Thanks to all the hard work from our contributors, Lubuntu 21.04 has been released. With the codename Hirsute Hippo, Lubuntu 21.04 is the 20th release of Lubuntu, the sixth release of Lubuntu with LXQt as the default desktop environment.

Support lifespan

Lubuntu 21.04 will be supported until January 2022. Our main focus will be on this and future releases.

Lubuntu 20.04 LTS will be supported until April 2023. For 20.04 LTS, 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 0.16.0 – with many improvements over 0.15, you can go here for more information.
• LXQt Archiver 0.3.0 which is based on Engrampa, is now included.
• Qt 5.15.2
• Mozilla Firefox 87.0, which will receive updates from the Ubuntu Security Team throughout the support cycle of the release.
• The LibreOffice 7.1.2 suite.
• VLC 3.0.12, for viewing media and listening to music.
• Featherpad 0.17.1, for notes and code editing.
• Discover Software Center 5.21.4, for an easy, graphical way to install and update software.

Our update notifier application received an update. The new update adds the packages and versions to the tree view to see the pending updates better. In addition, Update Notifier now has a separate tree view for security updates. 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 default wallpaper this time is one of the submissions from our artwork contest

We also have a new greeter background from our contest: 

Many thanks to Alan Diggs aka Schykle for the great art submissions!

Everyone Loves Screenshots

We will let the pictures speak for us: 

Where can I download it?

You can download Lubuntu 21.04 on our downloads page.

Installer

Lubuntu uses the Calamares system installer in place of the Ubiquity installer that other flavors use. 21.04 ships with Calamares 3.2.37. For a full/erase disk install, we have added the option of a swapfile by default. The swapfile size is initially set to 512 MB. The option for no swap is still available as a dropdown selection.

For a full description of the new features and fixes, see the upstream announcements for 3.2.37.

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
• KGIII
• Many more contributors!

Extra Thanks

The Lubuntu team would like to extend some extra thanks to Rik Mills – MOTU and Thomas Ward – Core Dev, for helping us get some of our packages merged from Debian that were not in our packageset. Rik and Thomas are always very willing to help the team and it is appreciated! Also extra thanks go to Raman Sarda for all of the Debian merges he did so that we could meet the Debian Freeze deadline.

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, Arabic, 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. We now have multiple languages available in the support section of our Discourse forum.

Known Bugs

Entry of encyption passphrases created with non US keyboard layouts results in failure to decrypt at boot after installation.

When installing the Lubuntu system using a non US keyboard layout and encryption, it may result in being unable to decrypt your volume when rebooting the system. Full disk encryption resulted in the GRUB boot loader being unable to read your language choices at boot until after you’ve provided the unlock key, meaning users being dropped into the GRUB rescue shell.

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