It’s been a while since my last post, whats up Ubuntu!!
The current stable release is Ubuntu 11.10 also know as the Oneiric Ocelot, I must admit I haven’t touch the last 3 release of Ubuntu.
Few weeks ago Canonical release the first Alpha of Ubuntu 12.04 “Precise Pangolin” this latest version would be a long term support (LTS) for 5 years. This pre-release version is not encouraged for everyone who are needing a stable system, occasional or even frequent breakage will occur.
What do we expect from this release?
A much improved power management. Colin King an Ubuntu engineer wrote from his blog:
Part of my focus this cycle is to see where we can make power saving improvements for Ubuntu Precise 12.04 LTS. There has been a lot of anecdotal evidence of specific machines or power saving features behaving poorly over the past few cycles. So, armed with a 6.5 digit precision multimeter from Fluke I've been measuring the power consumption on various laptops in different test scenarios to try and answer some outstanding questions:
ARM support. Mark Shuttleworth promised that Ubuntu would support ARM with the Pangolin release for the first time and focus on cloud computing:
Ubuntu is the #1 OS for cloud computing, whether you measure it by the number of instances running on all the major public clouds, the number of Ubuntu-based cloud appliances, the number of public and private clouds running on Ubuntu host OS. The extraordinary diversity of the Ubuntu community, the calibre of collaboration between Ubuntu and OpenStack, and the focused efforts of Canonical to make Ubuntu useful in the cloud have all contributed to that position.
12.04 will be the first LTS to support the ARM architecture on selected ARM SoC parts. In a world where computational density is increasingly prioritized over single-thread performance, the entry of ARM to the server market is a very interesting shift. Ubuntu has established a very strong competence in ARM and I think the 12.04 LTS release will power a new generation of power-focused hardware for the data centre.
Multi-monitor support. Stewart Wilson Canonical designer blog, for the past few months the team work on improving the multi-monitor experience in Ubuntu.
We invested in a six monitor rig and the prototype to test a number of different display configurations and to ensure that our design ideas scale well. However, our main focus for Precise is to ensure that we deliver a reliable and supportive experience for the core use cases, such as connecting to a second display or projector, disconnecting displays and using a closed laptop with an external display.
Linux Kernel 3.2. Ubuntu 12.04 Alpha 1 has a Linux Kernel 3.2.0-2.5 based on the Linux Kernel 3.2RC3.
Rythmbox is back. Moving from Banshee back to Rythmbox as a default music player for Ubuntu 12.04, Jason Warner of Canonical.
Thank you all for sending feedback on the default music player for 12.04. It is clear the right decision for 12.04 is to make Rhythmbox the default music player.
Firefox 9 and Thunderbird 9. Mozilla Firefox 9 is the default web browser and Mozilla Thunderbird 9 is the default email client.
GNOME 3.2.1 as the default desktop with Unity on top of it.
Ubuntu 12.04 is now in Alpha 1, watch out for the tentative release schedule, and ill be posting some updates on Ubuntu 12.04 so watch out for it.
Merry Christmas everyone!!!
Release schedule:
December 1st Alpha 1
February 2nd Alpha 2
February 16th Feature Freeze
February 23rd User interface Freeze
March 1st Beta 1
March 29th Beta 2
April 26th Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
