RaringRingtail/TechnicalOverview - Ubuntu Wiki

The Ubuntu developers are moving quickly to bring you the absolute latest and greatest software the Open Source community has to offer. The Ubuntu 13.04 Final Beta Release gives you a preview of the next version of Ubuntu.

Upgrading from Ubuntu 12.10

To upgrade from Ubuntu 12.10 on a desktop system:

• Open Software Sources.

• Switch to the Updates tab and set Notify me of a new Ubuntu version to For any new version.

• 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 '13.04' is available.
• Click Upgrade and follow the on-screen instructions.

To upgrade from Ubuntu 12.10 on a server system:

• Ensure that /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades includes Prompt=Normal.

• Install the update-manager-core package if it is not already installed.

• Launch the upgrade tool with the command sudo do-release-upgrade -d.

• Follow the on-screen instructions.

Note that the server upgrade will use GNU screen and automatically re-attach in case of e.g. dropped connection problems.

Offline upgrade options via alternate CDs are no longer offered for Ubuntu Desktop and Ubuntu Server. Please ensure you have network connectivity to one of the official mirrors or to a locally accessible mirror and follow the instructions above.

Upgrading from other releases

Users of other Ubuntu releases need to upgrade first to 12.10, and then to 13.04.

For further information on upgrading to 12.10, please see its upgrade instructions.

Ubuntu downloader for Windows discontinued

Due to various bugs in Wubi that have not been addressed in time for this Final Beta, the Ubuntu team will not be releasing the Wubi installer with 13.04. You can read more about this decision here. Users who wish to try out Ubuntu without repartitioning a Windows system are encouraged to use a live system instead, booted from either a DVD or a USB disk.

Download the Final Beta

Beta images can be downloaded from a location near you.

You can download Beta ISOs from:

http://releases.ubuntu.com/13.04/ (Ubuntu Desktop and Server)
http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/13.04/beta-2/ (Ubuntu Cloud Server)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/netboot/13.04/ (Ubuntu Netboot)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-core/releases/13.04/beta-2/ (Ubuntu Core)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/edubuntu/releases/13.04/beta-2/ (Edubuntu DVD)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/13.04/beta-2/ (Kubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/lubuntu/releases/13.04/beta-2/ (Lubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/13.04/beta-2/ (Ubuntu Studio)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-gnome/releases/13.04/beta-2/ (Ubuntu-GNOME)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntukylin/releases/13.04/beta-2/ (UbuntuKylin)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/13.04/beta-2/ (Xubuntu)

Please see the Raring blueprint list for details.

Please test and report any bugs you find:

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; others have been explicitly pulled in for 13.04 Raring Ringtail.

For a list of all packages being accepted for 13.04 Raring Ringtail, please subscribe to raring-changes.

Linux kernel 3.8.5

Ubuntu 13.04 Final Beta includes the 3.8.0-16.26 Ubuntu Linux kernel which was based on the v3.8.5 upstream Linux kernel.

Upstart 1.8

This release provides a new bridge, the upstart-file-bridge(8) that allows jobs to react to filesystem changes. For example, to have a job start when a particular file is created:

start on file FILE=/var/log/foo.log EVENT=create

Or to start a job when a file matching a glob pattern is deleted:

start on file FILE=/var/app/*.foo EVENT=delete

See upstart-file-bridge(8) and file-event(7) for further details.

Additionally, a new upstart-monitor(8) tool is available that allows event flows to be observed in real-time. This tool can run as a graphical or console application.

Python 3.3

We eventually intend to ship only Python 3 with the Ubuntu desktop image, not Python 2. This Ubuntu 13.04 Beta continues this process, although we will not be able to convert everything to Python 3 for Ubuntu 13.04.

If you have your own programs based on Python 2, fear not! Python 2 will continue to be available (as the python package) for the foreseeable future. However, to best support future versions of Ubuntu you should consider porting your code to Python 3. Python/3 has some advice and resources on this.

General

Automatic Apport crash reporting has been enabled by default again to catch problems early on. It now checks for duplicates on the client side, which will avoid uploading debug data and creating Launchpad bug reports unnecessarily in many cases now.

Ubuntu

Upstart User Sessions (technology preview)

This Ubuntu Beta includes a "tech preview" of Upstart User Sessions, which allow Upstart to supervise a user's desktop session. This feature is disabled by default for Ubuntu 13.04, but can be manually enabled for testing.

To enable Upstart User Sessions for all users:

To disable, simply comment out "ubuntu", logout and log back in again.

To see details of the running Upstart session, either echo $UPSTART_SESSION to see the D-Bus address the Session Init process is listening to, or run the following command which lists the process id of the Upstart session along with the value of $UPSTART_SESSION:

$ initctl list-sessions

The normal suite of Upstart commands is available (such as initctl, start, and stop). For example, to list all session jobs, run:

$ initctl list

To list system jobs from within a user session, run one of the following two commands:

$ initctl --system list$ sudo initctl list

Session jobs are read from /usr/share/upstart/sessions/ and $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/upstart/ (or $HOME/.config/upstart if $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is not set).

Session job output is logged to $XDG_CACHE_HOME/upstart/ (or $HOME/.cache/upstart/ if $XDG_CACHE_HOME is not set).

See init(5) for full details.

Ubuntu Server

Kubuntu

Xubuntu

Edubuntu

Lubuntu

Please read the Release notes for information.

Ubuntu Studio

For information about the Ubuntu Studio Beta release, please see RaringRingtail/Beta2/UbuntuStudio.

UbuntuKylin

UbuntuKylin has had several bug fixes applied to chinese-calendar and indicator-china-weather, made fctix as default and improved the theme since Beta 1. For information about the UbuntuKylin Beta release, please see UbuntuKylin/1304-beta-2-ReleaseNote.

Ubuntu GNOME

• In coordination with the Ubuntu Desktop Team, we have decided to stick with GNOME 3.6 for Ubuntu 13.04. For an overview of what's new in GNOME 3.6, please see the Release Notes.

• The GNOME3 PPA offers an early look at GNOME 3.8 for Ubuntu. Please note that you need to do a dist-upgrade instead of a regular upgrade or else GDM or GNOME Shell won't run after upgrading. In case of problems, please make yourself familiar with ppa-purge before using the GNOME3 PPAs.

• There are some additional GNOME 3.8 apps in the GNOME3 Staging PPA but these apps have known bugs, some of which are serious or critical bugs.

• Default apps have changed since Ubuntu GNOME Remix 12.10.
  • Firefox instead of GNOME Web (Epiphany)
  • Ubuntu Software Center and Update Manager instead of GNOME Software (gnome-packagekit)

  • LibreOffice instead of Abiword and Gnumeric

  • The other apps are still available for install; they just aren't included in the default install.

As is to be expected, at this stage of the release process, there are some significant known bugs that users may run into with the Ubuntu 13.04 Final Beta release. The ones we know about at this point (and some of the workarounds), are documented here so you don't need to spend time reporting these bugs again:

Boot, installation and post-install

• The installer freezes on the "Preparing to Install" screen when an already existing Linux installation is present. Turning swap off before installing may help. (LP: #1080701)

Migration

Graphics and Display

Desktop

• Skype won't start (LP: #1155327)

• The official Google Chrome installer is built against libudev0 instead of the libudev1 available in Ubuntu 13.04. We recommend that you install the open source chromium-browser from the Ubuntu Software Center until Google fixes this issue.

Kernel

Ubuntu GNOME

• The "Install Alongside" option doesn't work (LP: #1164592). This may be a duplicate of the previously mentioned bug 1080701.

For a listing of more known issues, please refer to the Raring Ringtail bug tracker in Launchpad.

It should come as no surprise that this Beta release of Ubuntu 13.04 contains other bugs. Your comments, bug reports, patches and suggestions will help fix bugs and improve the quality of future releases. Please report bugs using the tools provided.

If you want to help out with bugs, the Bug Squad is always looking for help.

If you would like to help shape Ubuntu, take a look at the list of ways you can participate at

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: