FILES DOWNLOAD: Utopic Unicorn

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Friday, October 30, 2015

Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn Release Schedule

Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn will be released on October 23th 2014.

Here's the Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn release schedule:

June 26th: Alpha 1 (for opt-in flavors);
July 31th: Alpha 2 (for opt-in flavors);
August 28th: Beta 1 (for opt-in flavors);
September 25th: Final Beta;
October 23th: Final 14.10 Release.

As you probably know, Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu GNOME and the other Ubuntu flavors don't have to follow the same release schedule as Ubuntu, that's why alpha 1, alpha 2 and beta 1 are "for opt-in flavors". Ubuntu (the "main flavor") usually only takes part in the final beta (and the final release, obviously).

Note that because it's so early in the development stages, the release schedule may change so keep an eye on the Utopic Unicorn release schedule Ubuntu wiki page.

thanks to novatillasku for the heads up, image via livescience.com

Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn Final Beta Available For Download

Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn final beta was released today, this being the first and only milestone for Ubuntu Utopic (while for the Ubuntu flavors, this is Beta 2). Let's take a look at what's new.

And I mean "look" figuratively, because there are almost no visual changes in this Ubuntu final beta release. For instance, this will probably be the first Ubuntu release in which Unity (now referred to as Unity 7, not to be confused with the latest Unity 8 which is used on the phone) won't get any new features - of course, unless that happens in the month that's left until the final release, but that's unlikely.

However, Unity 7 did receive quite a few bug fixes and minor improvements and the most notable were related to HiDPI support: the Dash previews, lockscreen and other Unity bits were updated with proper UI scaling based on current monitor scaling. You can check out the complete Unity 7 changelog HERE.

systemd available but not used by default, improved hybrid graphics support, Linux Kernel features

With Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn, the controversial systemd (208) is available in the repositories, and Ubuntu can finally boot with systemd, but it's not yet default because there are many packages which only have upstart jobs and they need to be updated to provide corresponding systemd units. Ubuntu will switch to systemd by default "when it's ready", says Martin Pitt

Hybrid graphics support was improved with Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn and the changes in this area include:

nvidia-prime and gpu-manager now support GDM (these changes were backported to older Ubuntu versions, but without the GDM patch that allows this);
added support for "gpumanager_uxa" and "gpumanager_modesetting" boot parameters, so that there is an option to force NVIDIA Optimus systems (that don't work well with Intel/SNA) to use either Intel/UXA or modesetting);
allow RandR offloading even without bbswitch;
more.

It's also important to note that Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn final beta ships with the Ubuntu Kernel 3.16.0-17, based on the upstream 3.16.3 Linux Kernel. Since the Linux kernel 3.13 (which is used in the previous Ubuntu version - 14.04), there were some important improvements, such as:

zram is considered stable with Linux 3.14; zram received LZ4 compression support;
stable support for Intel Broadwell CPU graphics (3.14);
the SCHED_DEADLINE scheduling class was added to the Linux scheduler in version 3.14 of the Linux kernel mainline;
faster resume from suspend;
EFI mixed mode support: 64-bit kernels can be booted from 32-bit firmware (with Linux 3.15);
various Nouveau improvements, including initial NVIDIA Maxwell GPU support, initial GK20A and GK110B GPU support as well as support for allowing to change the frequency of the GPU from the BIOS predefined values for nv40, nvaa, and nve0 clock types;
Radeon performance improvements through improved APU power management have been enabled in some APUs;
Intel Cherryview graphics support;
NVIDIA Tegra PRIME support;
Broadwell support for the Intel P-State driver (3.16);
various other improvements to audio and sound, btrfs and ext4 improvements, better support for newer laptops and much more.

You can read more about all the important Linux kernel changes here: Linux 3.14 | Linux 3.15 | Linux 3.16

Applications / packages

Among the applications shipped by default with Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn final beta are Firefox 32, Thunderbird 31.1, LibreOffice 4.3.1rc2, Nautilus 3.10.1, Rhythmbox 3.0.3, Empathy 3.8.6, Transmission 2.82, Shotwell 0.20.0, Gedit 3.10.4, Brasero 3.10.0 and Totem 3.10.1 (and others), on top of Unity 7.3.1+14.10.20140915 and GTK 3.12.2. Also, Utopic includes Mesa 10.2.6 (but 10.3 is available in the proposed repository) and Xorg server 1.16.0.

Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn final beta ships with GTK 3.12.2 and not the latest 3.14 (and, as you can see from the app list above, mostly GNOME 3.10 apps) because GNOME 3.14 was just released and Ubuntu 14.10 had its feature freeze on August 21st.

As for the default GNOME applications included by default in Ubuntu (w/ Unity), they are still at version 3.10 because they need to be patched to properly support Unity (to use regular window borders and menus) and it looks like the Ubuntu developers didn't have time to update them for this Ubuntu release.

There is some good news for GNOME fans though: GNOME Shell was updated to version 3.12.2 is available in the official Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn repositories.

Download Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn final beta

Before downloading it, remember that Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn is in beta, so you may encounter issues! That said, I've been using Ubuntu 14.10 for a while and, like the previous development cycle, it feels pretty stable and robust and I didn't encounter any major issues.

There are a couple of important known bugs that might occur if you try to install Ubuntu 14.10 Beta 2 (or any of the Ubuntu flavors) - check out the Xubuntu 14.10 beta 2 release announcement for work-arounds.

Download Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn final beta (for all flavors)

Release notes:

Ubuntu
Xubuntu
Kubuntu
Ubuntu GNOME
Lubuntu
Ubuntu Kylin
Ubuntu MATE (not yet an official Ubuntu flavor)

Ubuntu 14.10 (stable) will be released on October 23rd.

Are you using Ubuntu 14.10? What's your experience with it so far?

Ubuntu 14.10 Codename Revealed: Utopic Unicorn

Mark Shuttleworth has announced the codename for the upcoming Ubuntu release: Ubuntu 14.10 will be codenamed "Utopic Unicorn".

As you probably know, the development codename of an Ubuntu release takes the form "Adjective Animal". Initially these weren't in alphabetic order - until Dapper DRAKE (6.06).

In his post, Mark explains that with Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn, it's "time to bring systemd to the centre of Ubuntu, time to untwist ourselves from Python 2.x and time to walk a little uphill and, thereby, upstream. Time to purge the ugsome and prune the unusable".

Up next: Ubuntu 15.04 V V. Will it be "Violent Viper" :)? Or maybe Vibrant Velociraptor? We'll find out in 6 months!

For a list of codenames used in previous Ubuntu versions and upcoming release suggestions, see THIS page.

image via

Ubuntu Desktop Next (Unity8) 14.10 Utopic Unicorn Daily ISO Available For Download

A while back it was decided to create a separate Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn ISO running Unity8 on Mir, including the new core apps:

"The goal is to ramp up the quality of the unity8 desktop, without destabilizing our current environmenent. For that we are going to keep an unity7 image and add a new one for unity8 on the desktop, that new iso should become the default one by 16.04".

The new testing "flavor" is called Ubuntu Desktop Next and a daily ISO is available for download starting today. However, the ISO is still work in progress and for now, it still includes Xorg (needed for the current LightDM greeter and Ubiquity) and also, the list of packages that will be included on the ISO is marked as work in progress, so the default package selection should change.

According to the Building an unity8 desktop image blueprint, there are still quite a few items on the todo list, including:

make unity8-greeter usable on Desktop;
set up testing for the new image;
look at feature gaps in the greeter and things we need to implement
get the installer working at least in only-ubiquity (installer only) mode, installing from the live session is a wishlist item for this cycle;
look at pre-installing click packages on the ISO.

For more information about tne new Ubuntu Desktop Next ISO, check out today's Unity8 Desktop Preview Image UDS session.

Download the new Ubuntu Desktop Next 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn) Daily Build*

(the username is "ubuntu-desktop-next" - without the quotes - , and the password is blank which means you must simply hit the enter key)

* In my test, the current daily ISO didn't work properly and the Unity8 session failed to start (and I've tried it in VMware Player - which is supposed to support Mir -, and booting off an USB stick) but maybe it was something related to my system, I'm not sure. However, given that the not only Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn but this ISO too are in early development stages, that's to be expected. Hopefully the ISO will work soon - I'll retest and let you know when it works.

Download The Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn Community Wallpapers

The Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn community wallpapers were revealed today. They haven't landed in Ubuntu 14.10 yet but if you don't want to wait or you're not using Ubuntu 14.10, you can download them already.

The pack includes a selection of 12 beautiful wallpapers and of course, there's also am Utopic Unicorn image among them:

Download

The images above are small and for presentation purposes only. These wallpapers should land in Ubuntu 14.10 soon but until then, you can download the full size Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn community wallpapers by using the download link below:

Download Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn community wallpapers: zip | deb

What do you think?

GNOME Shell 3.12 and GTK+ 3.12 Available In The Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn Repositories

Quick Ubuntu / Ubuntu GNOME 14.10 Utopic Unicorn update: GNOME Shell 3.12 and GTK+ 3.12 have recently landed in the official Utopic repositories.

Currently, GTK+ 3.12 is available in the proposed repositories, so if you're already using Utopic, you'll have to wait a bit for the package to be available in main or you can enable the proposed repositories.

Unfortunately, GNOME Shell and GTK+ 3.12 are pretty much the only GNOME 3.12 packages available in the Utopic repositories (with maybe a few non-default exceptions like GNOME Music), at least for now. Nautilus, Gedit, Totem and so on are still at version 3.10 and GNOME Control Center and GNOME Settings Daemon at 3.8.6, but it's still very early in the Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn development stages (the first alpha for opt-in flavors will be released on June 26th), so there is still time for these to be updated.

It's also important to note that Ubuntu / Ubuntu GNOME 14.10 most likely won't ship with GNOME 3.14. That's because GNOME 3.14 is released on September 25th while the final Ubuntu 14.10 release is on October 23rd and there's not enough time to get everything ready/tested until then (especially considering that Ubuntu ships with some GNOME apps that need quite a few patches to work/look properly under Unity).

FILES DOWNLOAD