Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin)

Last Thursday April 26 was released the last version of Ubuntu (12.04), also known as Precise Pangolin. I have been using Kubuntu instead of Ubuntu from a long time, but last October I switched to Ubuntu, and I am very satisfied with the change. In my personal opinion, I see more professional Ubuntu than Kubuntu, and on many occasions, even more practical.

I have not had any problem during the upgrade. After the process, I had the new Ubuntu release ready to be used. As it has been already happening from many Ubuntu versions above, everything worked correctly after the installation. The stability and performance of this current version are insuperable.

What is new?

LTS (Long Term Support)

This release is LTS, that stands for Long Term Support. In other words, it will be supported throughout five years, both server and desktop version. So this is a perfect distribution to be used as a server whether we are thinking of installing new services.

HUD (Head-Up Display)

Rather than clicking on menu items to give them instructions, now you can press the 'Alt' key in order to bring up the HUD and type what you want to do. Then you will have a list of available functions (applications, files, Internet history, etc.) without needing to know in which menu they are located.

System Applications

By default, Ubuntu 12.04 provides Gnome 3.4.1, Linux kernel 3.2, Upstart 1.5, LibreOffice 3.5.2, Nautilus 3.3.5, Thunderbird 11, and so on. The default music player has been switched to Rhythmbox. Remmina with FreeRDP is the new standard remote desktop client, replacing Vinagre and rdesktop; and the new kernel introduces meaningful improvements in performance and power management.

Infrastructure

Hibernate has been disabled by default and resolvconf is now used to manage /etc/resolv.conf on all Ubuntu systems.

Privacy

From now on, Ubuntu allows to decide what user data (recently used files and applications which has been opened) should be stored in its history. Apart from this, it also allows to send error reports to Canonical.