Ubuntu announces 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal) Beta 1

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QuantalQuetzal/TechnicalOverview/Beta1

by cobychapple • 14 years ago

97 64 14 years ago

wiki.ubuntu.com

akandiah• 14 years ago

Looks like Wayland is not included in this release after all.

zacharyvoase2• 14 years ago

Note that this version of Ubuntu will not be shipping with Python 2. That's kind of a big deal.

andrewcooke• 14 years ago

you mean that it uses python 3 for the system, i assume? surely python 2 will be installable from the software centre, just like python3 can be installed now?

biomechanica• 14 years ago

They are going to use Python 3 for the system, yes. Python 2 will be available, as expected, in the repo's.

They are encouraging developers to transition their code to Python 3.

brokenparser2• 14 years ago

Yes, just like tomcat6.

w1ntermute2• 14 years ago

About time too. It's been 3½ years since Python 3 came out. People should've moved to it a long time ago.

packetslave2• 14 years ago

I suspect lack of Django support for Python 3 was a factor

pserwylo2• 14 years ago

I wonder if this will cause much strife. I run ArchLinux, for which the default /usr/bin/python is Python 3. Often I run into issues with (admittedly software not from the repos) which uses the

#!/usr/bin/python

shebang, and expects it to reference Python 2, thus causing breakage.

takluyver• 14 years ago

Ubuntu won't be changing that - /usr/bin/python will still mean Python 2. It just won't be installed by default (if they meet their goal, which looks doubtful for this cycle).

h00k• 14 years ago

There's always:

#!/usr/bin/env python

too

sp332• 14 years ago

Interesting, that's not recommended by python devs. Ubuntu follows the guideline of keeping /usr/bin/python as Python 2 (which will not be installed by default), and /usr/bin/python3 as Python 3.

ETA: Arch Linux actually did this before there was an "official" guideline. http://www.wefearchange.org/2012/04/python-3-on-desktop-for-...

propercoil• 14 years ago

not a python guy but heard this means python<3 scripts will break? no backwards compatibility with the new version?

briancurtin• 14 years ago

First sentence is false, second is true (by itself).

Python 3 isn't becoming `/usr/bin/python` - it will be `/usr/bin/python3` and the Python programs that are shipped on the CD will use that. If you thought Python 3 was going to become `/usr/bin/python`, then yes, that would cause backwards compatibility issues.

zurn• 14 years ago

Eh? http://packages.ubuntu.com/quantal/python2.7

zacharyvoase2• 14 years ago

Shipping. To wit: Python 2 is installable, but will not be installed by default.

ch0wn• 14 years ago

They won't remove python2k from the repositories any time soon.

TazeTSchnitzel2• 14 years ago

Are we getting PHP 5.4 too? I want me some [] and php -S.

chipaca3• 14 years ago

5.4.6 is in Quantal right now. Presumably 12.10 will have that.

chipaca3• 14 years ago

That was the goal, but it's not happening. 13.04, yes. Promise.

chipaca3• 14 years ago

Let me expand: we didn't make it to have python3 be the only shipped python in 12.10 because of several major dependencies. The stumbling blocks (as far as I know---when the rubber hits the road other things might pop up) were twisted, protobuf, and xapian. We have contracted out the work of porting the first two (the results of these efforts will be shipped in 12.10, in universe), and are moving away from the third one.

tebeka• 14 years ago

Just installed beta1. Opened terminal and then:

    $ python --version
    Python 2.7.3

StavrosK• 14 years ago

I was about to say "What the hell? Beta already?" and then I realized it was almost October. Summer flew past, wow...

brokenparser2• 14 years ago

There is no longer a traditional CD-sized image, DVD or alternate image, but rather a single 800MB Ubuntu image that can be used from USB or DVD

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

whyenot• 14 years ago

What the heck is that? A pig looking at the golden gate bridge? What does it mean?

I wonder how many people were still using the CD sized image. I'm guessing not very many, and with the size constraints, Canonical were probably itching to get rid of it.

stepzhou• 14 years ago

You have a funny take on it, but it's actually a guy flipping over a table.

cobychapple2• 14 years ago

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/flipping-tables-%E2%95%AF%E2%9...

ekianjo• 14 years ago

> What the heck is that? A pig looking at the golden gate bridge? What does it mean?

This is the best comment I have seen today. Thanks for making me smile :)

weel• 14 years ago

Back when I did some small scale sysadmin work, I found that our CD/DVD burners were a lot more reliable as CD burners than as DVD burners. This seemed to be true both of the older Dell ones we had and the newer generic-brand ones. I had much better luck using CDs for basic installs and then fetching additional stuff from the net than trying to use DVDs.

w1ntermute2• 14 years ago

I can't remember the last time I saw a CD, let alone touched one. There isn't a single computer in my house with a CD-ROM/RW drive, and even the ones with DVD drives don't have OSes installed with a DVD.

petitmiam• 14 years ago

The alternate image was useful for downloading now/installing the upgrade later. I guess the single image should be able to do that as well.

ciupicri• 14 years ago

Also users who previously installed using LVM or full-disk encryption via the alternate CD will find that these installation targets are supported by the consolidated image in 12.10. Finally! It was about time to offer what Red Hat/Fedora have been offering for ages.

RobAley• 14 years ago

If you have internet access, Canonical have always provided a minimal CD installer (about 30Mb) that grabs packages over the internet. See : https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/MinimalCD 12.04 is on there, and I haven't seen any announcement indicating 12.10 won't be. Not idea for every application (e.g. where you're installing onto multiple machines, will use a lot of bandwidth), but for 1 or 2 machines certainly an option.

dchuk• 14 years ago

I really think it's time Ubuntu ditches the bizarre animal names. This one is going to be barely pronounceable for most of the world. 12.10 would suffice

drcube• 14 years ago

They're almost at the end of the alphabet. What are they going to do next? They won't stop until "Zebra" though.

ngokevin• 14 years ago

Start over with Pokemon, obviously.

wmf• 14 years ago

Unicode?

shardling• 14 years ago

They've been avoiding mainstream animals lately.

My guess is the Zonure[1], since it is South African and looks awesome.

Although if they continue the trend of increasingly hard to pronounce names they might go with Zyzzyva.

[1] http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4033/4447517348_9bf8d8b2a6.jp...

jl6• 14 years ago

They might get away with Aardvark, Excel-style...

gchpaco• 14 years ago

12.10 is the official name for the actually released OS. The animal name is the code word for the thing that will become 12.10 when it's done. Things get a little confused sometimes in e.g. apt repositories but the official stuff is all quite clear on the distinction.

YokoZar• 14 years ago

In my 7+ years as an Ubuntu developer, I have yet to see a news article or forum post about a release that didn't somewhere spawn a discussion about adjective animal names.

Frankly, I think it generates considerable free buzz. Everyone's always talking about shuttleworthian adjectives and obscure animals.

My one point of contention, and I've brought this up with Mark personally, is that he needs to announce the name of the next release sooner. Or at least the adjective code name, as it's relevant for things like scripts and other tools, and once we start to freeze things we need to retarget stuff to the next (+1) release.

It's quite silly for any of that work to delay for a reason as lame as wanting to unveil the adjective in a future quirky blog post. Would you believe we actually had to build an abstraction layer in launchpad for release names so we can have things like the "R release" rather than just using the adjective directly?

Evbn• 14 years ago

Rabid Release-manager

Silly Shuttleworth

stickfigure• 14 years ago

Personally I'm looking forward to a Randy Rhinoceros in six months.

Jach• 14 years ago

> barely pronounceable

Pronounceable correctly, maybe. ("Quantal" is easy, but the first time I read it I pronounced "quetzal" like "pretzel" with a 'qw' instead of 'pr' and I will likely continue to do so even though it's technically wrong.)

creatio• 14 years ago

I thinks it's pronounced as 'kwantal'. I think it's easy enough to read, maybe it depends on your mother tongue (or 2, 3 or 4th).

jiggy20112• 14 years ago

Looks like this one will handle dual monitor properly with nvidia cards at least.

gitarr2• 14 years ago

What are you trying to say?

I use AMD on a desktop and a laptop and dual monitor works perfectly in Ubuntu 12.04 with both in various setups.

mattdeboard• 14 years ago

YMMV I guess. I just hooked a new monitor up to my laptop running 12.04 last night. I had to manually install the ATI drivers, then change the settings in Catalyst. I was required to reboot after each change. Then, I had to change the display settings in system settings. It took about 2 hours to get right and was a huge pain.

I have a dual monitor set up at work on 12.04 and it works flawlessly & smoothly. It is absolutely hit-or-miss. There are driver issues on Ubuntu for dual monitors.

mike-cardwell• 14 years ago

I plugged my 12.04 laptop into a projector the other day for the first time, and dual monitors worked just fine, without doing anything.

jiggy20112• 14 years ago

Try fullscreen Sdl or rotating one monitor's picture.

cupwithyourname• 14 years ago

Bummer, I didn't see anything about hidpi support in there.

nathancahill• 14 years ago

As a developer from Guatemala, I must say I am proud.

braco_alva• 14 years ago

I'm also from Guatemala, and yeah, it's really nice to see the word Quetzal in something as big as an Ubuntu version name.

cobychapple2• 14 years ago

Nice :)

I didn't understand the reference until I saw this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemalan_quetzal

"The quetzal is the currency of Guatemala. It is named after the national bird of Guatemala ..."

odiroot• 14 years ago

A (bit more) stable Telepathy stack for KDE is a big deal.

Also LightDM and guest mode finally come to Kubuntu. I hope it gets backported to 12.04. I'd prefer keeping my LTS system.

stuaxo• 14 years ago

Using it now, but kinda stuck on an ia32-libs problem

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ia32-libs/+bug/101...

Ubuntu announces 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal) Beta 1

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