Lubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) Released!

Thanks to all the hard work from our contributors, Lubuntu 20.04 LTS has been released! With the codename Focal Fossa, Lubuntu 20.04 is the 18th release of Lubuntu, the fourth release of Lubuntu with LXQt as the default desktop environment, and the first Long Term Support release with LXQt.

Support lifespan

Lubuntu 20.04 LTS will be supported until April 2023. Our main focus will be on this and future releases.

Lubuntu 19.10 will be supported for three months, until July 2020, and Lubuntu 18.04 LTS, the last supported release with LXDE, will be supported until April 2021. For both of these releases, we are limiting changes to critical fixes and underlying system changes shipped with all other Ubuntu flavors.

Note, due to the extensive changes required for the shift in desktop environments, the Lubuntu team does not support upgrading from 18.04 or below to any greater release. Doing so will result in a broken system. If you are on 18.04 or below and would like to upgrade, please do a fresh install.

What is Lubuntu?

Lubuntu is an official Ubuntu flavor which uses the Lightweight Qt Desktop Environment (LXQt). The project’s goal is to provide a lightweight yet functional Linux distribution based on a rock-solid Ubuntu base. Lubuntu provides a simple but modern and powerful graphical user interface, and comes with a wide variety of applications so you can browse, email, chat, play, and be productive.

This is the fourth Lubuntu release with LXQt as the main desktop environment. The Lubuntu project, in 18.10 and successive releases, will no longer support the LXDE desktop environment or tools in the Ubuntu archive, and will instead focus on the LXQt desktop environment. You can find the following major applications and toolkits installed by default in this release:

LXQt 0.14.1.
Qt 5.12.8 LTS.
Mozilla Firefox 75, which will receive updates from the Ubuntu Security Team throughout the support cycle of the release.
The LibreOffice 6.4.2 suite.
VLC 3.0.9.2, for viewing media and listening to music.
Featherpad 0.12.1, for notes and code editing.
Discover Software Center 5.18.4, for an easy, graphical way to install and update software.
The powerful and fast email client Trojitá 0.7 to get you to inbox zero in no time.

New this cycle: we have an update notifier application. Update Notifier was developed by Lubuntu Member Hans Möller. Update Notifier also lets you update your system from within the application itself.

You can find a variety of other applications installed which aim to enhance your experience while staying out of the way of your normal workflow.

Where can I download it?

You can download Lubuntu 20.04 on our downloads page. Please note that we dropped support for i386 (32-bit) images following the 18.10 release.

Installer

Lubuntu uses the Calamares system installer in place of the Ubiquity installer that other flavors use. 20.04 ships with Calamares 3.2.20.

For a full description of the new features and fixes, see the upstream announcements for 3.2.20.

Artwork

Results of the Lubuntu Wallpaper Contest

For this release we once again asked the community to get involved in creating the wallpaper for the desktop. The submissions were fantastic and the decision was difficult for the committee to decide. The committee scored the choices and narrowed the selection down. The Lubuntu Members then voted for the winning wallpaper; you can find a final, high-quality copy here. Thanks go to Hudson Bomfim for providing this wonderful image for the Lubuntu community to enjoy.

We have also added some of the finalists’ artwork too; you can find them in the /usr/share/lubuntu/wallpapers/ directory.

Everyone Loves Screenshots

We will let the pictures speak for us:

Lubuntu Manual

The Lubuntu Team has been hard at work in polishing a Lubuntu Manual book to make it easy for new and experienced users alike to use their system more productively. The book can be found at manual.lubuntu.me.

We want to thank Lyn Perrine for all the hard work she has put into the Lubuntu Manual. Thank you!

All existing URLs now redirect to https://manual.lubuntu.me/stable/. Going forward, the tip of the master branch (WIP documentation for the next release) can be found at https://manual.lubuntu.me/master/, and when documentation is released for 20.04 LTS, you can find that at https://manual.lubuntu.me/lts/. While the documentation for previous releases will be kept in the Git repository, they will not be published anywhere.

Lubuntu Project

How can I help?

We can always use more help! No matter your skill level or your technical experience, there’s something you can help with that can make a huge difference in Lubuntu. Join us on our chat (which is bridged three ways to Matrix, Telegram, and IRC) and talk to us there. Whether you know another language, have some spare time to help us test Lubuntu, are good at writing documentation, or just want to stay “in the know,” that is the place to be.

If you want to contribute to Lubuntu but do not feel you have the time or skills, consider buying a t-shirt or donating to Lubuntu.

Another great method to get involved is bug reporting. If you notice an issue, please file a bug using the instructions on the Lubuntu Wiki.

Don’t want to file a bug? Let us know what the problem is (in detail, enough that we can reproduce it) and we can assist you in filing one or do it ourselves.

Contributors

We would like to thank the following contributors for dedicating their time to Lubuntu this cycle. Thank you!

New Lubuntu Developer

Over the course of this cycle, we have welcomed the following Lubuntu Member as a developer of the project, with upload access to the Ubuntu archive. Thank you for your development work!

Raman Sarda

Global Team

The Lubuntu Global Team has been created to foster communities in non-English languages and locales, and includes Hans Möller, Noumeno, and Jyoti Gomes as the initial drivers of the project. An up-to-date list can be found on our Links page, but the existing groups include: Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Italian, Chinese, German, Japanese, and French. If you would like to start a language group, join our development channel and talk with the Global Team. At minimum, you should have a few interested drivers of the community, and at least one administrator that speaks English.

Known Bugs

Please also check the known bugs reported in the Ubuntu Release Notes for more common bugs affecting all Ubuntu flavors.

LibreOffice Exporting Documents as a PDF

There is a bug where certain fonts do not render in exported PDF documents. As a workaround, LibreOffice applications can be launched from the commandline with the following environment variable SAL_VCL_QT5_USE_CAIRO=true. For example, to launch writer issue SAL_VCL_QT5_USE_CAIRO=true libreoffice --writer.

Replace Partition on Certain Partition Schemes With Calamares Fails

Installs replacing a partition may fail with this bug. As a workaround; reboot, use KDE Partition Manager to delete the ‘unknown’ partition that exists, create the partition using the format you want (ext4, btrfs were tested & worked), deactivate swap partitions & exit KDE Partition Manager. Calamares can then use the prepared partition.

Calamares Tries to Install a Bootloader to Floppy Drive

If a system has a floppy drive with a floppy disk at the time of boot, Calamares tries to install a bootloader to the floppy. If the floppy disk is removed from the drive before boot the installation proceeds without failure.

Calamares Install Fails When Setting Mirrors

Under rare conditions, the installation process may fail when performing the automirror module. As a workaround, start the live system and issue the following in the terminal:

sudo sed -i 's/logging.http_error/logging.error/' /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/calamares/modules/automirror/main.py

The install process should then work properly.

Calamares selects wrong timezone

As reported in this bug, the automatic Geoip detection for the timezone may fail and default to America/New York. The correct timezone is still able to be selected manually.