The new preview release of Ubuntu Natty 11.04 Narwhal has been announced by its developers, and it’s time make a summary of developments and changes who have arrived since the first draft, which appeared December 2, 2010.

article is based on the fantastic analysis WebUpd8 have posted and you can read in English in the original. Here adapt that content in Spain with our own view of the launch, of course.

Packages

There are two significant changes in the selection of software packages available, and although I knew the news that these alternatives would make their appearance in Narwhal Natty sooner rather than later, we already have with us these two developments. This is Banshee and LibreOffice , replacing Rythmbox and OpenOffice .

Also in Alpha 2 are 06/02/1938-rc2 kernel , X.org Server 1.10 and Table 7.10, GNOME 2.32, Nautilus 2.32.1, Firefox 4 Beta 10, Evolution 2.32.1 and the aforementioned LibreOffice Banshee 3.3.0 and 1.9.2.

Improvements in the core

Actually this novelty

affects all distributions that use the kernel 6/2/1938, because this version has integrated the famous improvement that was the surprise in all media with Linux to know only 200 lines of code could improve the system performance is very relevant in certain scenarios.

The new kernel also comes with news on support for new hardware devices (over WiFi chipsets supported, such as sow), and also the new X.org Server and officers provide support for Sandy Bridge well as improved support for dedicated graphics cards from AMD and OpenGL support for more extensions.

AppMenu

menu of open applications, even if they are maximized and the entire screen- is hidden by default , and displayed as perform certain actions. As explained in the original article:

Wed In article WebUpd8 screenshots you can better understand this function:

Window not maximized, with the focus

Window not maximized, with the focus, with the mouse over the title in the top panel. Menu appears in the corresponding application.

Launcher

Unity / Places

Unity

Launcher now has support feature called Intellihide (which is now enabled by default). If you have an application maximized and want to access Unity pitcher can press the Super key or click the Ubuntu logo in the upper left corner.

There are also some experimental options as the backlight always on, the cast animation and animation urgent , with two different visual effects for these events and make them look good.

also feature File Locations (Places Files) and Applications is again back in Unity, but apparently is not fully functional in this version.

Software Center Ubuntu

As we mentioned in a recent article, the Software Center wants to become the central repository from this distribution when installing new software, and this has been progress in including new features.

In this preliminary release of Natty Narwhal will have the opportunity to include our rating (with stars) and comment on some application, although this will be taken account in Ubuntu.

Other visual enhancements

Although less important, there are other important changes in visual and usability that will undoubtedly be very useful for many users. We turn to describe them.

Unity already have a copy AeroSnap feature of Windows 7 that allows you to “attach” a window into one half of the screen by dragging it to one edge (left or right) desktop. The property of ’tiling’ or ’tiles’ can be really useful for movie screens and high resolution formats, such as 1,680 × 1,050 px.

Sound Menu Ubuntu now supports playback of lists , which makes this small utility one of the highlights once again the usability of the system.

One Ubuntu

also have visual changes , and as we mentioned a few days ago the “control panel” of this service in the cloud Canonical is refined over time, and now has a function that emulates the normal applications with AppMenu (formerly Global Menu).

GRUB2, in order to support Btrfs

One of the surprises we did not know is the inclusion of support Btrfs in GRUB2 , which will allow us to partition the boot and normal that we can choose from the boot menu, fantastic for all those who want to experiment with this file system as promising.

However, the support is not quite right as WebUpd8, which indicate that research issues such as integration with the updated versions of Ubuntu, with the integration of snapshots and dependencies packet interface options and other options that still seem somewhat confusing.

Unity

2D (Qt)

recently published a version of Unity for Qt / QML is supposed to be available as an option for those who can not run the normal Unity (with 3D support). However, 2D Unity not available natively on the Ubuntu CD 11.04 . Here is a video with 2D Unity in action:

Instead

Canonical will continue to build a classic based on GNOME desktop if your hardware can not support Unity. Things may change in future versions, so this could change in the final version.

Goodbye

Ubuntu Netbook Edition

Canonical

announcement makes clear that the issue for netbooks gone to integrate with conventional publishing, although there are rare cases like the one shown in the ARM version that makes use of some specific components that differ from the conventional version for x86 desktops.

WebUpd8 indicate that for now Ubuntu 4.11 Alpha 2 Natty Narwhal is still quite unstable , and that to create this 3-minute video was shot no less than 4 hours working with the distribution. Here are the results:

conclude warning us of the original versions that still come , and of course are planned in accordance with the roadmap that Canonical published long ago. This is the plan for the coming weeks:

Mon A fantastic WebUpd8 analysis we have to thank “to Caesar what is Caesar’s, the merit of this article is all of them, we have been limited mainly to translate and adapt content. Now what I played, of course, is to download the ISO image of Ubuntu 4.11 Alpha 2 Natty Narwhal if you are interested to try it in your PCs and laptops.