A second Ubuntu Linux Hoary Hedgehog pre-release CD has been released. Hoary Hedgehog is the next Ubuntu Linux release which is planned for April 2005. This is an early developer snapshot featuring Kernel 2.6.9, GNOME 2.9.2, and FireFox 1.0

Array CD 2 is ready, live from the Ubuntu conference in Mataró, Spain. This is the second in a series of milestone CD images released once every two weeks or so (theoretically; this one is belated, for which I apologise), as images that are known to be reasonably free of showstopper CD-build or installer bugs, while representing very current snapshots of Hoary. You can download it here:

http://cdimage.ubuntulinux.org/releases/hoary/array-2/
rsync://cdimage.ubuntulinux.org/cdimage/releases/hoary/array-2/

See http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/Archive for access instructions. I recommend rsync if possible, as you can then download future images based on this one to save bandwidth.

Pre-release versions of Hoary are *not* encouraged for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional breakage. They *are* recommended for Ubuntu developers and those who want to help in testing, reporting, and fixing bugs.

Some notable installer improvements and bug-fixes in this release:

* The installer uses udev and hotplug rather than devfs and discover. This brings it into more or less the same hardware detection sphere as the installed system, which should result in more consistent installations and fewer places for us to modify when adding support for new hardware.

However, there will be hardware that is *temporarily* no longer supported due to this change, since we haven't yet made sure everything interesting in the discover database is found by hotplug. Please file a bug with 'lspci' and 'lspci -n' output if you have a problem like this.

* Netboot installs should get second-stage packages from hoary now, rather than warty.

* Upgraded parted by several upstream versions; while this changed API/ABI so several other packages needed to be rebuilt, this is believed finally to correct the problem where Ubuntu installations rendered Windows unbootable with certain partition table layouts and BIOS versions (#1566). Please test.

* Linux kernel 2.6.9.

* Commented-out examples in /etc/apt/sources.list are added for updates (#3122) and security (#3599).

* Installing using an image written to a USB drive should now be supported, although due to being at the Ubuntu conference I haven't been in the best position to test it.

* Added the ia64 architecture, although the installer is untested.

* 'custom' boot option renamed to 'server'.

The two errata from Array CD 1 have also been fixed.

Known installer issues:

* The new hotplug support brings with it a few race conditions in hardware detection, so you may have problems with the framebuffer not being loaded or with your CD-ROM drive not being detected which are cleared up by trying the installation again. This class of problem is being actively worked on, and I believe we should have a solution soon.

* Network interface names aren't displayed properly in the network configuration stage of the installation, because they used to come from discover1-data which we aren't using any more. This will be fixed by using lspci instead.

If you're interested in following changes as we further develop Hoary, have a look at the hoary-changes list:

http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/hoary-changes

Bug reports should go here:

https://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/

Enjoy,

--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@canonical.com]