Thanks to all the hard work from our contributors, Lubuntu 20.10 has been released! With the codename Groovy Gorilla, Lubuntu 20.10 is the 19th release of Lubuntu, the fifth release of Lubuntu with LXQt as the default desktop environment.

Support lifespan

Lubuntu 20.10 will be supported until July 2021. Our main focus will be on this and future releases.

Lubuntu 18.04 LTS, the last supported release with LXDE, will be supported until April 2021 and Lubuntu 20.04 LTS will be supported until April 2023. For both of these releases, we are limiting changes to critical fixes and underlying system changes shipped with all other Ubuntu flavors.

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.

You can find the following major applications and toolkits installed by default in this release:

• LXQt 0.15.0 – with many improvements over 0.14 present in 20.04, you can go here for more information.
• Qt 5.14.2.
• Mozilla Firefox 81.0.2, which will receive updates from the Ubuntu Security Team throughout the support cycle of the release.
• The LibreOffice 7.0.2 suite – which solves the printing issue present in 20.04.
• VLC 3.0.11.1, for viewing media and listening to music.
• Featherpad 0.12.1, for notes and code editing.
• Discover Software Center 5.19.5, 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.

Our update notifier application received an update. The new update has a tree view to see the pending updates better. In addition Update Notifier checks for updates on a daily basis now. 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.

Artwork

The lubuntu artwork has an updated plymouth theme thanks to the contributions from Lubuntu Member apt-ghetto and Jacob Sawicki. The new theme looks fantastic on both EFI machines as well as legacy boot.

The default wallpaper this time is one of the favorites from the 20.04 release. 

Where can I download it?

You can download Lubuntu 20.10 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. 20.10 ships with Calamares 3.2.24.

For a full description of the new features and fixes, see the upstream announcements for 3.2.24.

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!

• Simon Quigley
• Walter Lapchynski
• Lyn Perrine
• Hans Möller
• Dan Simmons
• Chris Guiver
• Raman Sarda
• Thomas Ward
• apt-ghetto
• Noumeno
• sudodus
• Leó Kolbeinsson
• Jacob Sawicki
• Many more contributors!

New Lubuntu Member

Over the course of this cycle, we have welcomed the following Lubuntu Member to the project. Thank you for your contributions!

• Leó Kolbeinsson

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

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.

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