Introduction

The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the final beta release of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Long-Term Support) Desktop, Server, Cloud, and Core products.

Codenamed “Precise Pangolin”, 12.04 continues Ubuntu’s proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution. The team has been hard at work through this cycle, introducing a few new features but mostly fixing bugs.

With Ubuntu 12.04, Kubuntu, Edubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Mythbuntu and Ubuntu Studio also reached Beta 2 status today.

The Ubuntu developers are moving quickly to bring you the absolute latest and greatest software the Open Source community has to offer. The Precise Pangolin Beta 2 release of Ubuntu 12.04 gives a preview of the next LTS version of Ubuntu.

New Features in Precise Pangolin

Ubuntu Kernel

Beta-2 includes the 3.2.0-20.33 Ubuntu kernel which is based on the v3.2.12 upstream stable Linux kernel. This is an update from the 3.2.0-17.27 Ubuntu kernel which shipped in Beta-1 (based on upstream stable Linux kernel v3.2.6).
As with Beta-1, the Beta-2 kernel no longer carries separate amd64 -server and -generic kernel flavors. These have been merged into a single -generic kernel flavor to help reduce the maintenance burden over the life of this LTS release. i386 systems have had their default kernel changed to PAE. We have also removed the non-SMP PowerPC kernel flavor to help reduce maintenance costs. Hardware coverage is essentially the same between both the SMP and non-SMP PowerPC flavors and any consumers of the non-SMP PowerPC flavor will be automatically upgraded/updated to the SMP PowerPC flavor.

Ubuntu Desktop

New Applications and Defaults.
Interface Updates
ClickPad Support
Ubuntu One.
Others

Ubuntu Core

This flavor provides a minimal Ubuntu environment suitable for highly customised installs, and mainly just saw the general version upgrades for the contained packages.
In sync with the rest of the Ubuntu ARM images, builds for the ARMv7 hard float (armhf) architecture are now available. This is the supported architecture for all ARM Ubuntu images now.

Ubuntu Server

12.04 Beta 2 is shipping the latest milestones of OpenStack Essex, which is currently at RC1 state. The alignment of the development cycles will mean that 12.04 Final will include the Essex Final release, due April 5th.
Openstack component, Keystone is a new, from scratch rewrite this cycle, replacing the existing upstream source from Oneiric / 11.10.

You can also check out other new features which are added in the Precise Pangolin on their Official Release Page.