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WARNING: This is a draft document and a work in progress. Please do not use this as any reference until complete.

Introduction

The Xubuntu developers are moving quickly to bring you the latest and greatest software the Open Source Community has to offer. This is the Xubuntu 11.10 release.

Release Overview

Oneiric Ocelot includes new releases of all the major flavors of Ubuntu: desktop, server, cloud, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Edubuntu, Mythbuntu, and Ubuntu Studio. For Ubuntu, this release provides a full Unity experience even without 3D hardware acceleration, promoting Unity 2D to the primary fallback shell. LightDM steps forward as the login manager for Ubuntu, Edubuntu, Xubuntu, Mythbuntu, and Ubuntu Studio, and includes a customized Unity greeter. Kubuntu showcases the best new features of the KDE Platform, Plasma Workspaces, and Applications, including the Muon Software Centre. Ubuntu Server introduces a technical preview of Juju, a thorougly modern approach to service deployment and orchestration on cloud and bare metal, and support for the ARM architecture.

Revised Software Center

The Ubuntu Software Center adds new "top rated" views to the main category page and all subcategory pages, now allows you to edit or delete your own reviews, and has had a significant speedup for standalone deb file installations (gdebi functionality). Full CJK support is also available. OneConf is now built in to keep your installed applications between computers in sync. You just need to activate it with "File → Sync between computers…".

LightDM now uses the new gtk greeter by default.

Underlying Infrastructure

32-bit compatibility on amd64 systems

Ubuntu 11.10 provides "multiarch" support for installing 32-bit library and application packages on 64-bit systems. For all amd64 installs and upgrades, select 32-bit software, including skype and flash, will be installable directly using the same 32-bit packages that are used on i386 installations, without the need to install the ia32-libs compatibility package. For users this means 32-bit libraries will always be available at the same time as their 64-bit counterparts, even in the case of security updates, and users will only need to install those 32-bit libraries needed by the applications they have installed.

Linux 3.0 Kernel

Ubuntu 11.10 includes the 3.0.0-12.20 Ubuntu kernel which brings the 3.0 upstream kernel, the latest mainline release. The Ubuntu kernel is based on the linux v3.0.4 upstream stable kernel.

This kernel update brings a number of performance improvements both to ext4 (the default filesystem) and the process scheduler, which should improve interactive beahviour. It also brings support for newer hardware.

For the server the kernel also brings the return of Xen dom0 support as a tech preview building towards full support for the 12.04 LTS. It also has container and namespace improvements enabling full LXC support which is of particular interest on ARM platforms. There are also a number of networking and netfilter improvements.

Of note to application developers the default number of file descriptors has been increased simplifying management of programs utilising very large numbers of files.

For the deeply technical there are improvements to TCP and fragment identifier generations, BTRFS has a number of significant improvements, ext4 has SMP scalability improvements, and the Big Kernel Lock is dead!

Gcc 4.6 Toolchain

Ubuntu 11.10 includes gcc 4.6 as the default compiler. The toolchain is based 4.6-1-9ubuntu3 version of gcc. Some of the notable changes over the gcc 4.5 compiler include:

TODO: work with doko to get summary ?? include bintuils info, what about eglibc and cross compile??

Python 2.7

TO DO: double check on this and Python 3.0; default earlier/ 2.6 removed.

network-manager 0.9

The network-manager API has changed compatibility from prior versions. There is now an introspectable version property to help with rsolving conflicts.

New Features

gThumb is now in the default Xubuntu 11.10 installation, to help users with image transformations and viewing.

leafpad is the new default text editor(was mousepad), and now includes the ability to print.

pastebinit is now included in Xubuntu 11.10 intallations by default. If you need to use http://paste.ubuntu.com/, you can use pastebinit in terminals to paste directly without copying and pasting the data.

LightDM is the new application that manages logins in Xubuntu 11.10.

Updated Applications

Onboard (the onscreen keyboard) is now included in the default Xubuntu menus, under Accessories. For those who require an onscreen keyboard, this will be much easier to access using only a mouse or touchpad.

Installation

Overview

Download

Ubuntu 11.10 images can be downloaded from a location near you:

In addition they can be found at the following links:

Upgrading

Upgrading from Ubuntu 11.04

To upgrade from Ubuntu 11.04 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 '11.10' is available. Click Upgrade and follow the on-screen instructions.

To upgrade from Ubuntu 11.04 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 is now more robust and will utilize GNU screen and automatically re-attach in case of e.g. dropped connection problems.

Upgrading from Other Releases

Users of other Ubuntu releases need to upgrade first to 11.04, and then to 11.10.

For further information on upgrading to 11.04, please see the instructions in:

Known issues

The issues 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

  • In some cases, booting the live system takes a long time until the desktop starts. (791139)

  • When overwriting an existing installation in the Ubiquity desktop installer, it creates a new swap partition instead of re-using the already existing one. (782507)

  • Ubiquity desktop installer proceeds to use free space without warning, if sufficient free space exists, and "install alongside" is selected, then clicking on the forward button just begins the installation without warning. (766265)

  • omap3/omap4 netboot images are known to be too small (806751).

  • The "Memory test" mode is hanging indefinitely without any progress on some systems (confirmed on Dell Mini 10). (856055)

  • Chinese installs need to use the live environment instead of install only, to be able to type localize character. (871726)

Upgrades

  • Ubuntu 11.10 has migrated away from /var/run, /var/lock and /dev/shm and now uses /run, /run/lock and /run/shm instead (respectively). While the Ubuntu AppArmor packages and shipped policy have been adjusted for this, custom policy may need to be updated. The following my be used to aid in migration (it allows both the old an the new paths):

    $ sed -i -e 's#/var/run#/{,var/}run#' -e 's#/var/lock#/{run,var}/lock#' -e 's#/dev/shm/#/{dev,run}/shm/#' <profile>

  • Ubuntu 11.04 failed to upgrade to 11.10 with gcj-4.4-jre installed (853688)

  • amd64 users who updated to oneiric prior to August 16th or who installed oneiric prior to Alpha 3 will need to manually enable multiarch support on their systems to ensure they get the same experience (and see the same packages) as other users. This is as simple as running the following command: $ echo foreign-architecture i386 | sudo tee /etc/dpkg/dpkg.cfg.d/multiarch  An apt-get update later, and you'll have access to the full array of i386 packages in addition to the amd64 ones.

  • Any users who have updated to ubuntu 11.10 beta 1 and haven't updated since then, may encounter the fact that 'apt-get update' returns non zero, although it does successfully update the Packages file. In GUI tools, this translates to update-manager showing an error, but it does display the updated apt and allow it to be installed. (871731)

Known issues

For a full list of errata for Ubuntu 11.10, please see the Ubuntu 11.10 release notes.

***** Now in Ubuntu release notes *****

  • 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)

  • There is no screen title or headings when choosing "Install Xubuntu" from the CD menu (840094)

Reporting bugs

It should come as no surprise that this release of Oneiric Ocelot contains other bugs. Your comments, bug reports, patches and suggestions will help fix bugs and improve 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 Xubuntu

If you would like to help shape Xubuntu, take a look at the list of ways you can participate at

More information

You can find out more about Xubuntu on the Xubuntu website and Xubuntu wiki.

To sign up for future Xubuntu and Ubuntu development announcements, please subscribe to Ubuntu's development announcement list at:

Xubuntu/ReleaseNotes/OneiricOcelot/Final (last edited 2012-03-25 16:43:42 by nblzone-227-162)