Friday, September 7, 2012

Ubuntu 12.10 Beta 1 released

It has been 42 days since the least alpha release of Ubuntu 12.10, and now a beta has arrived. Some new features have been added, and there is some more points to talk about.

Probably one of the most seen features of this release is the Unity previews. This allows you to review a file, such as a document, in the the Unity dash instead of having to just open a file to view it.

And one thing to also note: Unity 2D is gone. It is not included in this release, and was removed from the 12.10 official repos a few weeks back. I covered this a few weeks ago if you missed it. You should be able to find it by using the search box to the right or at the bottom of the page if you are using mobile. If your graphics card can not handle Unity 3D, then your processor will do the rendering instead. So if you have an old machine with an old processor and graphics card, you might have a problem trying to run this. If you remember, Unity will switch to software composting, basically using your CPU.

At least there is some benefit to this, at least for the developers anyways. Developers will now have to focus on only one version of Unity, so now all resources will be focused on one version instead of maintaining two different versions that were built differently. You will also get to have all features of Unity in one package -- the same experience with all Unity users.

Previews
Unity previews was shown off a few days back. As the name suggests, Previews allow you to learn more about a file, folder or app from within the Unity Dash. No need to open a Dash result directly – just right-click on it to get more information. Doesn't that sound good to all of you?

There will be different types of previews for different files. Each will provide their own information.

There is also more changes in this beta, so head over to Omg! Ubuntu! to see them. I don't have any photos of mine to put up here. I know I cut this article a little short, but otherwise all the other stuff would be great to see with pictures, and I just don't have any right now.