386 images use a non-PAE kernel to support a bigger variety of machines

• Pavucontrol is now used over xfce4-mixer

• Some default shortcuts have been changed and some added, see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Xubuntu/Roadmap/Specifications/Precise/DefaultShortcutKeys#Detailed_specification for the complete list

• Lots of appearance tweaks and improvements, including fixes for Ubiquity, Plymouth and the Greybird theme
• New branding

For more information and download links for stable releases of Xubuntu, go to http://xubuntu.org/

Edubuntu

• This beta fixes a few issues that were identified in the previous beta release, including improved translations, a new epoptes release and a new LTSP.
• Edubuntu 12.04 will be the first 5 year LTS release of the Edubuntu project.
• For this release we focused on quality and stability and refrained from any significant feature improvements.

• iTalc, our classroom management tool has been replaced by Epoptes, which is more stable and better integrated with Edubuntu and LTSP.

• LTSP is updated to the new major 5.3 release, fixing many bugs, improving performance, bandwidth usage and providing better fat client support.

• Freemind and Geogebra were dropped from the default Edubuntu installation in an effort to avoid Java on our DVD. Both of these are still available via the Software Center, but aren't covered by the LTS support term.

• The KDE version of edubuntu-desktop will only be supported on a best effort basis and isn't covered by the LTS support term either.

• Edubuntu now includes vim and pastebinit by default to make the command line experience of advanced users more pleasant.

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

Mythbuntu

A pre-release MythTV 0.25 snapshot is now in Precise. The final release of MythTV 0.25 will be uploaded to Precise when it's complete.

• NOTE: Any MythTV 0.24 versions on your network are incompatible with MythTV 0.25. If you want to test Precise, you will need to upgrade your other machines to MythTV 0.25 as well. See http://mythbuntu.org/auto-builds for information about upgrading earlier Ubuntu releases to 0.25.

• There have been some upgrade problems found with packages that have changed (mythvideo, libmyth-0.25-0). These are now fixed.
• There were some logging problems with new rsyslog support. These are now fixed.

• For more information about what has changed in MythTV 0.25 please see: http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Release_Notes_-_0.25

Lubuntu

• Lightdm is used as the display manager, with the default gtk greeter.

• A new software-center optimized for Lubuntu available by default.
• Lubuntu artwork has been updated.

Ubuntu Studio

The Ubuntu Studio Development Team is proud to announce the Beta 2 release for Ubuntu Studio 12.04 (LTS?).

This release marks an incredible progression in terms of development for Ubuntu Studio. Highlights include:

• live DVD image
• GUI installation (in lieu of text based per alternate image)
• new installation slideshow
• lowlatency kernel installed as default
• transition to XFCE is 99.99% complete (always that 0.01% to look for)
• using greybird theme (thanks shimmer, xubuntu devs)
• slightly revised panel layout
• new "desktop applications" due to XFCE transition, but not all XFCE apps were choosen
• improved menu structure

• better Pulse Audio <-> JACK bridging (i.e. integration)

• improved ice1712 mixer (envy24control -> mudita24)

• better (not great) lightdm theme
• new desktop wallpaper image

Thank you to all who invested time and effort into development and testing in preparation of this important milestone.

Known issues

Boot, installation and post-install

• Visually impaired users should refrain from installing this beta, the screen reader is unable to access the ubiquity page titles. (965349)

• On some hardware, when installing using a Live CD, ubiquity hangs before the camera loads and after clicking continue on the "choose a user" screen. If this happens to you, please use the alternate image to install your system. (966294)

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

• On AC100 ARM images no keyboard selection is offered, a manual workaround is shown in the bug (925482)

• On OMAP4 Pandaboard images a camera is detected falsely resulting in the installer trying to take a picture while this is not possible (924419)

• On PowerPC, when installed alongside linux, the system does not automatically boot into the newly installed system. The workaround is to hold down option key to get a boot menu and proceed from there.

Upgrades

• The ia32-libs package that used to provide 32-bit libraries on 64-bit (amd64) installations has been removed in favour of multiarch. Systems using ia32-libs must migrate to multiarch in order to upgrade to 12.04. In most cases, this should be set up automatically by the upgrade process. Some users who upgraded through previous development releases may have removed /etc/dpkg/dpkg.cfg.d/multiarch, and must restore it with the contents foreign-architecture i386 in order to have 32-bit library support in 12.04.

• In some cases, the package manager in Ubuntu 11.10 may not be able to decide on a correct unpack ordering when upgrading 64-bit systems with the ia32-libs package installed; if this is the case, it will fail before starting to unpack any new packages with a message something like "Couldn't configure pre-depend libtinfo5 for libncurses5, probably a dependency cycle". A workaround is to install the apt and libapt-pkg4.12 packages from precise before starting the upgrade. (924079)

• Landscape is currently incompatible with multiarch. We hope that this will be fixed in time for 12.04; but if you are using Landscape then you will need to either remain with 11.10 or remove any 32-bit libraries.

• Aptitude does not work on 64 bit systems without disabling multiarch in /etc/dpkg/dpkg.cfg.d/multiarch . (831768)

Graphics and Display

• 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, 918815)

• 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, 834386)

• When using the Super+Tab, Super+W, and related Unity hotkeys, the application/workspace switcher or launcher often stay open instead of performing the requested action. Pressing the Super key again will fix this. (963470)

Desktop

• There are some upgrade known issues for system installed before precise. On first boot, you will loose your compiz settings and can end up in a session with just the wallpaper, no interface. In that case, just logout/login again (rebooting eventually) and the next login will be fine. (963093)

• There are known audio issues on the OMAP and OMAP4 images (925094)

Kernel

• Software RAID fails to rebuild after testing degraded cold boot (925280)

• Severe responsiveness issues with interrupts marked disabled on a small number of machines see the bug for workarounds, if you hit this issue please file a new bug and reference it this master bug (966782)

• When using a gma500 based netbook with psb_gfx driver (shipped by default with kernel => 3.x) if the option "vt.handoff=7" is enabled (by default) the psb_gfx driver cannot initialize itself correctly ending up in a blank screen instead of X. Workaround is to remove the "vt.handoff=7" parameter. (914311)

Ubuntu Server

• Squid Proxy update from 2.7 to 3.19 fails as config file has moved, and features in 2.7 not available in 3.x (924739)

• OpenStack: DB migration failing when upgrading glance - trying to create existing tables (883988)

• OpenStack: Nova API does not listen on IPv6 (850443)

• OpenStack: Nova + glance services die if started before db is reachable (959426)

• OpenStack: A bad AMI can hang an entire compute node (960276)

• OpenStack: Nova API does not listen on IPv6 (850443)

• OpenStack: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/var/www/.novaclient' (959262)

Ubuntu Cloud

• fsck / dirty filesystem on instance is death (928990).

Ubuntu Core

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

Kubuntu

• There are audio issues on the OMAP and OMAP4 images (925094)

Edubuntu

• As Edubuntu includes a standard Ubuntu desktop, most of the issues above also apply to Edubuntu.
• In an installed system with LTSP, the resolv.conf and sources.list files are invalid. (LP: #FIXME)
• Epoptes certificates are missing from the server (LP: #FIXME)

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)

• For the desktop images installing from the CD menu is failing, however, allowing the CD to spin until it stops at "try Xubuntu" fixes this and "Install Xubuntu" works again.
• For some live sessions, the network-manager indicator might be hidden. Running nm-connection-manager allows you to access the network management interface.

Lubuntu

• Some installer windows are too big for a netbook screen (744834)

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

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

Ubuntu Studio

Currently we have a few known issues which may affect users. These include:

• plymouth theme defaults to "text" for certain video cards and reference "ubuntu", not "ubuntu studio" (964931)

• qjackctl is unable to stop jackd at times (956438)

• mixer plugin may be confusing to adjusting sound levels
• graphical image of paritioning table during installation shows Xubuntu distributor logo

Mythbuntu

• Upgrades will currently pull in the entire gnome stack (936761). You can safely remove unity and the rest of gnome if you decide to upgrade.

• Mythbuntu has been affected by GTK's unico theme interface change, and images are not usable at this time. Please check the daily Mythbuntu images for a usable Mythbuntu image as soon as this bug is resolved. (943682).

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 Beta 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 Improving Ubuntu

Participate in Checking if "Fixed Bugs" are Fixed

Updated images with bug fixes are being made available daily now, and the latest can always be found on the ISO tracker. If you end up doing an install with one of these daily images please let us know what you find out (we want to know if a fix works, as well if there's still a problem).

Checking the Desktop Default Applications

The QA team has made available a ppa containing a preliminary set of manual application tests covering the default ubuntu desktop applications. You are encouraged to participate in testing your installation after installing Beta 1 by running these tests and reporting your results with checkbox.

In addition, contributions for testcases are very welcome. The current tests cases can be improved and more applications can be added. To help, see the directions for contributing manual application testcases for checkbox.

Other ways to help ...

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