Author Archives: Dan Simmons

04 Feb

Lubuntu 20.04.2 LTS Released!

Thanks to all the hard work from our contributors, we are pleased to announce that Lubuntu 20.04.2 LTS has been released!

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.

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17 Dec

Lubuntu Hirsute Hippo 21.04 Artwork Contest

The Lubuntu Team is pleased to announce we are running a Hirsute Hippo artwork competition, giving you, our community, the chance to submit, and get your favorite wallpapers for both the desktop and the greeter/login screen (SDDM) included in the Lubuntu 21.04 release.

Show Your Artwork

To enter, simply post your image into this thread on our Discourse forum.

We will close this thread on February 25th, 2021 and the judging will begin. No late submissions will be accepted.

The artwork selection committee will select the finalists for the Lubuntu Members to vote on.

Two selected images will be readily seen in Lubuntu 21.04, one will become the main wallpaper as with prior releases, another different image will be used for greeter/login (SDDM background).

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01 Oct

Lubuntu 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla) BETA testing

We are pleased to announce that the beta images for Lubuntu 20.10 have been released!

While we have reached the bugfix-only stage of our development cycle, these images are not meant to be used in a production system. We highly recommend joining our development group or our forum to let us know about any issues.

Getting the download

You can download the Groovy Gorilla daily build here.

Recording the results

To record your testing, you’ll need a Launchpad/Ubuntu One login. Go here to create one if you haven’t already got one.

Take a look at the testsuites, though most of our testcases can be found here.

Our current behavior when we run a QA-test install is to use the “Install using Calamares (entire disk)” testcase, where in the Comments section we use the first line to briefly list hardware used, the second line has an entry like

Lenovo V14 IIL,Intel Core i3-1005G1,8GB,256GB SSD
Testcase:BIOS,no encryption,full disk,Internet

which highlights it was a BIOS install, no encyption, full disk with internet connected; all of which matches an testcase found on our checklist.

How you describe your hardware is up to you, I get details from sudo lshw roughly in format “Make model (cpu, ram, gpu)” so my x201 will show as
lenovo thinkpad x201 (i5-m520, 4gb, i915)
but in my testcase example I’ve copied the first two lines from a real QA-test install performed by our most recent Lubuntu member Leó Kolbeinsson.

Reporting bugs

Follow the directions in the testsuite. If it does all of those things, great! If it doesn’t, we do need your help. Please file a bug on your testing box, and record the bug ID in the Bug (or Critical Bug) section in the iso.qa.ubuntu.com page when complete.

Follow the directions in the bug report, and be as specific as you can. This is a key step – an unreported bug will be an unfixed bug. For details on reporting bugs please refer to our wiki page and don’t forget to include the bug report number in the iso.qa.ubuntu.com test report.

Questions?

If you have any questions, appropriate places to ask are of course, our discourse site or for faster responses please ask on IRC #lubuntu-devel or via our telegram channel

Please note tests that complete okay with only minor issues should still be PASSED, but the bug ID reported in the “Bugs” section. If you consider it a show-stopper bug, record it in the “Critical bugs” section (failing the test if you believe absolutely necessary).

Thanks!

Thanks in advance to those of you who can help, and please reply on discourse with any issues, concerns, or questions!

13 Aug

Lubuntu 18.04.5 Released!

Thanks to all the hard work from our contributors, we are pleased to announce that Lubuntu 18.04.5 LTS has been released!

What is Lubuntu?

Lubuntu is an official Ubuntu flavor which uses the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment (LXDE). The project’s goal is to provide a lightweight yet functional Linux distribution based on a rock solid Ubuntu base. Lubuntu specifically targets older machines with lower resources, but also runs great on newer hardware. Along with a simple but usable graphical user interface, Lubuntu comes with a wide variety of applications chosen for their small footprint so you can browse, email, chat, play, and be productive.

Where can I download it?

You can download Lubuntu 18.04.5 LTS on our downloads page.

This announcement on our official website (Lubuntu.me, NOT Lubuntu dot net, which is not run by Lubuntu contributors) replaces the traditional release notes we have provided in the past on the wiki. We have left out some notes that are common to all flavors, so we recommend that you read the Ubuntu release notes.

Support lifespan

Lubuntu 18.04.5 LTS, will be supported until April 2021. We are limiting changes to critical fixes and underlying system changes shipped with all other Ubuntu flavors for the 18.04.5 LTS release.

What’s The Difference Between Lubuntu 18.04.4 LTS And This Release?

Lubuntu 18.04.5 is a set of images produced for convenience so that a fresh install of the latest Lubuntu LTS does not require as many updates after install (as Lubuntu continues to release Stable Release Updates and security fixes to make your experience as smooth as possible and to fix any bugs, if you want to help us out with this, see below, we always need more help). If you do system updates regularly, you are already running Lubuntu 18.04.5 LTS, and if you install Lubuntu on a system using a Lubuntu 18.04.4 LTS image or a previous point release and do system updates, that system will also then be running Lubuntu 18.04.5 LTS.

At this time, this will be the last planned 18.04 release for Lubuntu, thus also making it both the last LXDE release as well as the last i386 release.

How do I get support?

You can get support for Lubuntu here.

How do I help?

We always need more help! Feel free to join our development channel (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.

Known Issues

Bug 1890931 – Ubiquity confirmation window partially offscreen – In some circumstances, the partitioning confirmation dialog may be partially off screen. The dialog can be re-positioned and confirmation can be selected to continue the installation.

Did we miss something? Please file a bug and tag it with “lubuntu”. You can find out more about filing bugs at our wiki page.

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.

Thanks to our testers!

Huge thanks to Chris Guiver (guiverc), Leó Kolbeinsson (leoK), Bill (franksmcb) from the Mate team, and others for testing this release.

06 Aug

Lubuntu 20.04.1 LTS Released!

Thanks to all the hard work from our contributors, we are pleased to announce that Lubuntu 20.04.1 LTS has been released!

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.

Support lifespan

Lubuntu 20.04 LTS will be supported until April 2023. 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. We are limiting changes to critical fixes and underlying system changes shipped with all other Ubuntu flavors for the 18.04 LTS release.

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.

Where can I download it?

You can download Lubuntu 20.04.1 LTS on our downloads page.

This announcement on our official website (Lubuntu.me, NOT Lubuntu dot net, which is not run by Lubuntu contributors) replaces the traditional release notes we have provided in the past on the wiki. We have left out some notes that are common to all flavors, so we recommend that you read the Ubuntu release notes.

What’s The Difference Between Lubuntu 20.04 LTS And This Release?

Lubuntu 20.04.1 is a set of images produced for convenience so that a fresh install of the latest Lubuntu LTS does not require as many updates after install (as Lubuntu continues to release Stable Release Updates and security fixes to make your experience as smooth as possible and to fix any bugs, if you want to help us out with this, see below, we always need more help). If you do system updates regularly, you are already running Lubuntu 20.04.1 LTS, and if you install Lubuntu on a system using a Lubuntu 20.04 LTS image and do system updates, that system will also then be running Lubuntu 20.04.1 LTS. A brief list of the bugs fixed between 20.04 and 20.04.1 can be found here

How do I get support?

You can get support for Lubuntu here.

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!

How do I help?

We always need more help! Feel free to join our development channel (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.

Known Issues

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 Calamares is started, 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.

Did we miss something?

Please file a bug and tag it with “lubuntu”. You can find out more about filing bugs at our wiki page.

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.

Contributors

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

Thanks to our testers!

Huge thanks to Chris Guiver (guiverc), and Leó Kolbeinsson (leoK), as well as others for testing this release.

11 Jul

Lubuntu 19.10 End of Life and Current Support Statuses

Lubuntu 19.10 (Eoan Ermine) was released October 17, 2019 and will reach End of Life on Friday, July 17, 2020. This means that after that date there will be no further security updates or bugfixes released. We highly recommend that you update to 20.04 as soon as possible if you are still running 19.10.

After July 17th, the only supported releases of Lubuntu will be 18.04, with LXDE, and 20.04, with LXQt. All other releases of Lubuntu will be considered unsupported, and will no longer receive any further updates from the Lubuntu team.

You can find instructions on how to upgrade your Lubuntu installation here at our manual page.

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. The installation image can be obtained from our downloads page.

05 Apr

Lubuntu 20.04 LTS Beta Released!

Your Lubuntu team has been hard at work, and has now released the beta version of Lubuntu 20.04 LTS. This will be our 18th release of Lubuntu, our fourth LTS release, but is our first LTS with the new LXQt desktop.

Between April 2nd and April 23rd, all efforts will be focused on testing our product before its final release; finding any missed bugs and getting those squashed. These beta images are not intended to be used on a production system. We strongly encourage anyone willing to test the new images to join our development group, our forum, or the new Ubuntu community group that is coordinating testing for all the flavors on IRC or Telegram. For more information on testing Lubuntu please visit our wiki page. We’ll love all the spare time anyone can provide, to help test our upcoming Lubuntu 20.04 LTS release, and make this the best Lubuntu release ever.

Where can I download it?

You can download the Beta images off of our downloads page.

A note about 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. While the wallpapers didn’t make it into this Beta release, we are packaging them up and you can expect to see them in time for the final release.

Thanks to our Contributors!

This release would not be possible without significant contributions. Thank you for taking the time to develop, support, test and promote Lubuntu. We also want to thank those that choose to donate!

12 Feb

Lubuntu 18.04.4 Released!

Thanks to all the hard work from our contributors, we are pleased to announce that Lubuntu 18.04.4 LTS has been released!

What is Lubuntu?

Lubuntu is an official Ubuntu flavor which uses the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment (LXDE). The project’s goal is to provide a lightweight yet functional Linux distribution based on a rock solid Ubuntu base. Lubuntu specifically targets older machines with lower resources, but also runs great on newer hardware. Along with a simple but usable graphical user interface, Lubuntu comes with a wide variety of applications chosen for their small footprint so you can browse, email, chat, play, and be productive.

Where can I download it?

You can download Lubuntu 18.04.4 LTS on our downloads page.

This announcement on our official website (Lubuntu.me, NOT Lubuntu dot net, which is not run by Lubuntu contributors) replaces the traditional release notes we have provided in the past on the wiki. We have left out some notes that are common to all flavors, so we recommend that you read the Ubuntu release notes.

What’s The Difference Between Lubuntu 18.04.3 LTS And This Release?

Lubuntu 18.04.4 is a set of images produced for convenience so that a fresh install of the latest Lubuntu LTS does not require as many updates after install (as Lubuntu continues to release Stable Release Updates and security fixes to make your experience as smooth as possible and to fix any bugs, if you want to help us out with this, see below, we always need more help). If you do system updates regularly, you are already running Lubuntu 18.04.4 LTS, and if you install Lubuntu on a system using a Lubuntu 18.04.3 LTS image or a previous point release and do system updates, that system will also then be running Lubuntu 18.04.4 LTS.

At this time, this will be the last planned 18.04 release for Lubuntu, thus also making it both the last LXDE release as well as the last i386 release.

How do I get support?

You can get support for Lubuntu here.

How do I help?

We always need more help! Feel free to join our development channel (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.

Known Issues

Bug 186192  If there is less free space on the target drive than the USB install media, the installer may attempt to install to the USB drive while it is being used. Due to this we recommend not utilizing the install alongside option unless there is sufficient free space.

Did we miss something? Please file a bug and tag it with “lubuntu”. You can find out more about filing bugs at our wiki page.

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.

Thanks to our testers!

Huge thanks to Chris Guiver (guiverc), Leó Kolbeinsson (leoK), Bill (franksmcb) from the Mate team, and others for testing this release.