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Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) Beta 2 Released

By nhandler | Published: 2011-04-15

The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the release of Ubuntu 11.04 Beta 2.

Codenamed "Natty Narwhal", 11.04 continues Ubuntu’s proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution. The team has been hard at work since Beta 1, fixing bugs and getting things all nice and natty.

For PC users, Ubuntu 11.04 now supports laptops, desktops and netbooks with a unified look and feel based on Unity.

A special Ubuntu Netbook version is provided for platforms based on ARM technology, such as the Panda and Beagle boards.

Ubuntu Server 11.04 has made it easier to provision servers, and reduce power consumption.

Ubuntu Server 11.04 for UEC and EC2 is available as well, with a new kernel and improved initialization and configuration options.

The Ubuntu 11.04 family of Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, Mythbuntu, and Ubuntu Studio, also reach Beta 2 status today.

Ubuntu Changes
————–

Some of the new features now available are:

Unity is now the default Ubuntu desktop session. The Unity launcher has many new features, including drag and drop re-ordering of launcher icons, full keyboard navigation support, launcher activation through keyboard shortcuts, right-click context menu quick-list and switching between running applications.

The Ubuntu One control panel now allows selective syncing, and the launcher icon now displays sync progress. File syncing speed has been improved as well.

The Ubuntu Software Center now allows users to "rate & review" installed applications, share reviews via integration with social networking services added into Gwibber, and has other usability improvements.

Key applications have been updated to newer versions:

Ubuntu 11.04 comes with the latest Firefox 4.0 as standard web browser.

LibreOffice 3.3.2 has been included in 11.04 as the default office package.

Banshee 2.0 is the standard music player now and has been integrated into the sound menu.

And we continue to improve the underlying infrastructure:

11.04 Beta 2 has a kernel based on 2.6.38.

X.org 1.10.0 and Mesa 7.10.1 are the new versions included with 11.04.

GNU toolchain has transitioned to be based off of gcc 4.5 for i386, amd64, and ARM omap3/omap4 architectures.

All main packages have now been built and and are installable with Python 2.7.

dpkg 1.16.0-pre brings us up-to-date with staged changes for the upcoming Debian 1.16.0 dpkg release, as well as pulling in the current version of the in-progress multiarch work

Upstart has been updated to 0.9.4-1. There are a lot of new features: its now "chroot-aware", there is support for basic job/event visualization, there are two new initctrl commands (show-config, check-config), a socket bridge is now provided, the latest D-Bus version now allows D-Bus services to be activated via Upstart, a manual job configuration stanza, and override file support is now available

Please see http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/natty/beta for details.

Ubuntu Netbook on ARM
——————–

The ARM version is the first one to ship with our new Unity 2D interface by default.

The 2.6.38 kernel for OMAP4 has had many driver improvements, most notably the display driver was switched to use the HDMI port by default and auto detect the monitor resolution.

For developers, an Ubuntu Headless image is available for omap3 and omap4 hardware. Headless is fully set up for the serial port and contains a minimal command line install.

Ubuntu Server
————-

cobbler and mcollective have been included, which will make provisioning servers easier.

Powernap 2.0 uses a new method to reduce power consumption and can now monitor user activity (Console, Mouse, Keyboard), system activity (load, processors, process IO), and network activity (wake-on-lan, udp ports tcp ports)

Default dhcpd server updated from dhcp3 to isc-dhcp (version 4).

Eucalyptus is now the latest stable point release (2.0.2) with security and efficiency fixes. (Known bug against the dhcpd server)

OpenStack (nova) in Universe is a technology preview, with a recent snapshot of 2011.2 (Cactus) release.

libvirt is updated to 0.8.8 with new features and bug fixes (see upstream change log for full information 0.8.3->0.8.8)

Ubuntu Server for UEC and EC2
—————————–

cloud-init has been updated to 0.60. This feature includes support resizing of the root file system at first boot, adds minimal OVF transport (iso) support and allow setting of hostname when first booting. Rightscale support has been added to cloud-config and cloud-init.

Some of the supporting technologies that have been packaged and included are, Cassandra 0.7.0, ZeroMQ, Membase, and XtraBackup.

Kubuntu
——-

Kubuntu 11.04 Beta 2 sports the latest KDE software including KDE Platform 4.6.1.

Kubuntu now provides a working Samba file sharing module that lets you add and manage shares from the folder’s Properties dialogs.

The new Language Selector module allows you to add, remove, and manage system languages directly from System Settings.

An updated system-config-printer-kde brings a number of bug fixes to Kubuntu’s printer management tool.

Please see https://wiki.kubuntu.org/NattyNarwhal/Beta2/Kubuntu for details.

Xubuntu
——-

Xubuntu wallpaper has been updated for this release. The wallpaper is designed to integrate well with the new graybird theme.

The installation slide show has been updated for Natty Narwhal, and really displays the best of Xubuntu.

The Elementary Xubuntu icon theme has been updated.

Xubuntu is using the Droid font by default, since it is a lightweight, good visibility font.

The newly released Xfce 4.8 is included. The menus in Xfce 4.8 are now editable with any menu editor that meets the freedesktop.org standards. The suggested editor is alacarte.

Edubuntu
——–

You can test Edubuntu 11.04 directly from your web browser by going at http://www.edubuntu.org/weblive .

WebLive is also directly integrated in the Ubuntu Software Center letting you test the most popular apps without installing them on your machine. Just click the "Test drive" button.

Ubiquity now has an additional step allowing users to fine-tune which applications should be installed on the final system.

Edubuntu now ships with Arkose, which provides application sandboxing for downloaded apps.

New software packages in Edubuntu include Pencil, Geogebra, Calibre, LibreCAD, Freemind and Stellarium.

Theming improvements include a new LDM theme when installing LTSP from the Edubuntu installer. The text-mode boot mode now displays "Edubuntu" instead of "Ubuntu". Our ongoing menu refinements include new icons where they were missing, and more consistent case use in menu entries.

Edubuntu 11.04 ships with the classical Gnome desktop by default but Unity is available as an option in the installer.

For more details on what has changed in Edubuntu 11.04, please refer to http://www.edubuntu.org .

Ubuntu Studio
————-

The task selections during installation have been updated. The audio tasks have been parsed into two groups: generation and recording.

Currently, Ubuntu Studio is shipping the -generic kernel. We are working with the Ubuntu Kernel Team to get a -low latency kernel into the archives. An interim -lowlatency kernel is available in Allesio Bogani’s PPA.

network-manager has replaced gnome-network-admin.

The packages shipped in Ubuntu Studio are now more focused to support identified tasks and their derived work flows.

Ubuntu Studio does not currently use Unity. As the user logs in it will default to Gnome Classic Desktop (i.e. Gnome2).

Mythbuntu
———

The Mythbuntu-bare (Backup and Restore for the database and configuration files) Mythbuntu Control Center plugin now has the ability to schedule backups on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

Android and iOS devices can now be used as remote controls.

MythTV 0.24 is now integrated into the builds.

Please see http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/natty/beta for more details on the above products.

About Ubuntu
————

Ubuntu is a full-featured Linux distribution for desktops, laptops, and servers, with a fast and easy installation and regular releases. A tightly-integrated selection of excellent applications is included, and an incredible variety of add-on software is just a few clicks away.

Professional technical support is available from Canonical Limited and hundreds of other companies around the world. For more information about support, visit http://www.ubuntu.com/support .

If you would like to help shape Ubuntu, take a look at the list of ways you can participate at: http://www.ubuntu.com/community/participate .

Your comments, bug reports, patches and suggestions really help us to improve this and future releases of Ubuntu. Instructions can be found at: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs .

To Get Ubuntu 11.04 Beta 2
————————–

To upgrade to Ubuntu 11.04 Beta 2 from Ubuntu 10.10, follow these instructions:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NattyUpgrades

Or, download Ubuntu 11.04 Beta 2 images from a location near you:

http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/download (Ubuntu and Ubuntu Server)

In addition, they can be found at the following links:

The final version of Ubuntu 11.04 is expected to be released on April 28 2011.

More Information
—————-

You can find out more about Ubuntu and about this beta release on our website, IRC channel and wiki.

To sign up for future Ubuntu announcements, please subscribe to Ubuntu’s very low volume announcement list at:

http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-announce

Originally sent to the ubuntu-announce mailing list by Kate Stewart on Thu Apr 14 20:25:50 UTC 2011

News

Announcing the Next Ubuntu Bug Day! April 14th 2011

By akgraner | Published: 2011-04-13

Fellow Ubuntu Triagers!

This week’s Bug Day targets are*drum roll please* *Ubuntu Translations*!

* 28 New bugs need a hug
* 32 Incomplete bugs need a status check
* 17 Confirmed bugs need a review

Bookmark it, add it to your calendars, turn over those egg-timers!

* 14 April 2011
* https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay/20110414

Are you looking for a way to start giving some love back to your
adorable Ubuntu Project?
Did you ever wonder what Triage is? Want to learn about that?
This is a perfect time!, Everybody can help in a Bug Day!
open your IRC Client and go to #ubuntu-bugs (FreeNode) the BugSquad will
be happy to help you to start contributing!

Wanna be famous? Is easy! remember to use 5-A-day so if you do a good
work your name could be listed at the top 5-A-Day Contributors in the
Ubuntu Hall of Fame page!

We are always looking for new tasks or ideas for the Bug Days, if you
have one add it to the Planning page
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay/Planning

If you’re new to all this, head to http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs

Originally posted to the Ubuntu Devel Announce mailing list by Victor Vargas on Wed Apr 13 13:42:43 UTC 2011

Wiki Relicensed to CC-BY-SA 3.0

By David Planella | Published: 2011-04-13

For around six years the Ubuntu Wiki (wiki.ubuntu.com) has lived without
a clarified license. The Documentation team fixed a similar issue on
their wiki (help.ubuntu.com) three years ago. They chose a Creative
Commons license, which made it much easier to redistribute content and
give contributors clarified rights regarding their contributions.

After a longer discussion, the Community Council agreed to use a similar
decision process and the same license. Six weeks ago (15.02.2011), the
Community Council reached out to every single Ubuntu Wiki contributor
and asked for feedback. Also did we publish the same text in a couple of
Ubuntu-related blogs and discussed the relicensing in a Community
Council meeting.

Here is the feedback we received in the last six weeks:

 - Huge number of +1.
 - Disagreement with the process. A handful of contributors were
   unhappy about that we didn't ask for explicit approval of every
   single contributor to the wiki. While that makes sense in theory,
   it's simply not feasible with 15000+ contributors. We feel we did
   our best in reaching out to everybody and asking for feedback. Also
   did all of these contributors have no objections against the license
   itself.
 - Question about "DRM clause" in CC-BY-SA 3.0 license. One contributor
   wondered if we could dual-license the wiki to avoid the "DRM clause"
   in the Creative Commons license. Although we are sympathetic to this
   request, doing so would mean maintaining the wiki under two licenses
   and would mean that we could not incorporate BY-SA licensed
   materials, like material from Wikimedia projects. We have opted for
   the simpler strategy of using a single license.

Without further ado, we'd like to thank every single contributor to the
Ubuntu Wiki for their work and congratulate everyone to having more
rights regarding their Wiki content now:

	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

(via Daniel Holbach)

Documentation

Look what we built together, a retrospective on Unity bitesize bugs.

By jcastro | Published: 2011-04-12

This cycle we started off determined to make it easy for anyone who wanted to contribute to Ubuntu Unity to have no roadblocks in their way. We concentrated on making our work processes as smooth and easy as possible. We had Q+A sessions in IRC, Ask Me Anythings on Reddit, and regular status reports so that anyone who wanted to dive in this cycle could grab Unity and fix a bug.

This cycle the following 17 contributors have landed code into the “Unity” module:

Andrea Azzarone, Andreas Reichel, Connor Carney, Dylan McCall, Jamal Fanaian, Jamie Rowe, Jimmy Wahlberg, Marco Biscaro, Marco Trevisan(Treviño), Matthew Rasmus, Nico van der Walt, Oliver Sauder, Ruben Verweij, Shane Fagan, Stefano Candori, Ying-ChunLiu(PaulLiu), and Артём Попов.

Collectively this group help fix close to 60 bitesize bugs:

This was part of part of a greater effort of bug fixing over this cycle as the entire collective Unity team has closed close to 1200 bugs. Do note that in certain cases a contributor fixed meatier bugs than what was just on the bitesize list. Indeed without Andrea Azzarone we wouldn’t have a resizeable launcher,

So Now What?

Software is never finished. As of this writing three more new people have code proposals pending. As 11.04 is finalized it will get into the hands of millions of users. They will also want to fix and add things. The Get Involved page isn’t going anywhere. As we put the finishing touches on 11.04 we’re already having a think of where we want to go for 11.10 and how to grow contributions.

Other Unity Updates for this Week

Two Unity releases this week (Thursday and last Monday), totalizing an impressive number of 120 bugs fixes! As usual full story at https://launchpad.net/unity/3.0/3.8.4 and https://launchpad.net/unity/3.0/3.8.6
Compiz as well got multiple uploads with additional fixes (you can find them in the unity links above)
Mostly bug fixes/crashers
Compiz fixes crash issues with gitk, multimonitor support fixes for grid, some (still remaining) stacking issues
What is noticeable this week is probably the left edge reveal and the unity-preferences dialog to change it. The icon urgency animation is also back. All paperwork done for string freeze.
Also the grid plugin won an animation and is now orange (unity –reset to be back to the default!)
Dynamic quicklists are back (just needed to wire the latest pieces)

There is a known issue of random freeze with Xorg, we don’t really konw if it’s compiz hammering it too much with the stackattack patch (we will lower the value in next upload) or something else. RAOF is looking at it. Compiz is still crashing on plugins added/remove in ccsm. That’s priority #1 for Thursday to ensure we are in a good state but the amount of work to get there is huge.

How to Get Involved

1. Get the Code

Follow the Step by Step Instructions and Wiki Page. This will get the code from Launchpad, set up your development environment, and getting you used to the Launchpad workflow.

2. Pick a bug

Here’s the full list if you want to find more, feel free to just grab one, assign it to yourself, mark it in progress and get started.

3. Fix your bug and then get your code into Unity

Don’t worry we won’t leave you hanging, you can get a-hold of a Unity developer through many different ways:

#ayatana on freenode IRC during European and American workdays. Or you can post toÂ the mailing list if you have a question.
We also have weekly IRC Q+A for any developer who wants to dive in and ask a Unity developer. 7pm-8pm UTC (That’s 2pm EST) every Friday!

News

Off to a Great Start: Ubuntu App Developer Week – Day 1

By David Planella | Published: 2011-04-12

Ubuntu App Developer Week – Day 1 Summary

A great start for a great week. Looking at the lots of participation and questions during the first day shows that developing applications in Ubuntu is a hot topic. Here is a small summary from yesterday’s schedule.

Enabling Multitouch and Gestures Using uTouch

By Chase Douglas and Stephen Webb

Chase and Stephen delivered an overview on the whole stack of touch technologies focusing on two main aspects: gestures/uTouch and multitouch. On gestures, they showed us how there is a difference between general-purpose stroke gestures and defined gestures primitives, such as “drag”, “pinch/expand”, “rotate”, “tap”, and “touch”, which enable the possibility of defining a gesture language. A high-level overview of uTouch followed, with a description of the API and a couple of code examples showing how to integrate applications with it. To wrap up the session, they explained how Ubuntu will be the first distro to bring multitouch in 11.04 and how this was made possible, such as extending xorg’s XInput to version 2.1 to add multitouch support and. On the app developer side of multitouch, they announced a pre-release addition to the Qt framework that will support multitouch.