Introduction

The Ubuntu developers are moving quickly to bring you the absolute latest and greatest software the Open Source community has to offer. The Oneiric Ocelot Alpha 3 Release of Ubuntu 11.10 is a developer snapshot to give you an early glance at the next version of Ubuntu.

One of the requests received during the last Ubuntu Developer Summit was to provide a bit more information about the release process, and what's happening there. With this in mind, the release team will be adding a section about "what's happening in the background", to each of the milestones for those who are interested as part of this Technical Overview.

Get Ubuntu 11.10

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.

Download the Alpha 3

This release is for developers only. Most of these images are oversize; you can use either a DVD or USB for installation instead of a CD.

You can download Alpha 3 ISOs from:

New features in Oneiric

Please see the Oneiric blueprint list for details.

Please test and report any bugs you find:

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 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot.

For a list of all packages being accepted for 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot, please subscribe to oneiric-changes: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/oneiric-changes

Ubuntu Kernel

Alpha 3 includes the 3.0.0-7.9 Ubuntu kernel which is based on the mainline v3.0 kernel. This is an update from the 3.0-3.4 Ubuntu kernel which shipped in the Alpha 2 release and was based on the mainline v3.0-rc5 kernel. Some of the most notable changes between the Alpha 2 and Alpha 3 release with respect to the kernel include:

Adopted a 3 digit kernel version, eg 3.0.0-x.y

Rebase to upstream v3.0 final kernel

Enable Overlayfs

Enable Realtek RTL8192CU/RTL8188CU wifi driver

Enable support for rt53xx wireless chipset family

Enable Intellimouse mode for Lenovo Zhaoyang E47

Numerous config updates

Ubuntu Desktop

A new experimental release of compiz and unity has been included with this milestone. Highlights of this release are:

A new alt + tab (accessible by control + tab until feature complete) is available.

The restructuring for getting some new features has been done. Known bugs and regressions are documented below.

Better performances of launchers and panel, port to gtk3 and gtk3 indicator stack.

Unity 2D reduced the delta with Unity, share more codes with it and had almost full accessibility support. See known issues for the missing accessibility bits.

Thunderbird is included as default email client including menu and launcher integration.

The new gwibber landed in Oneiric bringing improved performances and a new interface using the most recent GNOME technologies.

GNOME got updated to current unstable version (3.1.4) on its way to GNOME 3.2

The lightdm gtk greeter switched to GTK3, the unity-greeter landed in the archive but is not default yet

The indicators got a visual refresh which includes a refactoring of the session indicator and a new power indicator.

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).

Ubuntu Core

Ubuntu Core is a new minimal rootfs for use in the creation of custom images for specific needs. With the release of Oneiric Ocelot, developers will be able to use Ubuntu Core as the basis for their application demonstrations, constrained environment deployments, device support packages, and other goals. More information is available on the Ubuntu Core wiki page.

Ubuntu ARM

Server images now implement pre-installed pool support which allows a complete server installation to be done without internet access.

Massive amounts of validation and QA have gone into these images to ensure common use cases such as IPsec is usable.

Ubuntu Server

All references to UEC have been changed to "Ubuntu Cloud". If the term UEC is discovered in this milestone, it should be considered a bug and raised accordingly.

Former UEC components (including Eucalyptus), is no longer part of the CD image, and should be demoted to Universe shortly.

Ubuntu Server Cloud images

The images have been formally renamed to 'Ubuntu Cloud Images' (or cloudimg as short form). The images should now be found at the new address: https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com

Kubuntu

Plasma and KDE Applications 4.7

The latest stable release of KDE's Plasma Workspaces and Applications brings new features and improvements all around. Highlights include:

Visual updates include a new Oxygen icon theme A cleaner default look to Dolphin Gwenview's new ability to compare two or more images New breadcrumb feature in the Kickoff menu that simplifies navigating submenus More improvements in the Network Management widget

KDEPIM 4.7

Along with KDE 4.7, 11.10 also introduces the new KDEPIM suite, which includes the new Kmail 2. The look and feel is familiar, but under the hood, most of the PIM suite is now fully migrated to the Akonadi storage service.

IMPORTANT: Do note that this is a major upgrade to the mail, calendar and addressbook systems, and as such still needs usage and migration testing. It is, even more highly than usual, highly recommended to back up all important data, mail, contact information, and calendars if you plan to test upgrading to 11.10.

Amarok 2.4.3

The Amarok folks have just released the latest version of the popular music player. Work has been done to improve the interface, drag-and-drop inside of collections, and dynamic playlists are some of the new things to be found.

Muon Software Center

Kubuntu has switched to providing the Muon Software Center and Muon Package manager by default. The Muon package management suite is tightly integrated with the Debian package management system (all Ubuntu flavors use under the hood) for better performance and more reliable results.

Additional information about this release of Kubuntu can be found here.

Xubuntu

The Xubuntu images currently require several workarounds in order to be used, so are not being officially published with the A3 release. Known issues have been documented below for those wanting to work with the daily images.

Edubuntu

Edubuntu switched from using the old gobby to using gobby-0.5/infinote.

The default desktop environment is now Unity with fallback to Unity 2D when the hardware doesn't support running the 3D version. Gnome 3 Fallback (which uses an updated gnome-panel) is available for those who want it through an option in the installer.

One of our goal for this release is to improve our translation support. Alpha 3 is the first release of Edubuntu to feature a fully translated installer. If it's not for you, please help translating it!

To learn more on Edubuntu and download a stable version of it, go to: http://www.edubuntu.org

Mythbuntu

Mythbuntu oneiric has transitioned over to the quicker lightdm desktop manager and brings updated builds of MythTV. Still on the 0.24 series, but growing more and more stable with each new build.

Lubuntu

Lubuntu is a flavor of Ubuntu based on the LXDE desktop environment. The goal is to provide a very lightweight distribution, with all the advantages of the Ubuntu world (repositories, support ...). With many LXDE components, Lubuntu also uses well-known applications, such as Chromium, Openbox, Pidgin ... (More informations on applications used or on the Lubuntu project are available on the wiki.).

Ubuntu Studio

Ubuntu Studio images are not being released with this milestone.

What's happening in the background

Lubuntu started in 2009, when several people from Ubuntu and LXDE decided to create a flavor of Ubuntu based on LXDE. Discussions began to decide which applications will be included by default. A first "draft" of a Lubuntu ISO, based on Ubuntu 9.10, was published as a preview, along with the first version of the lubuntu-desktop meta-package.

Integration in the official repository started during 10.04 release cycle, with discussions at UDS, updates of LXDE components and other parts of the seed, the creation of a set of default settings, and an original artwork. Lubuntu 10.04 was the first real release, with still some modified packages handle in a PPA.

We made 2 other releases (10.10 and 11.04), with constant improvements in the seed selection, artwork, usability and integration in Ubuntu ecosystem. But, we were unable to include Lubuntu images in the Ubuntu family, like others flavors (Xubuntu, Ubuntu Studio etc ...). We were blocked sometimes by process of flavor's creation, or sometimes by hardware problems. Finally, after the 11.04 release, the official request to the Technical Board was made, and we received the official "go" during 11.10 UDS. Then, after fixing the hardware problems and committed final pieces of code, Ubuntu ISO builders finally generated Lubuntu images for 11.10 Alpha 3. Next step is to make a great 11.10 release.

Known issues

As is to be expected, at this early stage of the release process, there are some significant known bugs that users may run into with the Oneiric 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

Many CD images are oversized and do not fit on a standard 700 MB CD. Please burn the images onto a DVD, or use usb-creator to put them onto an USB stick. This will be fixed by the first Beta release.

usb-creator is currently unable to create EFI-bootable USB sticks. (702283)

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

A gnome-settings-daemon crash report will pop up in the live system unless you selected "Try Ubuntu without installing" in the boot menu. This crash is harmless and does not break the live system or installation.

Shutdown in the live session sometimes does not work and seems to just hang on the desktop. Just restart the computer with the power button in that case, there is no possibility of data loss. (805906)

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)

ARM Desktop installations sometimes crash during the OEM configuration step or upgrades, due to a race condition in flash-kernel. (779410)

omap3 netboot images are known to be broken with the Alpha 3 release (820621)

Selecting "Configure encrypted volumes" in the alternate/server installer initialises encrypted volumes from scratch, and will destroy any encrypted data that was previously present. There is no way to reuse an existing encrypted volume at installation time at the moment, although we do consider this a bug that will be fixed in a future release. (420080)

Upgrades

During upgrade a debconf prompt about DM to use is displayed (806559)

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>

Graphics and Display

Unity and Nux have some known regressions for keyboard and mouse handling. Basically, middle click doesn't work on the launcher as well as shortcuts. Dismissing the dash by clicking outside of it is broken as well.

We had to revert from unity-window-decorator to gtk-window-decorator for performance reasons. This means that the "1 px border" for resizing window is temporary back

Unity 2D is not working on KVM with xen and cirrus video devices. As a workaround, use the -vga vmware option. (759803)



Since Unity is in active development right now, please check the unity bug reports before filing new bugs.

Desktop

Some icons are missing in the lightdm login screen. (796793)

Restart is missing from SessionMenu (815077) The user can either enter the following command in a terminal 'sudo reboot', or logout and select restart from the login screen.

Kernel

Hangs while suspending with iwlagn on Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 5350 AGN [Echo Peak] (811214)

Sandy Bridge power regression from kernel 3.0.0-6 to 3.0.0-7 (30% more power at idle) (818830)

Ubuntu Server

When running an i386 system under a virtual machine without enough memory allocated a kernel error is detected during installation. (790712)

autofs5: "when stopped, automount orphans some mounts" (578536)

"Apparmor results in denying operation mknod for isc-dhcp-server " (776945)

Ubuntu Cloud

Oneiric cluster compute instances do not boot in some cases; further details still being investigated.(791850)

/mnt not mounted, swap not used, disk is xvde (784937)

Kubuntu

820638 Muon defaults to allowing untrusted packages - In order to securely install new and updated packages you must change the default setting for "Allow installation of untrusted packages" so it is not checked.

Xubuntu

Users can not use System -> Users and Groups to make changes; you must instead use the terminal with 'addgroup' and 'useradd' (789333)

User must choose a session when logging in after an installation or upgrade. (806408, 799754)

LightDM has two Xubuntu Session options after upgrade to xubuntu-default-settings. If the user chooses the session resulting in a wallpaper with Xfce on it, they must do the following to reset the session: log out using 'right-click the panel, hover to panel, logout'

hit 'Ctrl+Alt+F2' to switch to a tty

login

type 'rm -r ~/.config', hit enter

type 'exit', hit enter

Alt+F7

click 'username'

enter password

click sessions to expand it

select the xubuntu session you did not use, it should be the one that is not highlighted

click 'login'

(819585)

casper doesn't configure autologin for lightdm properly; to login to the live session: Click 'Other...'

Enter username 'ubuntu', hit enter

tab to session, select the second Xubuntu session

tab to login, hit enter

(819624)

Desktop images are failing to install on some hardware (820731)

If you encrypt your drive or /home, you will lose all existing data on the hard drive, and will not be able to login (820460)

Edubuntu

You may have to wait over 5 minutes for Network Manager to timeout before starting LTSP Live. Also, LTSP Live will start a gnome 3.0 fallback session instead of Unity 2D. A rewrite of it is in progress which will address the issue. (791611)

Edubuntu now uses Unity by default and offers the user to use the "Gnome 3 Fallback session" if they want to. Selecting the Fallback session won't work because lightdm, the new display manager doesn't support changing the default session. The only known workaround is to select the session manually at every login. (806064)

Ubuntu Core

DRM libraries are always installed, even for users who are not enabling graphical environments (819802)

Lubuntu

Jockey crashes on start (819506)

Missing icons in the menu (819525)

GTK3 applications doesn't have a theme (819529)

Generic icon for network-manager (796147)

Generic icon for jockey (819542)

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

Reporting bugs

It should come as no surprise that this Alpha 3 release of Oneiric Ocelot 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

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.

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