since no significant engineering has been done on the image since oneiric i asked the release team that the alpha 1 iso image testing for ubuntu studio 12.04 be waved. it would appear that i asked belatedly because i think the image was published anyways. i certainly don't want to dissuade you from testing it if you wish, but please recognize that it is not required for alpha1. however, directly after the alpha1 milestone i expect to make significant and sweeping changes to the theming and UI to move the xfce transition closer to completion. we definitively will want testing for alpha2 (if not on some dailies before hand) for your input on what we need to improve. i expect this to take a week of my time after work and family to make what i think are the complete changes to the source package before uploading them to the bzr branch, which will then need to get upload to the repository. this means that the changes will not be ready immediately after the alpha1 milestone, but i will keep the list (and the #ubuntustudio-devel irc channel) in the loop. also notice i said "move the xfce transition closer to completion". this is because i am sure that i will not catch _everything_ that needs to be changed during the update (even though i have five pages of hand written notes). i will need you to give me your input on what you think needs to be updated. oh, and it's quite possible that i will break things quite badly at first, so be patient if things go very badly right after the update :P scottl