Super-fast, easy to use and free, the Ubuntu operating system powers
millions of desktops, netbooks and servers around the world. Ubuntu does
everything you need it to. It'll work with your existing PC files,
printers, cameras and MP3 players. And it comes with thousands of free
apps. The
Ubuntu operating system is used by 20 million people worldwide every
day. Long-term support (LTS) releases are supported for five years – ideal for organisations undertaking large deployments.
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New Features in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS:
Desktop Interface
Desktop Applications
The default music player has been switched to
Rhythmbox, which again includes the Ubuntu One music store.
-
GNOME has been updated to 3.4.1. Read the GNOME 3.4
Release Notes to learn what's new and improved. A few highlights include:
- - Files (Nautilus) now has undo support.
- Several games have been
modernized with useful help, simplified menus, and a less cluttered interface.
Remmina with FreeRDP is the new standard remote desktop client, replacing
Vinagre and rdesktop.
The
IcedTea Java plugin is no longer installed as part of the ubuntu-restricted-addons package but it is still available for install (
889171)
Software Center
- When
installing new software through software-center, corresponding language
support packages (translations, spell check modules particular to that
software, help files, etc.) are now installed alongside automatically.
This removes the need to open "Language Support" after installing new
software.
- The user can
opt-in into personalized recommendations. This will show global,
category and per-application recommendations to the user.
-
- Web Directory to share applications with your friends.
- Support for multiple screenshots and videos is now available.
- Startup time and overall responsiveness was improved.
- Improved support for installing multiple versions via the ubuntu-backports project.
Ubuntu One
- The all new Control Panel now provides an installer, setup wizard, ability to add/remove folders to sync, and more.
- Proxy support is now fully functional.
- Ubuntu One contacts sync in Evolution is not supported any more and has been removed.
Common Infrastructure
- Up
until Ubuntu 11.10, administrator access using the sudo tool was
granted via the "admin" Unix group. In Ubuntu 12.04, administrator
access will be granted via the "sudo" group. This makes Ubuntu more
consistent with the upstream implementation and Debian. For
compatibility purposes, the "admin" group will continue to provide
sudo/administrator access in 12.04.
Hibernate
(suspend to disk) has been disabled by default, as it was found to be
unreliable, very slow and confusing to have two suspend modes. See bug
812394 for details. If you want to re-enable it, please
follow this recipe.
- pm-utils
now has two new scripts to power down USB and various PCI devices in
battery mode. A number of desktop packages were fixed to wake up less
often. Both of these reduce power consumption and thus improve battery
lifetime.
resolvconf is now used to manage /etc/resolv.conf on all Ubuntu systems. You can learn more
here - Backports
are now more easily accessible -- to enable users to more easily
receive new versions of software, the Ubuntu Backports repository is now
enabled by default. Packages from backports will not be installed by
default — they must explicitly be selected in package management
software. However, once installed, packages from backports will
automatically be upgraded to newer versions.
- DVD
Images -- the DVD images have been cleaned up significantly reducing
their size to around 1.5GB to ease consumption. The remaining software
remains available via download.
Linux v3.2.14 Kernel
Ubuntu
12.04 LTS ships with an updated kernel moving from the mainline v3.0
series to the mainline v3.2 series. At release we are shipping with the
Ubuntu 3.2.0-23.36 kernel which is based on the
v3.2.14 upstream stable Linux kernel. The mainline v3.0 to v3.2 stable series update brings a number of new features. Some highlights include:
- ext4 gains support for larger base block sizes
- btrfs has more work addressing data integrity issues
- device mapper gains thin provisioning and recursive snapshots
- more work to improve performance under high writeback load
- networking improvements for congested networks
- ext3 moves to using filesystem barriers
- memory allocator improvements
- VFS scalability improvements
- a new iSCSI implementation
- software wait gains bad block management
Key changes in the Ubuntu kernel since the 3.0.0-12.20 Ubuntu kernel as shipped in the 11.10 Ubuntu release include:
-
The
amd64 -generic and -server kernel flavors have been merged
into a single -generic kernel flavor for Ubuntu 12.04. Given the few
differences that existed between the two flavors, it only made sense to
merge the two and reduce the overall maintenance burden over the life of
this LTS release.
- Support for a new armhf kernel flavor has been introduced.
-
RC6 is enabled by default for Sandy Bridge systems.
RC6 is a technology which allows the GPU to go into a very low power
consumption state when the GPU is idle (down to 0W). It results in
considerable power savings when this stage is activated. When comparing
under idle loads with machine state where RC6 is disabled, improved
power usage of around 40-60% has been witnessed.
-
An updated
AppArmor patch set has been included to better align with what is landing upstream.
Applied and enabled the
seccomp filters feature which uses the packet filtering machinery (BPF) to restrict access to system calls.
-
-
Upstart 1.5
Ubuntu 12.04 is distributed with a default toolchain that includes:
GCC 4.6.3 (and changes from Linaro GCC 4.6-2012.02), binutils 2.22, eglibc 2.15, and
Linaro gdb 7.4-2012.04.
Compared
to the 11.10 release the toolchain did see only incremental changes and
bug fixes; comparing to the 10.04 LTS release, GCC updates include
- Updated
frontends for better standards support (Ada 2012, Objective-C 2.0,
improved experimental support for the upcoming C++0x ISO C++ standard,
Fortran 2003 and 2008 improvements, new Go frontend)
- Improved optimizations, including better inter-procedural optimizations, and link time optimization (LTO).
Ubuntu 12.04 includes
Python 2.7.3 and
Python 3.2.3 Python 2.6 is no longer available for install.
- There
is expanded support for Python 3 in this release, with Python 3 ports
of python-dbus, python-feedparser, germinate, lazr.ui, wadllib,
python-defer, python-keyring, and python-qt4 now included, among others.
The default run time for Java is
OpenJDK 6b24 (
IcedTea 1.11.1). OpenJDK 7u3 (
IcedTea 2.1) is available in the archive as well.
Installation
Overview
Preparing
your computer for Ubuntu is now much simpler, with a wider range of
disk setup options. Each of these are detailed at length to provide you
with a clear understanding of the actions that will take place with your
selection.
You
can now reinstall or upgrade an existing copy of Ubuntu with the
Desktop CD installer, provided that your computer is connected to the
Internet.
System Requirements
The
minimum memory requirement for Ubuntu 12.04 is 384 MB of memory for
Ubuntu Desktop. Note that some of your system's memory may be
unavailable due to being used by the graphics card. If your computer has
only the minimum amount of memory, the installation process will take
longer than normal; however, it will complete successfully, and the
system will perform adequately once installed.
Systems
with less memory may be able to select "Install Ubuntu" from the boot
menu to run just the installer, rather than the whole desktop, or may be
able to use the alternate install CD.
Upgrading
Upgrading from Ubuntu 11.10
To
upgrade from Ubuntu 11.10 on a desktop system, start "Update Manager".
It should display the following message: "New distribution release
'12.04' is available. Click Upgrade and follow the on-screen
instructions".
Upgrading from Ubuntu 10.04 LTS to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
It is generally recommended that users of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS wait until the first point release, due in July, before upgrading.
To upgrade from 10.04 LTS on a desktop system before then, upgrade over the network with the following procedure.
- Start System/Administration/Software Sources
- On the Updates tab, set Show new distribution releases: to Long term support releases only, then press Close.
- Press Alt-F2 and type update-manager -d
- Click
the Check button to check for new updates. If there are any updates
to install, use the Install Updates button to install them, and press
Check again after that is complete.
- A message will appear informing you of the availability of the new release. Click Upgrade.
Follow the on-screen instructions.
Upgrading from Other Releases
Users of other Ubuntu releases need to upgrade first to 11.10, and then to 12.04.
System requirements
- While the minimum
memory requirement for 32bit is 384 MB, a minimum of 512 MB is needed
for the 64bit installation. On systems with only the bare minimum amount
of memory, it is also strongly recommended to use the "Install Ubuntu"
option as it uses less memory than the full live session.
- The
Ubuntu 12.04 installation image does not include support for old
computers that do not support PAE. If your computer is affected, you can
either first install Ubuntu 10.04 or 11.10 and upgrade to 12.04 or you
can use the Lubuntu or Xubuntu images. The non-PAE version of the Linux
kernel will be dropped completely following the 12.04 release.
Known Issues
Boot, Installation and Post-Installation
[Dell
Studio XPS 1340,Alienware m17x] Kernel panic and hang on boot due to
the ite-cir driver. A patch has been sent upstream and a test kernel is
referenced in the bug report. The fix will be immediately available as
a kernel update from the precise-updates pocket following 12.04's
release.
- When
closing the lid on a Unibody Macbook, the screen interacts with the
touchpad. This can cause spurious gestures and clicks, and potentially
lead to corrupted input driver state if the laptop suspends. To work
around the issue, remove and reload the kernel module after resume by
running:
$ sudo rmmod bcm5974
$ sudo modprobe bcm5974
Note
that this may disable some touchpad options, for example horizontal
scrolling. These options can be re-enabled by visiting the Mouse and
Touchpad settings. This is planned to be fixed in a post-release update.
Importing of existing Windows user accounts fails in some cases. (
987902)
- Wubi
(the Ubuntu installer for Windows) is not available as an option on the
Ubuntu Desktop/DVD any more. Instead, it is now a separate download.
Upgrades
Aptitude does not work on 64-bit systems without disabling multiarch in /etc/dpkg/dpkg.cfg.d/multiarch .
If
you have i386 packages installed on an amd64 system in Ubuntu 11.10, it
is strongly recommended that you install the versions of apt and dpkg
from oneiric-updates before upgrading. A number of multiarch-affecting
upgrade issues have been fixed in those versions.
In
some cases update-manager might appear to hang indefinitely. In that
case, open the expander at the bottom and check if there is a debconf
question which needs to be answered.
Upgrades
from Ubuntu 10.04 LTS to 12.04 LTS do not work using the alternate CD
or the server CD as a package repository. It is recommended that users
running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS wait for the 12.04.1 LTS point release,
scheduled for July, before upgrading. (
988941)
Kernel
On ARM omap images, the networking support for the Beagle XM board is broken
[Dell
Studio XPS 1340,Alienware m17x] Kernel panic and hang on boot due to
the ite-cir driver. A patch has been sent upstream and a test kernel is
referenced in the bug report. The fix will be immediately available as
a kernel update from the precise-updates pocket following 12.04's
release.
Missing
support for Sentelic touchpad in Asus K53U notebook. Patches have been
backported and will be immediately available as a kernel update from
the precise-updates pocket following 12.04's release.
Missing
support for BCM20702A0 Broadcom bluetooth device [0489:e042]. A patch
has been sent upstream. The fix will be immediately available as a
kernel update from the precise-updates pocket following 12.04's release.
Buffer
overflows in comedi driver. Patches have been backported from upstream
and a test kernel is referenced in the bug report. The fix will be
immediately available as a kernel update from the precise-updates pocket
following 12.04's release.
Intel
gma 4500mhd external monitor suffers from a scrambled picture. A
patches has been backported from upstream. The fix will be immediately
available as a kernel update from the precise-updates pocket following
12.04's release.
Kernel
Oops - BUG: unable to handle kernel paging request; RIP:
nfs_have_delegation+0x9/0x40 [nfs]. Some users attempting to run NFS
clients on 12.04 appear to be affected. A test kernel is referenced
from the bug report. Patches have been backported from upstream and
will be immediately available in a kernel update from the
precise-updates pocket following 12.04's release.
Patches
from upstream stable v3.2.15 and v3.2.16 will undergo a baking period
in the precise-proposed pocket during the first kernel SRU cycle. They
will then be released as a kernel update from the precise-updates pocket
approximately 3 weeks after 12.04 releases.
hid-logitech-dj
driver missing from the installer. It has been added to the d-i
input-modules udeb and will be included in the 12.04.1 point release.
rtl8187
driver missing from the installer. It has been added to the d-i
nic-usb-modules udeb and will be included in the 12.04.1 point release.
eGalaxis
Touchscreen Driver does not work. Patches have been backported from
upstream and will be immediately available in a kernel update from the
precise-updates pocket following 12.04's release.
ATI/radeon
framebuffers on PowerPC only enabled as modules and not built in. This
results in issues such as booting to a command prompt, loss of tty
consoles, and loss of suspend. A patch to build these in have been
applied and will be immediately available in a kernel update from the
precise-updates pocket following 12.04's release.
On
systems with an ATI Radeon 9200 graphics card the system will boot to a
black screen. As a work around edit the kernel command line in the boot
loader and add "nomodeset".
Fujitsu
Siemens Amilo M 7400 and Maxdata 7000DX wireless RF kill handling
triggers a kernel panic preventing wireless from operating correctly.
This may be worked around by editing your kernel command line and adding
"noexec=off".
Beagle
XM systems which are capable of running at 1GHZ will be initialised at
800MHZ leading to slower than optimal performance.
Some EFI systems fail to boot in EFI mode, BIOS mode is advised in these situations.
Desktop Interface
When
using the LiveCD in certain languages such as French and choosing "Try
Ubuntu" at the prompt, the keyboard will be brought up with the US
keyboard map instead of the correct one for the chosen language. To
avoid this bug, users can press any key at the very first splash screen
and select their language here instead.
Please install available updates to ensure that the issues below will be fixed on your system.
Unity
Dash (opened via the "Ubuntu" button in the top of the Launcher, or
after pressing the <Super> key) may appear sluggish or slow to
respond. This is caused by excessive redrawing of the screen contents
in some circumstances.
Unity
Launcher. If an application is pinned and then unpinned from the Unity
Launcher using right-click->Un/Lock to Launcher repeatedly the
application may vanish from the Launcher. It is necessary to log out
and login again. This relates to an application monitoring framework
called "Bamf"
Window
titlebars do not update on ATI graphics hardware with the "fglrx"
driver. A solution to this problem will be delivered in an update.
On some NVidia cards, when using the proprietary driver, moving windows and other large screen updates causes some tearing.
Desktop Applications
The mail client
Evolution
may delete folders and their contents as they are renamed or moved
around in IMAP (and IMAP+) accounts. It is recommended to copy folders
and contents before attempting to move or rename them. (
957341)
Support
5 years (Long Term Support).
Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
