ReleaseNotes

Revision 71 as of 2017-03-23 20:12:37

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Introduction

These release notes for Ubuntu 17.04 (Zesty Zapus) provide an overview of the release and document the known issues with Ubuntu 17.04 and its flavors.

Support lifespan

Ubuntu 17.04 will be supported for 9 months until January 2018. If you need Long Term Support, it is recommended you use Ubuntu 16.04 LTS instead.

Official flavour release notes

Find the links to release notes for official flavors here.


Get Ubuntu 17.04

Download Ubuntu 17.04

Images can be downloaded from a location near you.

You can download ISOs and flashable images from from:

http://releases.ubuntu.com/17.04/beta-2/ (Ubuntu Desktop and Server)

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/17.04/beta-2/ (Kubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/lubuntu/releases/17.04/beta-2/ (Lubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-budgie/releases/17.04/beta-2/ (Ubuntu Budgie)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-gnome/releases/17.04/beta-2/ (Ubuntu GNOME)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntukylin/releases/17.04/beta-2/ (Ubuntu Kylin)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-mate/releases/17.04/beta-2/ (Ubuntu MATE)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/17.04/beta-2/ (Ubuntu Studio)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/17.04/beta-2 (Xubuntu)

Upgrading from Ubuntu 16.10

To upgrade on a desktop system:

  • Open the "Software & Updates" Setting in System Settings.

  • 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 -d" (without the quotes) into the command box.
  • Update Manager should open up and tell you: New distribution release '17.04' is available.
    • If not you can also use "/usr/lib/ubuntu-release-upgrader/check-new-release-gtk"
  • 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 Prompt line in /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 17.04

Networking

  • The default DNS resolver is now systemd-resolved.

Swap

  • For new installs, a swap file will be used instead of a swap partition.

Updated Packages

Linux kernel 4.10

Ubuntu 17.04 is based on the Linux release series 4.10.

Driverless Printing

We now support printers which allow printing without printer-specific drivers. These printers are IPP Everywhere and Apple AirPrint printers, but also some PDF, Postscript, and PCL printers work. This way connecting a printer gets as easy as connecting a USB stick.

  • The printers can get connected via network or USB.
  • The setup of IPP Everywhere and Apple Airprint printers should occur fully automatically. You only need to plug in your USB printer or connect your network printer to the local network.
  • If you do not want to set up IPP network printers automatically edit /etc/cups/cups-browsed.conf to have a line "CreateIPPPrinterQueues No", and if you also want suitable PDF, Postscript, or PCL printers automatically set up have a line "CreateIPPPrinterQueues All". Reboot after modifying /etc/cups/cups-browsed.conf.
  • For manual setup of driverless network printers with system-config-printer, choose the printer under the discovered network printers and then "IPP network printer via DNS-SD", or "Driverless IPP" in the "Connections" list (In the "Select Device" step). In the CUPS web interface look for "driverless" in the discovered network printers entries and also for "driverless" in the make/model/driver choice.

  • On driverless USB printers (IPP-over-USB) you find the web administration interface under http://localhost:60000/ (if more than one printer is connected, the other ones are on port 60001, 60002, ...). It is highly recommended to access the interface with Firefox.

  • If you have a WiFi printer which does not allow to configure the WiFi access by its front panel, try to connect it via USB. If it is a IPP-over-USB printer you can configure it by its web interface now and then disconnect USB and use WiFi.

  • If you have an HP multi-function device with scanner, prefer using it with HPLIP driver as you were used to. When using in driverless mode you will not be able to scan. system-config-printer takes automatically care of this.
  • Driverless printing is supported on both Ubuntu Desktop and Ubuntu Server.

Ubuntu Desktop

  • LibreOffice has been updated to 5.3.

  • Apps provided by GNOME have been updated to 3.24. Exceptions are the Nautilus file manager (3.20), Terminal (3.20), Evolution (3.22), and Software (3.22).

  • The Calendar app now has a Week view.

  • gconf is no longer installed by default since it has long been superseded by gsettings. Note that statistics and preferences for the Aisleriot card games will be reset when upgrading to 17.04.

Ubuntu Server

qemu 2.8

Qemu has been updated to the 2.8 release.

See the Changelog for details.

libvirt 2.5

Libvirt has been updated to version 2.5. See the Changelogs for details.

For administrators worth to consider is that depending on the system setup and huge page size availability the specification of a page size for hugepages in a guest xml can now be mandatory.

DPDK

Ubuntu 17.04 includes the latest release of DPDK, 16.11.1.

See the Release Notes as well as the stable release announcement for more detail.

As a tech preview DPDK is now also available for ppc64el. This includes the latest improvements made in version 16.11.1 in general, but also further improvements to enable the i40e PMD and vfio-pci scanning on spapr platforms.

Known issues

As is to be expected, with any release, there are some significant known bugs that users may run into with this release of Ubuntu 17.04. 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:

  • Until 17.04 is released, all updates will be installed automatically in the background (1649709)

OpenVPN

OpenVPN 2.4 removed its tls-remote option. Current setups using that option will fail to work. Update your configuration to use verify-x509-name instead.

Desktop

  • New picture thumbnails are not being generated. (1665602)

  • The prompt to install missing codecs isn't working (1661371)

  • Some third-party .deb files are not installable in the Software app (1672424)

  • GTK+ 3.20 requires theme developers to make changes to their themes. Many (but not all) popular themes are now compatible with GTK+ 3.20.
  • Unity 8 session sometimes locks up when you press Print Screen (1525285)


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.

Participate in Ubuntu

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More about Ubuntu

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