Friday, September 02, 2011

Ubuntu Oneiric Beta 1 is available

The first Beta release of Oneiric Ocelot is available for testing. As always, this is a test release for the next version of Ubuntu expected sometime in October. It's meant for early adopters and testers. If you need a stable system then Oneiric isn't for you.

Here's some of the highlights for this release.

LightDM greeter

LightDM with Unity greeter
A new greeter is now being used in Oneiric by default. I can't say I like it all that much, but the transition from greeter to desktop seems smoother than before. Maybe in another release or two the greeter theme will look much improved.

Thunderbird

The new default email client for Ubuntu comes with complementary indicator support
Thunderbird is now the default email client on Oneiric replacing Evolution. They've even added indicator integration for Thunderbird already. Notice the Thunderbird item in the indicator menu (see screeshot, above).

Backup tool

Deja Dup backup now comes with every Ubuntu install
There's finally a backup tool that comes standard with Ubuntu. Users won't need to search for, and install their own backup utility anymore. Existing users, of course, can continue using whatever they want.

Refreshed indicators

Indicator menus got a refresh. Both session-indicator and me-menu seems to have changed
Indicators got a refresh in the migration to Gnome 3. Things got moved around; features added. It's nice to finally see update info on the indicators.

There's more, of course, including an updated kernel, multiarch support, a new alt-tab switcher, Gnome 3, and many others. Unity 2D is now the official fallback solution for hardware without 3D acceleration driver support.

As always, be sure to check out the list of known issues for anything that might affect your particular configuration. More details on the release are available from the technical overview page.

No comments:

Post a Comment