Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

Introduction to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

On 31 October 2011, Mark Shuttleworth disclosed that by the 14.04 version of Ubuntu, Ubuntu will support smart screens, TVs, tablets, and smartphones. It was disclosed that the 14.04 version of Ubuntu will be dubbed "Trusty Tahr" on 18 October 2013. On 17 every 2014, Trusty Tahr was released and is the 20th publication of Ubuntu.

Mark Shuttleworth represented that the concentration in this development cycle will be a publication categorized by "refinement, performance, technical debt, maintainability" and encouraged many developers for making "conservative choices".

Technical dept defines refining and catching up supporting work for earlier modifications. The development cycle for this publication concentrated on the tablet interface, particularly for the Nexus 10 and Nexus 7 tablets. There were some modifications to the desktop as the 14.04 version used the previous mature interface of Unity 7.

The 14.04 version of Ubuntu included the capability to turn off any global menu system and apply locally developed menus rather than for individual apps. Other aspects of the confinements of Xorg and not XMir or Mir, a Unity 8 preview of developers, new mobile apps, recreated USB Startup Disk Creator tool, a newer forked release of the GNOME Control Center, known as the Unity Control Center and SSD TRIM support (default). By default, the 3.10 version of GNOME is installed.

Features of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

LTS Hardware Enablement Stack

The 14.04.5 version will ship with an X stack and updated kernel by default in an effort for supporting a huge range of hardware on a previous LTS release. This new hardware enablement stack would be composed of the X stack and kernel from the Xenial 16.04 version.

Those running cloud or virtual images shouldn't require this new hardware enablement stack and hence it's suggested they remain on the actual Trusty stack. There are some options for remaining on the actual Trusty stack:

• Install from an old 14.04.1 or 14.04.0 version and update. The 14.04.1 and 14.04.0 versions are archived on http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/
• Implement an upgrade or update to Trusty from an old release of Ubuntu. Only those installing using the 14.04.2 media or new will by default get a new hardware enablement stack automatically.
• Implement a network install with the help of the netboot images instead of the new xenial-netboot, wily-netboot, vivid-netboot, or topic-netboot images.

Updated Packages

Package software and applications of every type are being updated at a rapid pace as with all new releases. Several of these packages came through an automatic sync from an unstable branch of Debian; others have been pulled in for the 14.04 LTS version of Ubuntu explicitly.

Linux kernel 4.4

The 14.04.5 version will ship with the new 4.4 version of the Linux kernel from the 16.04 version of Ubuntu and the same X.org stack by default. It is based on the 4.4.0 version of Extended Upstream Stable Kernel Release. The aim of offering a new kernel in the 14.04.5 version is for hardware enablement.

Python 3.4

Eventually, we intend to ship Python 3 only with the Ubuntu desktop image. The 14.04 LTS image version of Ubuntu continuous this procedure. However, we can't convert everything into Python 3 for the 14.04 LTS release of Ubuntu.

AppArmor

It has several new aspects in the 14.04 LTS version of Ubuntu. Notably:

• New Python 3 and Python AppArmor libraries (python3-apparmor and python-apparmor)
• A new @{profile_name} variable for referencing the recent profile name in policy
• Several policy updates in support of new aspects and bug fixes
• Many new tunables supporting the user directories of XDG, dovecot, and others
• New abstractions for software running upon Unity
• Developed DBus mediation
• Supports fine-grained ptrace mediation supports fine-grained signal mediation

Oxide

It is a WebView that is based on Chromium to provide web content. It permits us to support 3D party applications and developers in the Ubuntu archive by offering an up-to-date, secure, and fast web-engine library for the LTS duration.
While other libraries of web content like those based on webkit are present, their maintenance would be restricted to new upstream minor releases only, and the developers of the application are encouraged for using Oxide instead.

Ubuntu Desktop

General

The Ubuntu desktop get several updates. some essential modifications include:

• New application for Ubuntu-specific settings, derived from the control center GNOME
• Several default applications re-achieved well-developed menu bars upon Unity
• Now, Nautilus defaults to type-ahead search rather than starting a search if we are looking for a file in a directory

Unity

Essential new aspects include:

• Supports desktop scaling and high-DPI screens
• New lock screen and screen saver that matches the visual designs of Unity greeter along with improved security and speed.
• The Appearance settings option to display menus embedded in the title bar of the Window rather than the top menu bar.
• New decorations of the window along with improved performance and appearance. The contents of Windows are now live updated because they are resized.
• The application spread has been recreated along with new aspects including the ability for typing to filter the displayed Windows or applications.
• Now, dash scopes can be disabled or enabled from the application lens in the dash itself.

LibreOffice

The office suite of LibreOffice has been updated to the greatest and latest version 4.2.8 including new aspects:

• General
  • Supports native XFCE and MATE file dialogs
  • Supports BCP 47 language tags
  • Improved export and import filters
  • Supports initial HiDPI
  • A newer flat icon theme, i.e., sifr
  • A newer start center provides easy access and previews to used documents recently.
• Writer
  • Change tracking and spellcheck consolidated
  • Document search for languages (right to left)
  • Editing (in-place) of text fields
  • A new template of the default document
• Calc
  • New calculation engine
  • Trendline enhancements: moving averages, polynomials, extrapolation, force intercept, multiple trendlines
  • Right-click quick context menu for switching between sheets
  • Functions for accessing web data (FILTERXML, WEBSERVICE)
  • Random statistic functions and number generation

Xorg

The Xorg shows drivers and servers have been updated to the release 15.0.1 and mesa has been updated to the 10.1 release.

Ubuntu Server

Puppet 3

The 14.04 LTS version of Ubuntu contains Puppet 3. It is a major release upgrade from old LTS releases of Ubuntu. It contains several modifications which aren't compatible with the 2.7.x version of Puppet.

OpenStack 2014.1

The 14.04 LTS version of Ubuntu contains Icehouse (OpenStack 2014.1) version of the below projects:

• OpenStack Dashboard: Horizon
• OpenStack Orchestration: Heat
• OpenStack Telemetry: Ceilometer
• OpenStack Object Storage: Swift
• OpenStack Networking: Neutron
• OpenStack Block Storage: Cinder
• OpenStack Imaging: Glance
• OpenStack Identity: Keystone
• OpenStack Compute: Nova

Xen 4.4

The 14.04 LTS version of Ubuntu contains Xen 4.4. It is an important upgrade from the old release. Automatically, the hypervisor will be upgraded to the version, i.e., 64-bit (the Dom 0 doesn't need to modify). Ensure that our host is 64-bit capable before upgrading. The XM management stack has also been deprecated from Xen 4.1 and would be deleted in the next release of Xen 4.5.

Ceph 0.79

The 14.04 LTS version of Ubuntu contains Ceph 0.79. It will be upgraded to the stable release, i.e., Firefly by a stable release update when the 0.80 version is published upstream. This release contains efficient data coding for tiered pooling and cool storage.

Libvirt 1.2.2

The 14.04 LTS version of Ubuntu contains Libvirt 1.2.2 with complete support for Xen 4.4 and Ceph.

LXC 1.0

The 14.04 LTS version of Ubuntu contains LXC 1.0. It provides completely unprivileged containers, fast container clones with btrfs, zfs backing stores, LVM, or overlayfs, a new seccomp policy language, API bindings for the 3.0 version of python, lua, ruby, go.

MAAS 1.7

The 14.04 LTS version of Ubuntu contains MAAS 1.7. In addition to minor improvements and bug fixes, the 1.7 version of MAAS includes the below major aspects:

• Hardware Enablement Kernels: Now, MAAS supports utilizing kernels other than any default kernel for the Ubuntu releases. It includes deployment, commissioning, and enlistment and it is mainly focused on permitting users to use hardware enablement kernels.
• Zones: It is an arbitrary node's grouping. Then, this grouping could be used as pressure for deployment.
• Advanced Networking: Now, MAAS supports more than one interface of the managed network in one cluster and supports VLANs.

strongSwan

Now, the 14.04 LTS version of Ubuntu officially supports strongSwan IPSec. It is a modern and feature-rich IPSec solution. The supported solution of IPsec, ipsec-tools, in prior versions of Ubuntu, now gets community support and all users are encouraged for migrating to strongSwan for maintaining the official support.

Juju 1.22.6

The 14.04 LTS version of Ubuntu contains the latest stable version of Juju. It is a tool of service orchestration for Ubuntu. Existing environments of 1.16.6 Juju could be upgraded to the 1.22.6 version by executing the following command:

MySQL

The 14.04 LTS version of Ubuntu supports MySQL 5.5. Also, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS supports three other MySQL alternatives which are as follows:

• MariaDB 5.5- It is a drop-in substitution for MySQL 5.5.
• MySQL 5.6- The upcoming version of MySQL of Oracle.
• Percona XtraDB Cluster 5.5- It is a Galera-based Active MySQL/Active solution.

Note: Upgrading to the 5.6 version of MySQL is an automatic single way procedure. It's possible to manually downgrade.

PHP 5.5

PHP is updated to the 5.5 version which is a major update from the 5.3 version as available in the old LTS. Upstream defined a few compatibilities in the update and suggest testing before upgrading the environments of the production.

Apache 2.4

The 14.04 LTS version of Ubuntu contains Apache 2.4. it is a major release upgrade from the 2.2 version of Apache in the 12.04 LTS version of Ubuntu and all users should take care for reading the upgrade notes contained in the upstream upgrading and packaging documentation.

Ubuntu Touch

As a part of the bigger Ubuntu 14.04 version efforts the team of Ubuntu Touch is proud for making the greatest and latest touch experience present to their enthusiast developers and users.

While the Ubuntu Touch version is not a supported version, they feel it's important for handing out a "stable" build for huge feedback and testing, while they are continuing with velocity towards their going-to-market milestone.

Devices

Ubuntu Touch added tablets to the devices mix for this milestone. The device set with builds present is:

• manta (Nexus 10 Tablet)
• flo (Nexus 7 Tablet)
• mako (Nexus 4 Phone)

Known issues of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

Installation, post-installation, and boot

• Automatic install has defected on drives that include partitions that either doesn't have any operating system installed or partitions that include installed Windows 8.
• After installation, clicking the enter button does not restart the system and a hard reset is needed on a few systems.
• Installation on very small memory computers may fail for starting or exiting without finishing with no error. It is suggested that swap be made before installing for such computers.
• Live session begins with keyboard fixed to English US and UTC timezone even when non-English languages are chosen.

Upgrade

• On drives, automatic upgrade including the data partitions of the user, including for many operating systems, and every system of Windows 8, will outcome in the entire drive being wiped and every existing data will be lost.
• The user needs to re-type their credentials when the computer is upgraded from an old version by the installer. If the home directory of the user is encrypted, the upgrade succeeds but that user can't log in.
• Flightgear configuration fails while upgrading from the 12.04 LTS version to the 14.04 LTS version.
• Tex-common package configuration fails while upgrading from the 12.04 LTS version to the 14.04 LTS version.

Power Management

There are kerneloops with a resume/suspend failure message seen when opening lid on a few systems.

Desktop

The Dash of Unity does not display any application on some rare occasions.

Graphics and Display

Migration

Networking

Kernel

A few laptops (netbook class particularly) along with previous graphics can face poor graphical performance if beginning with a high-resolution outer monitor attached. It is because a few graphics cards (such as Intel 945GSE) can't support advanced 3D graphics if the mixed width of both screens beats some threshold (2048 pixels typically).

AppArmor

AppArmor 2.8.95, the major tools in the apparmor-utils have been re-specified for improving maintainability. Currently, the aa-logprof and aa-genprof CLI tools include many bugs that disturb their utility while it permits us for better supporting them and include fixes going forward. These bugs must be fixed before publication. It is suggested that people manually develop policies at this time.