We’ve now officially entered the season that comes only, er, twice a year: the countdown to the next iteration of Ubuntu. With beta 1 of Ubuntu 12.04 now available, it’s time to take a look at what’s new — and there’s a lot of it — in the latest and greatest version of what is (probably) the world’s most popular open source operating system.

Ubuntu 12.04, or “Precise Pangolin,” as geeks like to call it, is slated to officially debut in stable form April 26, 2012. And while Ubuntu’s biannual development schedule means that new versions of the operating system are pushed out with relative frequency, the upcoming version is particularly notable as a “longterm support” (LTS) release, which means Canonical will provide updates for Precise on both desktops and servers through April 2017 — substantially longer than it does for other releases. The last LTS was Ubuntu 10.04, which appeared two years ago.

Previewing Pangolin

In theory, Ubuntu 12.04’s LTS status means it’s more conservative from a development standpoint, since developers typically focus on fine-tuning and polishing LTS releases instead of adding new features and software. In fact, however, Precise packs a surprising number of changes, including:

All in all, this list of changes, which I’ve restricted to only the larger-ticket items, represents quite a bit of new features in Ubuntu 12.04. For an LTS release, Precise is really pushing the envelope.

For my money, though, that’s a good thing, since the updates bring some long-needed enhancements to the Ubuntu desktop experience — particularly when it comes to Unity. Better to incorporate these into the LTS than to wait for the next-next release of Ubuntu in October 2012.