Ubuntu Unleashed

Upgrading from Ubuntu 8.10

To upgrade from Ubuntu 8.10, 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 '9.04' is available. Click Upgrade and follow the on-screen instructions.

New features in Jaunty

These features are showcased for your attention. Please test them and report any bugs you find on Launchpad:

http://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu

Updated packages

As with every new release, packages--applications and software of all kinds--are being updated at a rapid pace. For a list of all packages being accepted for 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope, please subscribe to Jaunty-changes:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/jaunty-changes

X.Org server 1.6

The latest X.Org server, version 1.6, is available in Jaunty. For a little while, this will again cause increased instability for some users while the proprietary video drivers catch up.
Font size optimization

Font dot-per-inch settings are now optimized based on your monitor's capabilities, rather than defaulting to 96 dpi. You can further customize your dpi settings via System → Preferences → Appearance → Fonts → Details...
New style for notifications and notification preferences

Included in Jaunty is a simple menu which can be used to set preferences for notification icons, such as where they pop up on the taskbar. There is a possibility that Ubuntu 9.04 will get a whole new notification system, as shown in the Flash movie here:

http://www.markshuttleworth.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/jaunty904_notifications_example1_web_092.swf
Linux kernel 2.6.28

Alpha 5 includes the 2.6.28-8.26 kernel based on 2.6.28.7.
Ext4 filesystem support

Alpha 5 supports the option of installing the new ext4 file system. ext3 will remain the default filesystem for Jaunty, and we will consider ext4 as the default for the next release based on user feedback.

Alpha 5 adds Ext4 support to gparted (Curtis Gedak).
Download Alpha 5

Get it while it's hot. ISOs and torrents are available at:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/jaunty/alpha-5/ (Ubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/edubuntu/releases/jaunty/alpha-5/ (Ubuntu Education Edition)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/jaunty/alpha-5/ (Kubuntu) Kubuntu release notes
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/jaunty/alpha-5/ (Xubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/jaunty/alpha-5/ (UbuntuStudio)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/mythbuntu/releases/jaunty/alpha-5/ (Mythbuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-netbook-remix/releases/jaunty/alpha-5/ (Ubuntu Netbook Remix)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-mid/releases/jaunty/alpha-5/ (Ubuntu MID)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/netboot/jaunty/alpha-5/ (Ubuntu ARM)

Known issues

As is to be expected at this stage of the release process, there are several known bugs that users are likely to run into with Jaunty Alpha 5. We have documented them here for your convenience along with any known workarounds, so that you don't need to spend time reporting these bugs again:

The installer sometimes fails to tell the kernel to reload the partition table during partitioning. This is a race condition, so not everyone will be affected, but if you are then you may have to re-try partitioning a few times before it completes successfully. We believe that the main problem lies in udev, and will be fixing that immediately after Alpha 5. 334278

A new XServer, version 1.6, is included in Alpha 4. The binary proprietary fglrx driver is not yet supported for this server and will exhibit various serious issues if run against it. Users of this driver are encouraged to wait or to switch to the open source -ati driver in the meantime. 313027

Users of Intel i845 or i865 video chipsets are unable to load X, getting an error message of "Fatal server error: Couldn't bind memory for BO front buffer". Users on these systems are advised to wait for a resolution to this bug before upgrading. 304871

OEM configuration fails in Jaunty Alpha 5 due to a repeating error pop-up when setting up the end user. This bug will be resolved for Jaunty Alpha 6. 334281


Users testing the ARM images on NSLU2 systems will need to take special measures to avoid time-consuming locale generation. Use the 'Go back' button in the installer, select "Change debconf priority" from the main menu, and select medium priority; once at the detailed locale selection screen, de-select all locales. Detailed instructions can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ARM/NSLU2. In Jaunty Alpha 6, this will be handled by default.

Ctrl-Alt-Backspace is now disabled, to reduce issues experienced by users who accidentally trigger the key combo. Users who do want this function can enable it in their xorg.conf, or via the command dontzap --disable.

Font sizes may be abnormally small or large on monitors which mis-report their capabilities. If you suspect this may be the case, please see X/Troubleshooting/HugeFonts for steps to troubleshoot this issue.

Reporting bugs

It should come as no surprise that this alpha release of Jaunty Jackalope contains other bugs. Your comments, bug reports, patches and suggestions will help fix bugs and improve future releases. Please report bugs through the Ubuntu bugtracker

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

http://www.ubuntu.com/community/participate/

More information

You can find out more about Ubuntu on the Ubuntu website and Ubuntu wiki.

To sign up for future Ubuntu development announcements, please subscribe to Ubuntu's development announcement list at:
http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-announce

Announcing GNOME Do 0.8. With 20 new plugins, faster search, better results,
animated themes, and 111 fewer bugs, your desktop's killer app just got killer-er.

Awesome New Plugins

Banshee, Bibtex, Cl.ickable, Claws mail, Google search, Opera, Ping.FM, Remember the Milk, System services, TinyUrl, Tracker search, and Translate to name a few. Plugins also install much faster now.

Faster Search, Better Results

Memory usage is down, and searches are noticably snappier. Our relevance algorithms are also better than ever -- Do will learn your habits and offer personalized search results immediately.

Animated Themes

Do's themes -- Classic, Mini, Glass, and the newly added Nouveau and Docky -- now sport gorgeous animations and dropshadows. Watch for falling jaws.

Docky

Docky is our attempt to make Do more discoverable and memorable. It's the same Do you know and love, just a little friendlier.

File Previews

We've added preliminary support for viewing file thumbnails, so you can better recognize the images, movies, and documents you encounter in Do. If your file manager displays thumnails, Do will attempt to show them.

Improved Text Entry

With support for copy, paste, and longer lines of text, Do's new extended text entry mode is perfect for composing emails and tweets. Activate text entry mode by pressing your period key.

Many Bugs Exterminated

82 core bugs and 29 plugin bugs have been meticulously tracked and squished. There's still a lot of work to do, but Do 0.8 is one well-oiled machine.

New Plugin API

In creating a more cross-platform codebase, a wonderful, platform-agnostic plugin API emerged. Plugins now have extensive access to notifications, logging, relevance information, threading tools, and much more.

Howto Install:

8.10 (Intrepid)

$ sudo aptitude install gnome-do

8.04 (Hardy)

If you are upgrading from an old installation of Do, please be sure to completely remove your old version.

$ sudo aptitude purge gnome-do gnome-do-plugins gnome-do-plugin-rhythmbox

and remove the Do plugins configuration directory

$ rm -rf ~/.local/share/gnome-do/plugins/

Once you have removed your old installation, or if this is your first time, follow these instructions.

Add the Gnome Do PPA Repository to your sources list. (See the Ubuntu Repositories).

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-core/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-core/ubuntu hardy main

In Synaptic Package Manager, search 'gnome do' or install from the terminal:

$ sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude install gnome-do

7.10 (Gutsy)

Add the following to your /etc/apt/sources.list (here's how)

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-core/ubuntu gutsy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-core/ubuntu gutsy main

then run

$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install gnome-do

The Ubuntu team is proud to announce the release of Ubuntu 8.04.2 LTS, the
second maintenance update to Ubuntu's 8.04 LTS release.  This release
includes updated server, desktop, and alternate installation CDs for the
i386 and amd64 architectures.

In all, over 200 updates have been integrated, and updated installation
media has been provided so that fewer updates will need to be downloaded
after installation.  These include security updates and corrections for
other high-impact bugs, with a focus on maintaining stability and
compatibility with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS.

To Get Ubuntu 8.04.2 LTS
------------------------

To download Ubuntu 8.04.2 LTS, or obtain CDs, visit:

 http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

We recommend that all users read the release notes, which document
caveats and workarounds for known issues.  They are available at:

 http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/804

About Ubuntu 8.04.2 LTS
-----------------------

This is the second maintenance release of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, which
continues to be supported with maintenance updates and security fixes
until April 2011 on desktops and April 2013 on servers.

Over 200 post-release updates have been integrated, and a number of
bugs in the installation system have been corrected.  These include
security updates and corrections for other high-impact bugs, with a
focus on maintaining stability and compatibility with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS.

See http://www.ubuntu.com/usn for a full list of Ubuntu security updates.
As of 2009-01-20, all updates affecting packages on the CD have been
applied.

A summary of notable updates follows.  See
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu for specific information about a
particular bug number.  A complete list of post-release updates can
also be found at:

 https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardyReleaseNotes/ChangeSummary/8.04.2

Installer Updates
-----------------

* Create sambashare group and add the initial user to it (#238224)

* Permissions on some system files and directories were set wrong when
  installing from Desktop CDs.  For users tracking the recommended
  hardy-updates repository, this issue has already been corrected
  post-install (#288479)

* Record the partition table as changed when a single partition's file
  system type has changed, fixing bootloader installation failures
  when installing onto existing partitions (#149832)
      
* Fix writing of /var/log/installer/oem-id in OEM mode (#251751)

* Use the correct mirror for -security in the event of
  apt-setup/security_host being preseeded (#306356)

Desktop Updates
---------------

* Fix a race which can lead to a gvfs-fuse-daemon crash when closing
  session (#235698)

* Prompt for restarting session when installing samba to take into
  account sambashare group membership and the need for libpam-smbpass to
  create NTLM password hash (#212098)

* Fix undeletion of menu items with the alacarte menu editor (#225941)

* Stop/start anacron on suspend/resume and on power-cycle (#249220)

* Fix hang on "Loading..." when opening a PDF file (#256048)

* Fix incorrect handling of authentication cases leading to excessive
  gnome-keyring CPU usage (#236171)

* Fix printing to remote ipp:// printers (#258104)

* Don't look for a Trash directory on autofs mounts (#210468)

* Fix GNOME session blow-up when using GUI to join a Windows domain
  (#222224)

* Fix ICQ connections in pidgin (#244591)

Server updates
--------------

* Fix race with mdadm/devmapper while looping for the root filesystem
  (#244926)

* Revert "TC action parsing bug fix", which broke shorewall and
  wondershaper
  (#194623)

* Support booting degraded RAID devices (#290885)

General Updates
---------------

* Set hdparm power management to 254 for all hard drives while on AC, and
  128
  while on battery (note that suspend/resume still breaks this, and a more
  complete fix will be forthcoming for Ubuntu 8.04.3) (#59695)

* Support CDs with no uncompressed Packages files, only compressed ones,
  enabling upgrade to future releases using CDs (#255545)

* Conflict with old mysql 4.1 packages to ensure smooth upgrades from
  Ubuntu 6.06 (#208695)

* Backport cifs.upcall, to support Kerberos-authenticated CIFS kernel
  mounts
  (#236830)

* e1000 checksum recheck after reset (#60388)

Helping Shape Ubuntu
--------------------

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/

If you have a question, or if you think you may have found a bug but
aren't sure, try asking on the #ubuntu channel on IRC.FreeNode.net, on
the Ubuntu Users mailing list, or on the Ubuntu forums:

 http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users
 http://www.ubuntuforums.org/


About Ubuntu
------------

Ubuntu is a full-featured Linux distribution for desktops, laptops, and
servers, with a fast and easy install 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

More Information
----------------

You can find out more about Ubuntu on our website:

 http://www.ubuntu.com/

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

There is a brand new PokerTH 0.6.3 version, check it out!
These are the major changes:
We introduced a new startwindow separate from the gametable. There is also a new chance tool which shows the chance of the current hand. The ingame kick was redesigned, introducing a vote kick procedure. You can start a vote to kick a user by right clicking on the player's avatar. Some new translations were added (finnish and danish). PokerTH is available in 18 languages now!

More info
Download Here

Jaunty Jackalope is currently in the Alpha 2 phase as of this post, you can follow the development release schedule here

To upgrade simply Press ALT-F2, and type in update-manager -d

A message will appear informing you of the availability of the new release.

Click upgrade.

Just a note, since this is alpha it isn't suggested to run on Production machines. Run it only if you care about bleeding edge software and don't care about system crashes and your confident your data is backed up safely.

I personally use a separate /home partition so I don't loose my valuable data, you can use the site search on this site to find information on that as well :)

Previously I made this howto for Ubuntu Hardy, here is an updated post for Intrepid
Here is a quick way to add the winehq repository so you dont need to wait for the ubuntu community to add the latest wine.
Open up a terminal Applications->Accessories->Terminal
Now copy/paste these commands:
Adding the gpg apt key:
wget -q http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/387EE263.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -
Lets add the Repository via wget:
sudo wget http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/sources.list.d/intrepid.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq.list
Now lets update our apt sources and install the latest wine!
sudo apt-get update ; sudo apt-get install wine
Ok now you will always have the latest development wine package installed!

Google Gadgets for Linux provides a platform for running desktop gadgets under Linux, catering to the unique needs of Linux users. It's compatible with the gadgets written for Google Desktop for Windows as well as the Universal Gadgets on iGoogle. Following Linux norms, this project is open-sourced under the Apache License.

An important area where Google Desktop for Linux is different from its siblings on other operating systems is support for gadgets. Now, the Linux version of Google Gadgets will extend the gadgets platform to Linux users. By enabling cross-platform gadgets, a large library of existing gadgets are immediately available to Linux users. In addition, gadget developers will benefit from a much larger potential user base without having to learn a new API.

There's two main components to the application: one is a common gadget library responsible for running and presenting a gadget, and the other is a host program that allows the user to choose gadgets and run them on the desktop. Currently we have hosts written for GTK+ and QT, with the GTK+ host offering a sidebar similar to that of Google Desktop for Windows.

Download Google Gadgets for Ubuntu

Follow the Open Source Initiative here