While the web struggles over the importance (or non-importance) of Linux Mint surpassing Ubuntu on the DistroWatch leaderboard, it’s business as usual for the crew at Canonical. And with a new release deadline looming on the horizon, it’s time to start releasing milestone builds of Ubuntu 12.04.

On December 1, the first alpha Ubuntu 12.04 was made available from Canonical’s servers. As is typically the case with the company’s early releases, there aren’t a whole lot of front-facing changes yet in Precise Pangolin. A few noteworthy apps are presently M.I.A., including note app Tomboy, the Banshee media player, and gbrainy — a collection of brain games for the GNOME desktop.

Two new betas from Mozilla are included: Firefox 9 and Thunderbird 9. The Ubuntu software center has also received some minor tweaking, with support added for multiple screenshots. It’s a subtle change, but who doesn’t want the option of checking out a few more action shots before downloading an app or game?

Canonical is also clearly focused on making Ubuntu 12.04 a good fit for enterprise settings. Frontman Mark Shuttleworth notes that it’s an LTS release and has promised a smooth upgrade process from Ubuntu 10.04, better support for multi-monitor configurations, and improved manageability. He also feels that Canonical has moved beyond the daunting task of transitioning to the Unity interface and can now get to work on “perfecting” the Ubuntu desktop experience.

As always, you can grab ISO downloads for the new Ubuntu alpha from Canonical’s servers — or go the P2P route and torrent 12.04 instead.

via OMG!Ubuntu and Ostatic

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5 replies on “First Ubuntu 12.04 Alpha ready for download”

  1. ubuntu is still using unity despite the complaints if many users. now they want to replace menus with an HUD. no wonder linux mint is now number 1

  2. Ubuntu is the biggest waste of time ever – it is fail on *every* level. Management: fail, Community: fail, Distribution: fail. Use any other distribution and be happy and productive. Linux Mint Debian Edition is starting to get pretty polished too if you really need something Ubuntu-ish.

  3. Ubuntu family still does not have LibreOffice Wizard for database source working to select from the list of email clients “contact” lists to use as a datasource.   Ubuntu is not business friendly, making changes all the time increases the total cost of ownership (TCO = labor, etc).  Someday, when the team (full of GUI folks) starts to understand what a business needs for software to run, then you “might” see Ubuntu, Kubuntu, etc in the business world… but, it will take a few years to build some trust first.  Red Hat has trust, and they also have Security Enhanced Linux as their foundation (something that Ubuntu does not have, but must have as their security foundation in order to get the respect of Enterprise and other business IT management)!

    1. I have Sandy Bridge Core i7 and I’m using the integrated graphics and I’m at 1920×1080 which defaults upon installation. I’m using Ubuntu 11.10 and seems strange if this is not supported in 12.04

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