ReleaseNotes

Revision 13 as of 2015-09-24 22:03:10

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Introduction

These release notes for Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) provide an overview of the release and document the known issues with Ubuntu 15.10 and its flavors.

Support lifespan

Ubuntu 15.10 will be supported for 9 months for Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Core, Kubuntu, Ubuntu Kylin along with all other flavours.

Official flavour release notes

Find the links to release notes for official flavors here.


Get Ubuntu 15.10

Download Ubuntu 15.10

Images can be downloaded from a location near you.

You can download ISOs from:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/releases/15.10/beta-2/ (Ubuntu Desktop, Server, and Snappy Core)
http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/15.10/beta-2/ (Ubuntu Cloud Server)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/netboot/15.10/ (Ubuntu Netboot)

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/15.10/beta-2/ (Kubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/lubuntu/releases/15.10/beta-2/ (Lubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/15.10/beta-2/ (Ubuntu Studio)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-gnome/releases/15.10/beta-2/ (Ubuntu GNOME)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntukylin/releases/15.10/beta-2/ (Ubuntu Kylin)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-mate/releases/15.10/beta-2/ (Ubuntu MATE)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/15.10/beta-2/ (Xubuntu)

Upgrading from Ubuntu 15.04

To upgrade on a desktop system:

  • Open the "Software & Updates" Setting in Systemsettings.

  • Select the 3rd Tab called "Updates".
  • Set the "Notify me of a new Ubuntu version" dropdown menu to "For any new version".
  • Press Alt+F2 and type in "update-manager" (without the quotes) into the command box.
  • Update Manager should open up and tell you: New distribution release '15.10' is available.
  • Click Upgrade and follow the on-screen instructions.

To upgrade on a server system:

  • Install the update-manager-core package if it is not already installed.

  • Make sure the /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades is set to normal.
  • Launch the upgrade tool with the command sudo do-release-upgrade.

  • Follow the on-screen instructions.

Note that the server upgrade will use GNU screen and automatically re-attach in case of dropped connection problems.

There are no offline upgrade options for Ubuntu Desktop and Ubuntu Server. Please ensure you have network connectivity to one of the official mirrors or to a locally accessible mirror and follow the instructions above.


New features in 15.10

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 Ubuntu 15.10.

For a list of all packages being accepted for Ubuntu 15.10, please subscribe to wily-changes.

Linux kernel 4.2

Linux 4.2 is another exciting update with the following highlights:

  • New AMDGPU kernel driver for supporting recent and near-term Radeon GPUs
  • Intel Broxton support
  • F2FS file-system encryption support
  • NV-DIMM support

A new kernel for the Raspberry Pi 2 has also landed in the official archive.

Boot and service management

systemd integration have been improved.

Ubuntu Desktop

The general theme for 15.10 on the desktop is one of bug fixes and incremental quality improvements as well as a more significant change in the move to systemd as an init system.

Unity

Unity has had many bugs fixed and new features added. Locally integrated menus are now available for unfocussed windows. There have been a number of usability improvements to the dash.

Compiz 0.9.12

  • Various fixes and improvements.
  • Refined integration with the MATE desktop.

General

  • Firefox is updated to version 41 and Chromium is updated to version 44.
  • MATE is updated to 1.10.
  • Most of the GNOME platform is now based on version 3.16.
  • Blueman 2.0 is now include and used by several flavours along with BlueZ 5.34.

LibreOffice

LibreOffice 5.0.1 brings a lot of improvements.

  • Core
    • PDF export supports Time-Stamp Protocol
    • Adobe Swatch Exchange (.ase) support
    • Maintaining invisible content in Emails
  • Writer
    • Emoji and in-word replacement support
    • Style previews in the Sidebar
    • Word-compatible text highlighting
    • Crop an image
    • Better calculation of displayed page number
    • Table Management
    • Toolbar improvements
    • DOC improvements
    • OOXML improvements
    • RTF improvements
    • Image Drag and Drop
    • Optional RSIDs
    • LibreLogo: joining arbitrary points

  • Calc
    • Conditional formatting improvements for XSLX
    • Scientific Format and Number Format
    • Formula engine now supports table structured references, new spreadsheet functions and A:A / 1:1 entire column/row references
    • Crop, change and save an image
    • Toolbar improvements

Full details here:

Boot, installation and post-install

  • The amd64 (Intel x86 64bit) images specifically targeted at Apple hardware (amd64+mac) are no longer produced. Most Apple computers are now capable of booting the amd64 image directly using the EFI (not legacy) boot method so long as their firmware is up to date. If for some reason your hardware doesn't boot properly using the amd64 image, make sure you don't have a pending EFI update and if that still doesn't ##work, then patch the 64-bit ISO using the software in bug #1298894 (tested working on Macbook 2,1). Alternatively, simply use the ##i386 (32bit) image instead.

  • Due to changes in syslinux, it is not currently possible to use usb-creator from 14.04 and earlier releases to write USB images for 15.04; we believe that it is also not possible to use usb-creator from a 15.04 system to write USB images for earlier releases. For now the workaround is to use a matching release of Ubuntu to write the images, but we intend to issue updates soon to work around this incompatibility. 1325801

  • Depending on your location Ubiquity may trigger and ubi-timezone error during install. If you encounter this the recommended work-around is to install without an active network connection. (Bug: 1462688)
  • In Virtualbox, the installer currently has a bug where after the installation is complete, the installation medium will eject, but you will be unable to press ENTER to reboot. Powering off and back on should boot you into your installed system. This is being tracked in bug 1447038

  • The right driver for Broadcom wireless cards is not always detected (1498074) As a result wifi networking doesn't work. The drivers are available on the image and can be installed manually from the command line with dpkg.

Upgrade

* If several keyboard layouts are configured before upgrade, the wrong layout might be selected after upgrade (1447157) Re-select the keyboard layout of your choice from the keyboard indicator or system-settings to make it the default. This setting will then persist upon reboot.

  • modemmanager fails to upgrade from 15.04 (1481798) If it happens, don't reboot and run the command sudo dpkg --configure -a from the command line to finish the upgrade before rebooting.

* Ubuntu MATE does not currently support upgrading from 15.04 to 15.10 (Bug:)


Official flavours

The release notes for the official flavours can be found at the following links:


More information

Reporting 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.

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More about Ubuntu

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