Beta2

Revision 129 as of 2012-07-26 05:05:02

Clear message

DRAFT

Introduction

The Ubuntu developers are moving quickly to bring you the absolute latest and greatest software the Open Source community has to offer. The Quantal Quetzal Alpha 3 Release of Ubuntu 12.10 is a developer snapshot to give you a very early glance at the next version of Ubuntu.

Get Ubuntu 12.10

Upgrading from Ubuntu 12.04

To upgrade from Ubuntu 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 tell you: New distribution release '12.10' is available. Click Upgrade and follow the on-screen instructions.

To upgrade from Ubuntu 12.04 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 will utilize GNU screen and automatically re-attach in case of e.g. dropped connection problems.

Download the Alpha 3

This release is for developers only. The Ubuntu Desktop images are now bigger than a standard CD, and you should use a USB for installation.

You can download Alpha 3 ISOs from:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/quantal/alpha-3/ (Ubuntu Desktop and Server)
http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/quantal/alpha-3/ (Ubuntu Cloud Server)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/quantal/alpha-3/ (Kubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/lubuntu/releases/quantal/alpha-3/ (Lubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/edubuntu/releases/quantal/alpha-3/ (Edubuntu DVD)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/quantal/alpha-3/ (Ubuntu Studio)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/quantal/alpha-3/ (Xubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/netboot/quantal/ (Ubuntu Netboot)

New features in Quantal

Please see the Quantal 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 unstable branch; others have been explicitly pulled in for 12.10 Quantal Quetzal.

For a list of all packages being accepted for 12.10 Quantal Quetzal, please subscribe to quantal-changes: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/quantal-changes

Linux kernel 3.5

Quantal Alpha-3 includes the 3.5.0-6.6 Ubuntu kernel which was based on the v3.5 upstream Linux kernel. This is an update from the 3.5.0-2.2 Ubuntu kernel which shipped in the Quantal Alpha-2 release and was based on the v3.5-rc4 upstream Linux kernel. Other notable changes with the Quantal Alpha-3 kernel include changing the default scheduler back to Deadline for both the server and desktop, homogenization of the kernel configs for supported flavors and arch's, removal of redundant firmware files, and misc bug fixes. As with the Quantal Alpha-1 and Alpha-2 releases, the Quantal Alpha-3 kernel continues to include the transitioning of the i386 generic-pae flavor to become the generic flavor offering, collapsing of the virtual flavor back into the generic flavor, and standardizing of the entire linux-meta package.

Python 3.0

For 12.10, we intend to ship only Python 3 with the Ubuntu desktop image, not Python 2. Alpha-3 continues this process.

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.

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

Update Manager has been streamlined and renamed Software Updater. It also now checks for updates when launched.

A new X.org stack has been introduced which includes xserver 1.12, mesa 8.0.3, and updated X libs and drivers. The new xserver provides improved multiseat support, better smooth scrolling, and a large variety of bug fixes. The proprietary -nvidia driver now supports the RANDR standard for monitor configuration. We anticipate doing another X.org stack update later on in the Quantal development cycle.

Jockey has been deprecated in favor of a "Drivers" component in software-properties

Libreoffice got updated to 3.6.0rc2

GNOME has been updated to 3.5.4 for most of the components

The first unity 6 version landed with quite some bugs fixed and refactoring for the features that will land next.

Ubuntu Server

TODO: arosales, Daviey, smoser, jamespage

We are continuing to trial the removal of i386 Ubuntu Server CD image. This means that the primary supported installation method is AMD64, the 64-bit release (X86_64). However, other supported installations mechanisms for i386, such as mini.iso and netboot are still supported, which are an initial minimal download; and install directly from the network. i386 images for Alpha is also available, but is not declared as part of the Alpha 3 release. Feedback is most appreciated, if this causes issues for particular hardware.

Unlike the Desktop flavour, we are currently targeting the 12.10 Server image to fit onto a standard cd image (703MB).

Kubuntu

TODO: Riddell or ScottK

Xubuntu

TODO: astraljava

  • The ISO is oversized for CDs for Alpha3, but the Xubuntu team is targeting to fit a standard CD image.

Edubuntu

  • 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.

Lubuntu

  • A new version of the session manager is available, including more customization and integration options (not enable by default, but available for testing)
  • A new version of pcmanfm (file manager), including at lot of bug fixes, external thumbnailer support ...
  • First update of the artwork for 12.10, including a new wallpaper and adjusted gtk themes.
  • notification-daemon have been replaced for xfce4-notifyd on the default installation, to display notifications.
  • catfish, a searching utility, have been added to the default installation.

Ubuntu Studio

  • A new web page is out. The help button on the main menu points there.
  • The menu has been fixed moving audio production tools out of Media Playback.
  • A MIDI router and MIDI tools menu have been added.
  • Task Manager has been switched to System Monitor for better memory use display.
  • A main menu tool has been added to setting to allow the user to change their menu.

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 Quantal Alpha 3 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

  • Ubiquity displays scrollbars inside of slideshow. (1008717)

Migration

  • Upgrade from Precise Desktop with update-manager fails with "can't load DistUpgradeViewGtk (No module named vte)" (1009226) The command line version of the upgrader works correctly (do-release-upgrade -d).

  • In some cases, update-manager crashes with ImportError in main: No module named UpdateManager.UpdateManage (1013276)

Graphics and Display

  • 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)

  • On some systems, gnome-settings-daemon crashed with SIGSEGV in xft_settings_set_xsettings(). (948347)

Desktop

  • Nautilus is missing the Preferences menu item. (999827)

  • The system service to manage device color profiles is crashing on some systems. (1026520)

Kernel

  • ...

Ubuntu Server

  • iSCSI root volume based installs, but then appears to fail to boot. It actually does boot, and running /scripts/local-top/iscsi, resets everything properly, and gets boot going again. (1028458)

  • Unexpected prompt for nameserver IP when using DHCP occurs. (1018271)

Ubuntu Core

  • ...

Kubuntu

  • update-manager testing has not been tried with Kubuntu yet, and is not recommended at this time.

Edubuntu

  • libwebkitgtk-3.0-0 is pulling in gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad and gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg which might make the image larger than normal (1028486).

  • ...

Xubuntu

  • libwebkitgtk-3.0-0 is pulling in gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad and gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg which might make the image larger than normal (1028486).

  • All applications using Gtk3 currently have some mismatched colors in menus and buttons because of a bug in the Unico engine (1016713).

  • Xubuntu, installer locked in auto resize (1027461)

Lubuntu

  • Some iso's for A1 are over sized for CD use. (1009896)

  • Installation will fail if you want to install grub on anything else that the first drive (sda or sda1) (1015880)

  • libwebkitgtk-3.0-0 is pulling in gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad and gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg which might make the image larger than normal (1028486).

  • To work around the Evolution getting black message text on black background change settings->settings manager->appearance->style->bluebird in preference to thinice. (1010487)

Ubuntu Studio

  • libwebkitgtk-3.0-0 is pulling in gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad and gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg which might make the image larger than normal (1028486).

  • ...


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

Reporting bugs

It should come as no surprise that this Alpha 3 release of Quantal Quetzal 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

These images were able to be made available to you thanks to the help of our QA Community

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: