Edubuntu

New Features in Edubuntu 12.10

Edubuntu is the Ubuntu flavour for education and children, it's based on Ubuntu and integrates additional software for use at home or in the classroom.

It's produced as a DVD image that can also be converted to an USB stick and includes support for most languages by default.

Edubuntu Applications

  • Stellarium has been dropped in favour of Kstars. Stellarium has big OpenGL demands that are hard to meet on ARM devices.
  • Tomboy has been re-introduced as the default note-taking application.
  • Language packs have now been moved off from the live image to a pool on the disc. This greatly improves install times at the cost of using more RAM in a live session when a local language is specified.
  • A new package called 'edubuntu-netboot' is introduced. This package now provides the functionality previously provided by ltsp-live and will also be used for casper-netboot.
  • Certain packages which are default in Ubuntu aren't installed in Edubuntu. These are avoided during installation, but due to current technical limits, can't be avoided during upgrades and may have to be manually removed after an upgrade. These packages include: icoutils, qt3-assistant, unity-lens-shopping and virtuoso-minimal. These can be removed using the Software Centre or by using "sudo apt-get remove icoutils qt3-assistant unity-lens-shopping virtuoso-minimal" from a terminal
  • Nepomuk and Akonadi icons are now hidden from menus.
  • The wallpaper selection has been updated.
  • Although no ARM release is made for Edubuntu 12.10, test builds have been done daily to ensure Edubuntu packages work on ARM. If you are running Ubuntu 12.10 on ARM, you may install the Edubuntu educational packages from the Software Center.

Desktop Interface

  • Update Manager has been streamlined and renamed Software Updater. It also now checks for updates when launched. Additionally, the release upgrader portion of Update Manager has become its own package - ubuntu-release-upgrader.
  • A new Xorg stack has been introduced which includes xserver 1.13 candidate versions, mesa 9.0, and updated X libs and drivers. The new xserver provides improved multiseat support, better smooth scrolling, and a large variety of bug fixes. There is a new version of the ATI driver, and the proprietary -nvidia driver now supports the RANDR standard for monitor configuration.

  • Unity and Compiz now works on hardware supporting only GLES instructions, releasing unity to a wide range of armel machines.
  • Unity was updated to version 6.8 including support for:
    • Addition of 'More Suggestions' category which delivers commercial content to the Dash via the 'Unity Shopping Lens'
    • Numerous fixes and refinements to the dash
    • Option to prevent any network connection from the dash in the privacy gnome control center panel.
    • Support addition of webapps in the launcher by default (including Amazon & Ubuntu One Music stores)

    • An updated indicator-messages including a new libmessaging-menu api (deprecating the old libindicate library)

    • All launcher icons (except the BFB and Trash) should now be movable
    • Added the ability to unlock removable-storage icons from the launcher to de-clutter it
    • When in spread mode (Super+W) it's possible to close windows by clicking the close button revealed when hovering over them
    • Gwibber lens now features preview support in the dash
    • Webapps can now trigger package downloads where required by compliant websites visited by the user
    • Additional icons have been added to the filesystem lens to enable dragging and dropping filesystems (such as USB sticks) into the launcher
    • Previews in the video lens now show details for remote Amazon videos
    • Unity and unity-panel have been ported to atk-bridge for accessibility
  • Accessibility is turned on by default.
  • Ubuntu Medium font has been included.
  • The extra "launchpad integration" menu items which used to be added to the help menus have been dropped as they were not useful to most users and creating confusion.
  • The login greeter was updated:
    • Support for logging into remote desktops via RDP has been added, making it easier to use Ubuntu as a thin client
    • Network status is now displayed in the top panel
    • General visual refresh, with more space for long names and a better looking session chooser

Desktop Applications

  • LibreOffice has been updated to 3.6.2. It no longer needs a separate plugin to provide built-in menubar & HUD support.

  • GNOME has been updated to the new 3.6 version for most of its components. Read the GNOME 3.6 Release Notes to learn what's new and improved. A few highlights include:

    • Empathy: the contact list in GNOME's messaging and chat application received a cleaner design with groups disabled by default and the contacts you talk to the most often ranked at the top of the list.
    • Disks: improvements have been added including extra power management functions and the return of the benchmark feature.
  • Firefox and Thunderbird got updated to the current "16" version.

  • Jockey has been deprecated in favor of a "Drivers" component in software-properties.
  • The default partition mount point is now /media/username/ instead of /media/

Common Infrastructure

Secure Boot

Ubuntu 12.10 is the first Ubuntu release to support UEFI Secure Boot, a standard for controlling what software can be run on a computer. Supporting Secure Boot, a part of the Windows 8 certification requirements for client systems, ensures that Ubuntu will continue to provide an "it just works" experience on new hardware.

Due to time pressures, only some flavors released with 12.10 will install and boot on Secure Boot hardware:

  • Ubuntu desktop
  • Ubuntu server
  • Edubuntu

We expect to enable all other flavors in 13.04.

Migration-support deprecated

The tool responsible for migrating user accounts from other operating systems to Ubuntu (migration-assistant) has been removed from the installer.

Linux kernel 3.5.5

The Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal release includes the 3.5.0-17.28 Ubuntu Linux kernel which was based on the v3.5.5 upstream Linux kernel. This is an update from the 3.2.0-23.36 Ubuntu Linux kernel which shipped in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Precise Pangolin and was based on the v3.2 upstream Linux kernel. Other notable changes with the Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal kernel include:

  • Transitioning of the i386 generic-pae flavor to become the generic flavor offering
  • Collapsing of the virtual flavor back into the generic flavor
  • Homogenizing the entire linux-meta package
  • Arrival of a new highbank arm server kernel flavor
  • Changing of the default scheduler from cfq to deadline
  • Packaging updates for signed kernels

Python 3.2

The Ubuntu desktop has begun migrating from Python 2 to Python 3. Most Python applications included in the desktop and their dependent libraries have been ported to Python 3. In most cases, Python 3 versions of libraries are available alongside their Python 2 counterparts. Ported applications will only run with Python 3. Work will continue in Ubuntu 13.04.

If you have your own programs based on Python 2, fear not! Python 2 will continue to be available (as the python package) for the foreseeable future. However, to best support future versions of Ubuntu you should consider porting your code to Python 3. Python/3 has some advice and resources on this.

GNU Toolchain

Ubuntu 12.10 is distributed with an updated default toolchain that includes: GCC 4.7.2 (was GCC 4.6 in 12.04 LTS), a binutils snapshot from the 2.23 branch (was 2.22 in 12.04 LTS), eglibc 2.15, and gdb 7.5.

Further information can be found upstream (GCC-4.7, gdb).

Java Toolchain

Ubuntu 12.10 ships OpenJDK7 as the default Java implementation. This brings improved performance, new features and better compatibility with other Java 7 implementations.

Use of the OpenJDK6 is now deprecated and the openjdk-6-* packages in universe for Ubuntu 12.10 will not be provided in future releases of Ubuntu.

Installation

Overview

Preparing your computer for Edubuntu 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 Edubuntu with the DVD installer, provided that your computer is connected to the Internet.

Download

Edubuntu 12.10 images can be downloaded from:

System Requirements

The minimum memory requirement for Edubuntu 12.10 is 512 MB of memory but 1024 MB is highly recommended. 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.

It's recommended to use the i386 image for computers with less than 1GB of memory. For these systems, installing using the "Install Edubuntu" option from the DVD boot menu will also be faster as it'll save some memory (compared to the "Try Edubuntu without installing" option).

When using Edubuntu 12.10 as an LTSP server, you should plan at least an additional 256 MB per client.

The Edubuntu 12.10 installation image does not include support for old computers that do not support PAE.

Upgrading

Upgrading from Edubuntu 12.04

To upgrade from Edubuntu 12.04 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 display following message: "New distribution release '12.10' is available. Click Upgrade and follow the on-screen instructions".

Upgrading from Other Releases

Users of other Edubuntu releases need to upgrade first to 12.04, and then to 12.10.

For further information on upgrading to 12.04, please see the Ubuntu Precise upgrade instructions.

Known Issues

Edubuntu being based on Ubuntu, most known issues of Ubuntu also apply to Edubuntu, below is a list of Edubuntu specific known issues and the current list of Ubuntu known issues.

Specific to Edubuntu

  • Unity 2D is no longer available in 12.10. As a result, the Gnome Fallback session (also known as the "Ubuntu Classic") will now be made default when LTSP is selected. LTSP users who wish to continue using Unity-2D should remain on Edubuntu 12.04 LTS.
  • In some cases, the session indicator shows up empty on LTSP. This appears to be related to the video card of the thin client. The only known workaround at this stage is to call "gnome-session-quit" manually. (1028972)

Installation

  • A bug may cause a failure in memtest test #7. See this memtest86+ bug

  • Booting the Ubuntu installer in UEFI mode from a USB disk on certain Samsung laptops (530U3C, NP700Z5C) may trigger a firmware bug that renders the machine unbootable. Users are advised to use caution when installing on Samsung laptops and ensure that they are configured for legacy BIOS mode, not UEFI mode. (1040557)

  • The consolidation of desktop installation media into a single image means that some installation options that were previously available on the alternate CD have no direct replacement on the desktop image.
    • Users who were installing using the alternate CD to install with LVM or full-disk encryption can now use the desktop image for this.
    • To install LTSP, please install using the Ubuntu Server 12.10 image, then add ltsp after installation. You can also continue to install with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS media and upgrade to 12.10 from there.
    • There are several options for installing using software RAID. You can:
  • The desktop image installer cannot unlock existing encrypted (LUKS) volumes. If you need to make use of existing encrypted volumes during partitioning, then use the "Try Ubuntu without installing" boot option to start a live session, open the encrypted volumes (for example, by clicking on their icons in the Unity launcher), enter your password when prompted to unlock them, close them again, and run ubiquity to start the installer. (1066480)

  • ARM OMAP4 machines will sometimes boot to a black screen during installation. It's likely that the system has booted fine, but you will need to switch to another tty then back to tty7 (Ctrl+Alt+F1 and then Alt+F7) to get graphics. (1065902)

  • On ARM Panda boards with no external storage attached, the installer interface will be confusing and installation is likely to fail. We strongly recommend attaching an external hard disk when installing on Panda boards. (1053030)

  • On a mac with an external display can not run in framebuffer mode error occurs on the 2nd reboot onwards. (1066883)

Kernel

  • Haswell processor graphics is not fully supported. (1066975)

  • On some systems, when opening lid, there is a kerneloops with a suspend/resume failure message seen. (1054732)

  • On certain ASUS machines with AMD graphic chips, a WMI event and ACPI interrupt are sent at the same time when hitting the hotkey to change display mode, resulting in the display mode being changed twice in succession. Users can work around this using the Displays panel in System Settings for changing display modes. (1052278)

  • On ASUS N53SN laptops, the kernel does not boot without noefi on commandline. (1053897)

Networking

  • In order to improve compatibility with other local nameserver packages, NetworkManager now assigns IP address 127.0.1.1 to the local nameserver process that it controls instead of 127.0.0.1. If the system's /etc/resolv.conf is absent or is a static file instead of the symbolic link to ../run/resolvconf/resolv.conf installed by default then this static file will have to be updated by the administrator in order to continue using the NetworkManager-controlled nameserver.

Libvirt

  • Windows vms which previously worked with 'vga' video now need 'cirrus' video.

Toolchain

  • Python 2.7.3 includes a fix for a security vulnerability affecting Python's dict and set implementations. Carefully crafted, untrusted input could lead to extremely long computation times and denials of service. Although disabled by default, vulnerable applications such as CGI scripts can explicitly enable "hash randomization" to prevent this exploit. Due to implementation details of this fix, virtualenvs created with older 2.7.x releases may not work with 2.7.3. Specifically, the os module may not appear to have a urandom function. This problem can be solved by recreating the broken virtualenvs with the newer Python 2.7.3 version. See http://bugs.python.org/issue13703 for full details. (954595)

VMware Player

  • Installing either version 4 or 5 of VMware Player on Ubuntu 12.10 will trigger a crash report regarding lsb_release, because the lsb_release command uses Python 3 but the VMware installation environment overrides the Python settings to point to a bundled version of Python 2. (938869) It is unknown what impact this has on VMware Player at runtime.

Video Drivers

  • Several video drivers are not functioning with some legacy chip-sets.
    • xserver-xorg-video-trident with some Trident Cyberblade chip-sets. Black screen and lock-up. Bugs

    • xserver-xorg-video-intel with i810 chip-sets. Segfault. 1060492

    • xserver-xorg-video-sis with 315 series (SiS 315/E/PRO, 550, [M]650, 651, 740, [M]661[FMG]X,[M]741[GX]) chip-sets. Black screen or loops around login screen. 1034812

    • xserver-xorg-video-ati with ATI Rage Pro chip-sets. Black screen.
  • Workarounds
    • Test with a Live CD to see if your hardware is effected.

    • Trident Cyberblade - As the vesa driver doesn't work with this chip-set the only solution is to remain with 12.04.
    • Intel i810 - A new install can only be accomplished from the Alternate ISO. On reboot go to Recovery Mode and delete the video driver. apt-get remove xserver-xorg-video-intel This will also remove xserver-xorg-video-all but this is only a meta package and isn't needed. On reboot create suitable xorg.conf or use RandR to get correct resolution if necessary.

    • SiS 315 Series - As Intel i810 except apt-get remove xserver-xorg-video-sis

    • ATI Rage Pro - As Intel i810 except apt-get remove xserver-xorg-video-ati

Support

  • Edubuntu 12.10 is supported for 18 months.
  • Security and bugfix updates for Edubuntu are provided by the Edubuntu community

QuantalQuetzal/ReleaseNotes/Edubuntu (last edited 2012-10-18 10:58:40 by stgraber)