UbuntuDesktop

Revision 11 as of 2012-04-17 03:31:34

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New Features in Ubuntu

Desktop Interface

  • 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.
  • The control-center's "User Interface" panel now allows users to easily configure some properties of Unity.

  • Nautilus quicklist support has been added to Unity launcher.

  • ClickPad devices are !trackpads where the physical button is integrated into the !trackpad surface. Ubuntu 12.04 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.

Desktop Applications

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

  • LibreOffice has been updated to 3.5.

  • Gnome has been updated to 3.4.1
  • Remmina with FreeRDP is the new standard remote desktop client, replacing Vinagre and rdesktop.

Software Center

  • 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.
  • The user can opt-in into personalized recommendations. This will show global, category and per-application recommendations to the user.
  • Payment support for PayPal

  • Web Directory to share applications with your friends
  • Support for multiple screenshots and videos is now availalble.
  • Startup time and overall responsivness was improved.
  • Improved support for installing multiple versions via the ubuntu-backports project.

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

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 Ubuntu 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 Ubuntu with the Desktop CD installer, provided that your computer is connected to the Internet.

Download

Ubuntu 12.04 images can be downloaded from a location near you:

In addition they can also be found at the following locations:

System Requirements

The minimum memory requirement for Ubuntu 12.04 is 384 MB of memory for Ubuntu Desktop. 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 Ubuntu" 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 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 display following message: "New distribution release '12.04' is available. Click Upgrade and follow the on-screen instructions".

Upgrading from Ubuntu 10.04 LTS to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

To upgrade from 10.04 LTS on a desktop system, upgrade over the network with the following procedure.

  1. Start System/Administration/Software Sources
  2. On the Updates tab, set Show new distribution releases: to Long term support releases only, then press Close.
  3. Press Alt-F2 and type update-manager
    1. Click the Check button to check for new updates. If there are any updates to install, use the Install Updates button to install them, and press Check again after that is complete.
    2. A message will appear informing you of the availability of the new release. Click Upgrade.
    Follow the on-screen instructions.

Upgrading from Other Releases

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

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

Known Issues

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)

Graphics and Display

Applications

Changes since 11.10

Changes since 10.04 LTS

  • ? add in highlights (with links to where more detailed information can be found)

TODO pitti/skaet: mine release notes from prior releases for content

Support

  • 5 year, LTS.