natty narwhal

It seems that recently there have been some contradictory discussion between the Banshee team and Canonical concerning the percentage of the revenue given by Canonical (who wants to become profitable and sustainable) to Banshee/Gnome Foundation (related to Ubuntu One Music Store and AmazonMP3 plugins).
The conclusions (settlement) are:

Ubuntu 11.04 alpha 2 has just received some important UI improvements, transforming a nice experience into a rocking one (and remember, it's just alpha 2).

So, what is new?

Massive changes have just landed in Ubuntu 11.04 alpha 2, Natty Narwhal, bringing many changes from an UI point of view (and, of course, many bug fixes).

So, what is new in Unity 3.4.2 (previous version is 3.4, so, if we look at the version number it should be a small update)?:

It has been a productive, way-to-go Natty Narwhal week, but, just before the release of Natty Narwhal alpha 2 on 3 February 2011, a new, surprising and sexy approach has been put in Unity: two new, awesome, monochrome icons (Files&Folders and Applications).

At the moment, this monochromatic approach could be observed only on these two persistent icons, but, who knows what to future is going to look like.

After a couple of days of remarkable updates (both useful and eye-catching) Natty Narwhal seems to be full of daily surprises.
I have just discovered an "Experimental 3D support for NVIDIA cards" (in the main repos) when I've ran "Additional Drivers". I may be wrong, but is very clear (at least for me) that a new alternative to the NVIDIA proprietary drivers is being made and might land as an official, stable alternative to the proprietary drivers in the near future (possible in Natty+1).

Unity 3.4 has just landed in Ubuntu 11.04 alpha 1, Natty Narwhal, bringing the "places" back ("places" were removed from Unity 3.2.16 because of a serious bug that froze the whole Unity interface).
The new places have now its own dash (icons are not properly showed yet) and search entry (quite fast at the moment).
Other important changes:

Great news for Ubuntu 11/04 alpha 1, Natty Narwhal, Unity 3.2.16 is here bringing:

Mozilla Firefox 4 beta 10 and Vlc 1.1.6 have landed in Ubuntu 11.04 alpha 1, Natty Narwhal, bringing a better, enjoyable and consistent experience (at least for the brave alpha testers).

What is new in Vlc 1.1.6 ?

• multiple fixes and improvements on audio output
• updated translations for Chinese, Nippon, Spanish, Bulgarian, etc
• faster decoding with recent codecs libraries

Natty Narwhal alpha 2 will be released on 3 February 2011.

The Dash has finally landed in Natty Narwhal bringing important changes in the user interface.

One very important thing that is brought by unity 3.2.14 package is the Dash, or "semi"-Dash.

Why semi? Because, unlike its Maverick predecessor, is now represented only by a portion of the screen (if you have the screen bigger than 1200x1024 resolution) and the icons are very big (for now Find Media Apps, Find Internet Apps, Find More Apps, Find Files, Browse the Web, View Photos, Check Email, Listen to Music).

Ubuntu 11.04, Natty Narwhal , has just received a big update: LibreOffice 3.3 RC 3 is now the default office suite in Natty Narwhal.
This huge step toward usability and regularly updated office packages comes after a couple of days since Banshee replaced Rhythmbox as the default music player.