Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) Alpha 2 released and download links are included

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The Ubuntu developers are moving quickly to bring you the absolute latest and greatest software the Open Source community has to offer. The Maverick Meerkat Alpha 2 is the second alpha release of Ubuntu 10.10, bringing with it the earliest new features for the next version of Ubuntu.
This is an alpha release. Do not install it on production machines. The final stable version will be released on October 10, 2010.

Upgrading from Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

To upgrade from Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on a desktop system, 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 ‘10.10' is available. Click Upgrade and follow the on-screen instructions.

To upgrade from Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on a server system: install the update-manager-core package if it is not already installed; edit /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades and set Prompt=normal; launch the upgrade tool with the command sudo do-release-upgrade -d; and follow the on-screen instructions.

Download Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) Alpha 2

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

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/maverick/alpha-2/ (Ubuntu Desktop, Server, and Netbook)
http://uec-images.ubuntu.com/releases/maverick/alpha-2/ (Ubuntu Server for UEC and EC2)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/maverick/alpha-2/ (Kubuntu Desktop and Netbook)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/maverick/alpha-2/ (Xubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/maverick/alpha-2/ (Ubuntu Studio)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/mythbuntu/releases/maverick/alpha-2/ (Mythbuntu)

New features in Maverick

Feature development for Maverick has started. Please see the Maverick blueprint list for details.

Updated Packages

As with every new release, packages--applications and software of all kinds--are being updated at a rapid pace. Many of these packages came from an automatic sync from Debian's Unstable branch. The period of automatic syncs has stopped now, so from now on there will be fewer changes.

GNOME

The GNOME base platform has been updated to the current 2.31 versions. This particularly includes the new dconf and gsettings API. Evolution was updated to the 2.30 version, which operates much faster compared to the version in Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.

KDE

KDE was updated to the current 4.5 RC 1 release.

Qt

Qt was updated to the current 4.7 beta release.

Unity

The new Unity interface is now the default in Ubuntu Netbook Edition. This includes the global menu bar as part of the default interface. Please note that applications still retain the menu in their own window as long as the global menu bar is still being tested and fixed.

Linux kernel 2.6.35

Alpha 2 includes the 2.6.35-6.7 kernel based on 2.6.35-rc3.

This kernel includes new security enhancements. Of major note is the change the default behavior of PTRACE which is used by gdb, strace, ltrace, etc. The behavior for 10.10 is that only child processes can be PTRACEd, due to the default value of "1" in/proc/sys/kernel/ptrace_scope. This value may be inappropriate for some development systems and servers with only admin accounts. If using "sudo" for PTRACE is not desired, please change this value to "0".

New cloud-init features

cloud-init, the configurable initialization process for Ubuntu Server cloud images, has gained new features in Maverick Alpha 2, including pluggable hooks, ebsmount, ext4 support, and new stanzas in the cloud-config format.

Installation

The new btrfs file system may now be used during installation via manual partitioning, as long as /boot is on some other file system. (At the moment, this only works on the alternate and server CDs.)

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2 Responses

  1. Scott says:

    When will one of these upgrade fix the long-standing and widespread problem that prevents so many from suspend/resume on a laptop?

    I’ve been through three major version upgrades now in hopes of fixing that one issue. All of them have been painful, none has fixed it.

  2. Mohammed Khalilia says:

    I have the same concern as Scott. I am not using Ubuntu 10.04 right now because of this suspend issue. I am hopping it will fixed on the next release.

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