Author Archives: Simon Quigley

27 Mar

Lubuntu Plucky Puffin Beta Released!

Thanks to the hard work of our contributors, we are happy to announce the release of Lubuntu's Plucky Beta, which will become Lubuntu 25.04. This is a snapshot of the daily images.

Approximately two months ago, we posted an Alpha-level update. While some information is duplicated below, that contains an accurate, concise technical summary of our improvements this cycle, while this post has a much wider scope.

The elephant in the room

For those not closely following the latest developments from Ubuntu's Discourse instance and/or the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, there is an elephant in the room.

Earlier this year, the Open Source community at large mourned the substantial loss of thought leader and technical expert Steve Langasek. This is still a sensitive topic for many people; Steve was not only an excellent and highly influential technical leader, manager, and advisor, he was a friend to many of us. Steve deserves our most sincere gratitude and respect, and our hearts go out to his family and loved ones.

This loss has also presented great logistical challenges for the wider Ubuntu community. Steve was not only a hard-working engineer, he was extremely efficient, and had an excellent eye for inconsistencies. The unrelenting chasm in our processes and everyday efforts presented by this challenge has caused this cycle to be more difficult on us all.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States of America, was in office from 1933 to 1945. Among his many accomplishments, he is credited for being a thought leader during one of the US' most tumultuous and turbulent eras, the Great Depression and WWII. A substantial portion of his speeches contain timeless quotes and values, which we can draw wisdom and inspiration from:

I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our Nation impels. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, March 4th, 1933, Inaugural Address

In the Ubuntu Code of Conduct, we have several similar, contemporary reminders which echo a similar sentiment:

The poorest decision of all is no decision: clarity of direction has value in itself. Sometimes all the data are not available, or consensus is elusive. A decision must still be made. There is no guarantee of a perfect decision every time – we prefer to err, learn, and err less in future than to postpone action indefinitely.
A leader’s foremost goal is the success of the team.
Leadership occasionally requires bold decisions that will not be widely understood, consensual or popular. We value the courage to take such decisions, because they enable the project as a whole to move forward faster than we could if we required complete consensus. Nevertheless, boldness demands considerateness; take bold decisions, but do so mindful of the challenges they present for others, and work to soften the impact of those decisions on them. Communicating changes and their reasoning clearly and early on is as important as the implementation of the change itself.

Be bold. Be courageous.

…but, be considerate too, please.

Qt 6.8.3, and delivering an excellent Qt stack

We are deeply committed to ensuring the Qt offering in Ubuntu and Debian is the best it can be. We actively participate in packaging and bugfixing for Qt packaging, and care about the state of Qt in the archives. We have an excellent opportunity this cycle to provide a Qt stack that is more stable than past releases.

The release schedules for Qt 6.8, Qt 6.9, and Qt 6.10 align extremely well with Ubuntu's, and we would like to reiterate our great appreciation for the Qt project, both for your considerateness (whether intentional or not) and your excellent work.

What does this mean for the end user? The desktop environment and vast majority of applications in Lubuntu, Kubuntu, Ubuntu Studio, Ubuntu Kylin, and the installer for Ubuntu Unity all use Qt as the primary user interface toolkit. We even collaborate with the Lomiri project to ensure they are kept in the loop.

As tracked in this Launchpad bug, we will be delivering Qt 6.8.3 to users over the course of the next week or less. This effort reinforces our commitment to providing a stable, robust, and reliable Qt 6 stack in Ubuntu.

X/Twitter, and addressing our silence

For those who have not been following world news, someone controversial bought Twitter. Other projects are taking one stance or another, we will not have an opinion on this matter as a project, and that is final. As a general rule, we want to be on all platforms where our users are, regardless of its ownership and rules. You can find a link to our official platforms here.

Historically, we have pushed people towards following @LubuntuOfficial on X because that is where the latest updates have been posted. Recently, we've become locked out of the account entirely.

Our concern with X is not social, it is technical. While we have the password on the Lubuntu Council level, it requires two-factor authentication. The email on the account is valid, but X's mail servers are far too strict, and despite a handful of attempts, refuses to send an email to our account on file.

To put it simply: no, we are not inactive on X because we are taking a stance one way or another. We're simply locked out. If anyone reading this has a contact for the X team so we can get this resolved quickly, please do encourage them to personally DM Simon Quigley on X. We have already exhausted all available public routes and they keep redirecting us and denying us on technicalities due to which specific Lubuntu Member filed the request.

We hope this can be sorted out soon, peacefully.

The installer is noticeably faster

As covered extensively in the Lubuntu Alpha notes linked at the top of this post, we have made significant performance improvements to the speed of Calamares-based installs in Ubuntu, specifically Lubuntu, Kubuntu, and Ubuntu Unity.

Not much has changed between those notes and today, but we have noticed a few rough edges related to the backend rewrite:

  • When selecting the Virtual Machine Manager from the Customize menu, it silently fails to install virt-manager. You can work around this by manually installing the virt-manager package at first boot.
  • We need to re-visit and re-work OEM installs, likely to work with stacked squashfses. We released the Beta without this fix due to the assumption that a very low amount of users will be testing OEM on a non-LTS Beta release.

Both of these issues block the release of Lubuntu 25.04, and are expected to be fixed shortly, likely around the same time Qt 6.8.3 lands.

While this does not apply to us directly, we would also like to compliment the team working on the Ubuntu Desktop Installer, which the other flavors use. This is also noticeably faster this cycle.

You, yes you, join our community!

Are you looking for a better way to be well-connected with the Lubuntu community? Do you want to discuss any common issues with other users, get the latest Lubuntu updates, or learn more about us and our community? The best place to do that is Discourse, anyone is welcome to join or start discussions in that space.

If you are looking for something slightly less formal, yet more current, please consider joining our Discussion channel on Matrix. It is generally a relaxed channel where you can share common ideas about Lubuntu with like-minded users.

As a secondary option, we also semi-regularly browse our subreddit, which has its own great set of content and discussions. In practice, this is mostly support.

If this sounds exciting to you, create a post in the Lubuntu space, or reply to this post on Discourse.

I want to get more involved with testing and reporting bugs, how?

The best way for people to help with testing is by reporting results on the ISO QA tracker. These are extensive tests which cover most aspects we typically check before release.

We would like to take this opportunity to highlight the leaderboard. Assuming every test receives its due diligence, it's a great way to make a noticeable impact in the community, and a fun way to gamify what could ordinarily be arduous.

You can find Lubuntu-specific information on reporting bugs here, or for all of Ubuntu here.

Testers are also encouraged to join us in Lubuntu Development and Ubuntu Flavors on Matrix to collaborate in real time.

Wallpaper

We have a brand new, beautiful wallpaper as the default in Lubuntu Plucky, which you can see on our Discourse version of this post

Special thanks to Aaron Rainbolt for coordinating this.

Thanks!

None of this would have been possible without our passionate team of contributors. Thank you very much to our Lubuntu Members, in no particular order:

Special thanks to these folks who have assisted in making this Beta release great:

Extra Credit

Want to contribute to Ubuntu? Start here.

04 Feb

Lubuntu Plucky Puffin Alpha Notes

Lubuntu Plucky Puffin is the current development branch of Lubuntu, which will become 25.04. Since the release of 24.10, we have been hard at work polishing the experience and fixing bugs in the upcoming release.

Below, we detail some of the changes you can look forward to in 25.04.

Two Minute Minimal Install

When installing Lubuntu, you may notice that three options are present on the Customize screen: Full, Normal, and Minimal. These allow for different applications to be installed based on the user’s needs. While these options have not changed, the backend has.

Traditionally, in a very basic sense, Lubuntu installations are done by mounting a squashfs file, then using rsync to copy it onto a partition. In layman’s terms, a Lubuntu installation USB drive is simply a wrapper around a zip file, which is then installed onto your hard drive.

When selecting the Minimal option, the squashfs is copied onto the filesystem, but many packages are removed afterwards via a long apt remove or apt purge command. This proves to be inefficient, making minimal installations take longer than normal installations. Instead, in coordination with the Ubuntu Foundations Team, we now have stacked squashfses.

This means that we can limit our installations only to the layer we need. Here is a visual representation of this:

In minimal installations, instead of installing the Standard layer and removing a list of packages, we now only have to install the Minimal layer. In our preliminary testing, the fastest installation time was approximately 90 seconds on real hardware, and the slowest time was approximately three minutes within a virtual machine. Therefore, two minutes is an estimation, not a guarantee. If someone would like to conduct a wider study, we welcome it.

Faster Snap Installation

While the Minimal option does not include snapd, in 24.04, we added support for installing snaps during system installation in the Full or Normal modes. This required some glue to ensure the installation of snaps is both standards-compliant and robust.

To understand the progress we made in this area, let’s first lay out how it currently works on 24.04 and 24.10.

Let’s say the ISO (more precisely, the Standard layer) represents the snaps on the left, and the right represents the latest revisions in the Snap Store:

Each target snap (hello, foo, bar, and baz) is fully downloaded from the Snap Store. Meaning, the download size is approximately 171 MB. Additionally, during the download itself, there is little indication of progress.

The Snap Store does support delta downloads for a given snap. This means, if snap foo with revision 100 has a full download size of 100 MB, and we need to update to foo revision 105 which has a full download size of 105 MB, we can instead download the difference between those two snap revisions. The size of the delta can vary, and in this case, will not always be 5 MB.

This means the downloads turn into something like this:

It results in a download of 69 MB instead of 171 MB, which saves network bandwidth, storage bandwidth, and storage space.

Additionally, all pre-installed snaps are updated using delta downloads. The update process is typically done after first boot; previously, the live ISO could be running the latest snap revisions while the freshly installed instance would still have the snap revisions as shipped on the live ISO. This has changed in Plucky.

Qt 6 Everywhere

We are deeply committed to ensuring the Qt offering in Ubuntu and Debian is the best it can be. We actively participate in packaging and bugfixing for Qt packaging, and care about the state of Qt in the archives.

That being said, it is time to deprecate Qt 5. We are actively working to port as many applications as possible to Qt 6, in time for the ambitious goal of removing Qt 5 entirely before the release of 26.04 LTS. You will notice this general trend across Lubuntu packages.

We would appreciate it if VLC could release a 4.0 beta (or final release, ideally) before the 26.04 LTS feature freeze. This would certainly expedite the process of porting the archive to Qt 6. We are participating in active investigations regarding other popular Qt 5 applications and whether they have a port in progress.

We are also deeply grateful that the Qt 6 release cycles seem to align with the Ubuntu release cycles, as seen in the release schedules for Qt 6.8 and Qt 6.9. We appreciate Qt upstream and their consistency.

Therefore, Ubuntu Plucky is expected to ship with Qt 6.8.3. At the time of writing, we are currently in the process of transitioning from 6.8.1 to 6.8.2. We expect Ubuntu Q (what will become 25.10) to ship with the Qt 6.9 series, and Debian Trixie will (tentatively) release with Qt 6.8.2.

Moving to Dracut

Lubuntu is currently the only flavor which has moved from initramfs-tools to Dracut by default on fresh installs (not the live ISO). We are actively participating in the call to try out Dracut, and would encourage you to report your findings there.

EDIT: Soon after these notes were published, the draft specification was formalized. If you run into any issues, let us know on Matrix or by filing a bug against Dracut in Ubuntu.

We have also sent code to Calamares for more enhanced Dracut support here.

It is entirely possible this change will be reverted prior to the release of 26.04 LTS, if it proves to not be the right fit. Please let us know if you identify any showstoppers.

Where’d Wayland Go?

We originally targeted a full move to Wayland for the 24.10 release (and previously, before the 20.10 release). Both of these attempts were slightly too ambitious, this time for different reasons.

This time is purely technical; we need a new version of Mir in Debian (ideally before Trixie freezes), which will allow us to upload Miriway and switch Lubuntu sessions over.

We are also actively interested in upstream work which will enable Miriway to work well under LXQt. Once the aforementioned issues are solved, getting this merged will be the next step.

Don’t worry, we’re still committed to moving and testing it extensively prior to the release of 26.04 LTS.

What about LXQt?

Lubuntu Plucky currently has LXQt 2.1 with the latest point releases at the time of writing. We will continue to track LXQt upstream releases until Feature Freeze, then cherry-pick bugfixes or include bugfix point releases up until Plucky’s final release as appropriate.

It is entirely possible that we will provide backports for 24.10. Backports to 24.04 may take additional time, depending on Wayland progress.

Into the Matrix

Lubuntu is now fully on Matrix. See our links page to join us.

Additionally, Ubuntu Development discussion has now moved to Matrix. We also have the Ubuntu Qt channel for Qt transition status, development conversation, and more, and the Ubuntu Flavors channel for general discussion and chatter around flavors and cross-flavor communication.

Discourse Transition

We love our Discourse instance, but not maintaining it. We would have jumped ship to the Ubuntu Discourse long ago. Canonical has full time sysadmins, so we don’t need to be. But we kept serving up our own, even when uptime dropped, because support requests were not allowed. That policy has since been revoked, so we’ve carved out a space in the Support & Help category, as well as in the Flavors category.

Our new home will be much like the old one. You should see the same great faces helping out in much the same way. I’m sure there will be some new ones. The organization will be a bit different, but that should improve soon with planned changes.

More to come

These are simply our alpha notes, more to come! Join us on Matrix if you’d like to learn more, or help out.

25 Apr

Lubuntu 24.04 LTS Released!

Thanks to the hard work from our contributors, Lubuntu 24.04 LTS has been released. With the codename Noble Numbat, Lubuntu 24.04 is the 26th release of Lubuntu, the 12th release of Lubuntu with LXQt as the default desktop environment.

Download and Support Lifespan

With Lubuntu 24.04 being a long-term support interim release, it will follow the standard LTS support period of three years, and will be supported until April 2027.

You can download Lubuntu 24.04 here. If you would like to upgrade your existing 23.10 installation, please visit our manual page describing the process. Common Ubuntu instructions can be found here.

New in 24.04

Try or Install Screen

Try or Install Screen

Lubuntu now ships an attractive "installer prompt", which provides a simple, intuitive, and beautiful environment from which to connect to the Internet, set your desired language, and choose to Try or Install Lubuntu. If you select a different language and choose to Try Lubuntu, the live session will automatically be updated for that language.

System Installer

Customize Menu

Customize Menu

Traditionally, installing Lubuntu only provides a regular installation mode (a single option for installs). This changes with Lubuntu 24.04, where you can now pick between Normal, Full, and Minimal. A Normal installation gives you a traditional Lubuntu experience. The Minimal mode ships with just the desktop environment and essential components (no web browser or snapd). A Full installation is the same as Normal, but comes with several recommended third-party apps:

  • Virtual Machine Manager
  • Element
  • Thunderbird
  • Krita

In addition, you can choose to download and install updates during the installation procedure rather than having to install them afterwards. This can help speed up the installation process and get you up-and-running quicker.

OEM Installation Mode

OEM Installation Mode

Since our transition to LXQt over five years ago, we've been notably missing one very useful feature – an OEM installation mode. In the past, it was possible to install and configure Lubuntu on a system, then prepare it for shipping to an end-user. This is useful for hardware manufacturers or people giving a computer to someone else, but is not functionality we retained.

We are pleased to report that the OEM installer has made a comeback in Lubuntu 24.04.

If you're looking to sell, provision, or donate hardware with Lubuntu preinstalled, the OEM installation mode is meant for you. OEM installation is exactly the same as normal installation, except for the user account created at install time is a temporary OEM user rather than a permanent user. After installation, you can:

  • log in
  • install or remove software
  • run tests
  • configure settings
  • etc.

Once the system is configured properly, you can activate the "Prepare for shipping to end user" icon on the desktop, confirm that you are finished configuring the system, shut the computer down, and then send it to its intended destination. When the user receives it and powers it on, they will be shown a first-boot setup screen allowing them to configure their own user account.

You can activate OEM installation mode by selecting "OEM install (for manufacturers)" in the ISO boot menu. Alternatively, you can boot the ISO normally, click Try Lubuntu, and then launch the OEM installer from the Application Menu > System > Install Lubuntu 24.04 LTS (OEM mode).

Applications and Utilities

It's not often that we add new utilities to Lubuntu, but this cycle we added several new applications to our default install, providing several new and powerful features we think you'll enjoy using.

Bluetooth Management

We now ship Blueman as our Bluetooth manager. This provides a convenient system tray icon for managing bluetooth devices. If your system is Bluetooth-enabled, a status icon will automatically appear in the toolbar.

SDDM Configuration Editor

Have you always wanted to configure the login screen? Good news, you now can! The SDDM configuration editor allows you to modify the login screen settings, changing the theme used, adjusting the reboot and shutdown commands used, and much more.

Software Updater

Our previous software update installer has been replaced by a new-and-improved utility, "Lubuntu Update". The UI has been substantially revamped, update notifications have been integrated into the system better, and you can now manually check for updates and install them whenever you want.

Redshift

If you are one of the many users that benefit from having a night color mode on your system, you'll be happy to hear that Lubuntu now ships a night color feature via Redshift-Qt. You can enable it by running Redshift from the application menu.

Picom Configuration Utility

Lubuntu is the lightest official Ubuntu flavor. That is by design – we try to keep things small, sleek, and clean, rather than big, heavy, and fancy. This commitment to a lightweight experience is most evident in our lack of fancy desktop effects.

What if you actually want some fancy desktop effects?

With the Picom Configuration utility, you can now easily enable window transparency, titlebar transparency, shadows, and fade-in/fade-out effects on your desktop, and more. Note that changes made in this utility will require you to log out and log back in before they take effect.

Artwork

SDDM greeter background

Thanks to the efforts of our team and the work of other open-source artists and designers, we have significantly refreshed the artwork in Lubuntu 24.04:

  • The wallpaper and login screen have been refreshed with images designed specifically for Lubuntu 24.04.
  • The Lubuntu Manual icon has been refreshed.
  • For those who like to customize their desktop, you can install the lxqt-themes-extra package to get two new LXQt themes (win-eleven-dark and sombre-et-rond).

Known Bugs

Installer

  • Calamares installer lacks a way to install proprietary drivers: Bug #1825286
  • lubuntu/xubuntu reinstall (& install) on dual boot system, grub does appear & offer OS choice: Bug #2060624
  • Calamares automatically creates swapfile with manual partitioning without any warning: Bug #2062060
  • missing option to erase and use the whole drive: Bug #2059907
  • Calamares fails to install on logical volume on several conditions when using Manual Partitioning: Bug #2061123

LXQt

  • changing monitor configuration & on next login, only one monitor is fully usable to LXQt: Bug #2013074
  • Keyboard layout is ignored: Bug #2047295
  • The network manager tray application silently fails on incorrect passwords: Bug #1865949

Common Release Notes

Please also check the Ubuntu Release Notes for more common issues and bugs affecting all 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:

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. New features and bugfixes in core Ubuntu components can be found here.

Lubuntu Manual

The Lubuntu Team has been hard at work in polishing the Lubuntu Manual to make it easy for new and experienced users alike to use their system more productively. The manual 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! Versions of the Lubuntu Manual:

Need help quickly? The Lubuntu Manual can be accessed via the “Lubuntu Manual” desktop icon.

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. More information about contributing can be found here. 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!

Global Team

The Lubuntu Global Team has been created to foster communities in non-English languages and locales. An up-to-date list of our communities 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.

11 Apr

Lubuntu Noble Beta Released!

We are happy to announce the Beta release for Lubuntu Noble (what will become 24.04 LTS)!

What makes this cycle unique?

Lubuntu is a lightweight flavor of Ubuntu, based on LXQt and built for you. As an official flavor, we benefit from Canonical’s infrastructure and assistance, in addition to the support and enthusiasm from the wider Ubuntu community. We are thankful for the opportunity to call ourselves an Ubuntu flavor; when there are common struggles, we step up to help. When discussions arise that affect the entire ecosystem, we lend a voice. This cycle was no different in that respect, but different in many others.

This started with the normal transitions that occur during the beginning of every cycle, a list of which can be found on the release schedule for Noble. These transitions take time; we (as Ubuntu) perform rigorous testing to ensure these packages are ready before publishing them for general availability. Several feature uploads became stuck, but we were looking forward to the opportunity to test after Feature Freeze.

We then faced two major transitions following Feature Freeze, the first of which was time_t. This allows for 32-bit devices to work past 2038. To learn more about the 2038 problem, visit this site. Immediately following this transition, the xz-utils backdoor was found. We would like to thank the Canonical and community developers involved in these transitions for their work around the clock to get everyone in the ecosystem to a releaseable state.

What does this mean for Lubuntu?

We need extra help from our community to test this release. If you have a few spare hours (or even minutes), please do help us test. If something is not working, please feel free to check the Beta tracking document, and file a bug if it is not otherwise reported.

If you are unsure how to file a bug report but just want to make the issue known, that is okay, please either make a post on our Discourse instance or join our Development channel on Matrix. Any help is appreciated, and your one post or message will make a difference for many users.

What new features made it?

For much more information, please see the Alpha status post.

Since then, we have made the tough decision to not include the following in the final release:

  • Power management UX.
  • Active Directory support in Calamares before release; that pull request has been submitted upstream.

That being said, a redesigned Customize menu has made it, in addition to other bugfixes and features listed in the Alpha announcement.

Our final release announcement will have many more details, stay tuned!

Where do I download it?

From our downloads page, here.

09 Dec

Noble Numbat: The Next Generation of Lubuntu

The Lubuntu Team has been hard at work already this development cycle polishing the Lubuntu desktop in time for our upcoming Long-Term Support release, 24.04 (codenamed Noble Numbat). We have pioneered groundbreaking features and achieved remarkable stability in crucial components. These enhancements are not just technical milestones; they're transformative changes you'll experience when you install the next version of Lubuntu.

To get the latest Lubuntu developments at your fingertips, follow us on X or Mastodon.

Without further ado, we are excited to announce the Lubuntu 24.04 LTS Alpha featureset.

Lubuntu's Installer

Why We're Sticking With Calamares

One common query we often encounter is: Why does Lubuntu use Calamares? This question is best understood with a bit of historical perspective, which we hope will bring clarity on the decisions and developments that led to our current choice.

In the turbulent 18.10 cycle, Lubuntu swiftly transitioned from LXDE to LXQt, shifting our primary desktop environment. With this change, we've moved away from supporting LXDE and, consequently, from a primarily GTK-based application stack. The rationale is simple: a desktop environment that uniformly utilizes either Qt-based or GTK-based applications is more resource-efficient than one combining both.

During this process, we discovered that Ubiquity, Ubuntu's existing desktop installer, has two frontends: a KDE frontend, and a GTK frontend. The KDE frontend was obviously written with KDE in mind, and contained a significant amount of technical debt. Resolving this technical debt (given that the Ubuntu Installer Team only put(s) active effort towards the GTK frontend) would have pushed our transition to LXQt out further, which would have resulted in increased instability for 20.04 LTS.

Instead of taking this route, we decided to do what no other flavor had done before us: use Calamares. To this day, Calamares is exponentially faster than Ubiquity, both in progressing through the pages and doing the install itself. We have received requests for items such as a Minimal Install option in Calamares, and other options specific to Ubiquity. We have jumped over many hurdles this cycle, and we are proud to say that Calamares is essentially at feature-parity with Ubiquity.

The Ubuntu Desktop Team has recently been working on the new Ubuntu Desktop Installer. This tool, developed with Flutter and distributed as a snap, is intended to provide a frontend interface for Subiquity, which is the new installer for Ubuntu Server. They are attempting to replace Ubiquity, which is a noble mission.

After thorough evaluation of the new installer, the decision was made not to adopt it for our use. We found that Calamares consistently and continously outperforms the new installer in UI page performance and installation speed, and aligns more closely with our existing theming. Furthermore, the requirement for each flavor to create a separate snap for theming purposes presents a less than optimal solution. Excluding one specific application, our stance is in favor of using Qt applications over Flutter applications.

Other flavors are more than welcome to adopt Calamares. After all, it is already used by quite a few other distributions, and we would be happy to help.

What's new this cycle?

Lubuntu's installer now has a Customize menu:

From the Lubuntu installer, you can now select one of three options:

  • Minimal Installation: barebones install without snapd
  • Normal Installation: regular application set, what you already know and love
  • Full Installation: the Normal Installation, but with Element, Thunderbird, Krita, and Virtual Machine Manager installed.

In terms of the checkboxes, Ubiquity has tricky wording. You may notice it is almost identical: the difference is, this checkbox both downloads and installs updates at the end. If you are installing with a reliable Internet connection, this is always recommended.

The third-party software is what you would expect: the restricted extras addons.

We also have a new desktop icon for Calamares:

And we've done some work to clean up theming, which will be landing over the next week or so.

Installer Prompt

Lubuntu's Try or Install feature has been missing since 18.04, but now it's back!

Introducing the Lubuntu ISO's "First Boot" screen:

When you select a Wi-Fi network (the list automatically updates if you're walking around!) and click Connect, you will be prompted for your password:

If your password is too short or too long, it will not let you Connect. If you get the password wrong, it will let you retry.

Also, when selecting your language and clicking Confirm, the language both on your live session and your installed session will be set appropriately.

Ubuntu Desktop does not currently have this feature.

If you have an Internet connection, or if your language is one of the top five in the world, this will also download GNOME, KDE, and LibreOffice language packs. A non-native English speaker should never have to read English to use Lubuntu, that's our goal. It doesn't add much disk space either (less than 20 MB per language.)

Bluetooth Management

We have lacked a GUI for Bluetooth in Lubuntu for a long time. This is now fixed. If you search for "Bluetooth Manager" in the LXQt menu, you can now seamlessly configure your bluetooth devices:

The only downside to this is, it's GTK-based. Before the release of 26.04 LTS, we plan to rewrite this in Qt with full feature parity.

SDDM Configuration Editor

Want a way to configure the login screen on Lubuntu, but don't want to configure it the hard way? Try SDDM Configuration Editor from the LXQt menu:

You can change your theme, preview a new one, and even change your default session!

Redshift: Dim the screen at night

By launching Redshift from the menu, a blue light filter activates, making the screen easier to view at night. There is no graphical way to configure it yet, but there is a right-click menu in the panel for temporarily suspending it:

Lubuntu Manual Icon

We've refreshed the icon for the Lubuntu Manual:

New (Optional) Themes

We recently announced several new themes available in Lubuntu by default:

A Windows Eleven-inspired theme

And sombre-et-rond, a modern dark theme for LXQt:

All images come directly from the upstream author.

We are looking for more themes to include as options. If you find any, or know of any themes we should get rid of, please let us know.

Power Management UX (Work in Progress)

We are simplifying and refining the user experience around these messages:

Our end goal is to only provide the information that is actually useful. If you start a virtual machine, it should not warn you about not having a battery.

Updated Battery Icon

Instead of the default icon having little precision about the battery percentage (low/medium/high), we changed it to indicate the percentage at all times.

24.10 and Beyond: Wayland and Qt 6

Our goal is to completely switch Lubuntu to Wayland and Qt 6 by the release of 24.10. This may seem like a large task, but LXQt has been working on Wayland support upstream for some time now, and the porting process from Qt 5 to Qt 6 is designed to be incredibly simple. That being said, you can expect 24.10 to be slightly rough around the edges. We expect these transitions to be fairly seamless compared to past ones, with the end goal being complete feature parity, but there are always unknowns when making significant shifts like this. It will be swift, and early 24.10 Alpha ISOs may be unusable.

Wayland has been default in Ubuntu Desktop since 22.04 for most systems, and Red Hat will be removing support for X11 entirely in its next release. That being said, unless the Ubuntu Archive Administrators move to remove X11 entirely before this point, we will be supporting the X session as an opt-in choice through 26.04 LTS, at minimum. At this point, we will evaluate any remaining issues, and make a followup decision.

We have one primary objective to meet before 26.04 LTS: make it so seamless that the user does not have to worry about it. This may mean providing an optional Wayland session for 24.04 LTS, just to "get the ball rolling," but we are unsure exactly what this looks like yet. It will be optional for 24.04 LTS but default for 24.10.

But wait, there's more…

There are several other features we are working to include in time for this release; that being said, it is a Long-Term Support release, so we will only be shipping features we are sure we can support. If you would like to make a suggestion, please join us.

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. 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,” get involved!

If you want to contribute to Lubuntu but do not feel you have the time or skills, consider donating to Lubuntu. Another great method to get involved is bug reporting. If you notice an issue, please file a bug. 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.

Lubuntu in the Linux Media

More details about 24.04 (and recent, relevant Lubuntu news) can be found in the links below, where our Release Manager answers questions about what's coming next:

16 Nov

Lubuntu 23.10 Backports PPA Released with LXQt 1.4

When users first download Lubuntu, they are presented with two options:

  • Install the latest Long-Term Support release, providing them with a rock-solid and stable base (we assume most users choose this option).
  • Install the latest interim release, providing the latest base with the latest LXQt release.

As we have mentioned in previous announcements, Kubuntu and KDE Neon created the idea of a "Backports PPA." This PPA (or repository, in the case of KDE Neon), exists to layer stable feature updates on top of the rock-solid Ubuntu core you know and love. We were inspired by this idea, and decided to create the Lubuntu Backports repository.

Our intention has originally only been to release these updates for Long-Term Support users. However, we have received an overwhelming amount of feedback from users and corporate partners alike, asking us to release these updates for 23.10. Therefore, we are making an exception by creating this additional repository.

This provides a fourth option for users: install 23.10, enable Backports, and get the latest-and-greatest LXQt, without exposing yourself to the churn of a usual development release cycle (which you can also download, if you'd like to help us out) and its instability. That being said, 23.10's Backports are much less tested. Proceed with appropriate caution.

You can enable this repository via the command line, using the following command:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lubuntu-dev/backports-mantic

Then, you can run Apply Full Upgrade from the LXQt menu. (It will take us a few days to get everything fully migrated over, so be patient if you don't immediately receive these updates.)

PLEASE NOTE: After 24.04 LTS is released, this PPA will be DELETED. It WILL cause apt error messages, halting the process before completion, when you update your system after that point. Please, upgrade to 24.04 LTS when it's released in April 2024, so you do not experience these issues. Also, this PPA is NOT compatible with the 22.04 Backports PPA. Upgrades from 22.04 LTS Backports to 23.10 in general are NOT supported, that does not change with this PPA.

It's a bad idea to enable the Staging repositories if you come across them. Just don't do it, unless you're planning on helping.

14 Nov

LXQt 1.4, Arriving at a Lubuntu Backports PPA Near You

The Lubuntu Team is happy to announce that the Lubuntu Backports PPA with LXQt 1.4 is now available for general use. You can find details on enabling it below.

What is the Lubuntu Backports PPA?

Our Backports PPA is modeled after Kubuntu's. It exists to provide the latest LXQt desktop stack on top of a stable Ubuntu base. (The concept could also be considered similar to KDE Neon.) As time goes on, our development focus will continue to be on new releases, and we plan on landing and testing changes there prior to pushing them to Backports. That being said, this is a perfect middle ground between stability and new features that users of all experience levels will be able to enjoy.

What's new in this release of LXQt?

LXQt About in 1.4

lxqt-menu-data has been created to handle menu files across LXQt. You may experience some slight changes in menu functionality:

Updated menu in LXQt 1.4

Updated file manager settings in LXQt 1.4

You can now specify the terminal to use when selecting Open In Terminal from the context menu.

New Audible Bell option in QTerminal

At last, QTerminal supports an audible bell. We've left this disabled by default, for the time being.

Preliminary support has been added for color profiles in LXImage (Qt).

Many other bugfixes and small changes have been included. Let us know if you run into any issues. More information on this LXQt release can be found here, and on the LXQt website.

Is this a separate edition of Lubuntu?

Nope, this is still the same Lubuntu you know and love, you're just getting new features available on the regular releases earlier than everyone else on the LTS release. You're jumping on an in-between track.

Okay, so how do I enable it?

The Backports PPA is available here. You can add the PPA using the following command: $ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lubuntu-dev/backports Please note that upgrades from 22.04 to an interim release are NOT supported once Backports is enabled. Please let us know if anything is off.

You, yes you, can help

If you have some time, please consider joining us. If you would like to help us continue the development of the project long-term, you can donate to the Lubuntu project here.

22 Sep

Lubuntu 23.10 Released!

Thanks to all the hard work from our contributors, Lubuntu 23.10 has been released. With the codename Mantic Minotaur, Lubuntu 23.10 is the 25th release of Lubuntu, the 11th release of Lubuntu with LXQt as the default desktop environment.

Support lifespan

With Lubuntu 23.10 being an interim release, it will follow the standard non-LTS support period of nine months; this means that Lubuntu 23.10 will be supported until July 2024. Our development focus going forward will be on Lubuntu 24.04 LTS and future releases, so only critical bugfixes and security updates will be provided.

If you choose to use Lubuntu 23.10, we STRONGLY recommend upgrading to 24.04 LTS soon after it is released, but before Lubuntu 23.10 hits end of life. If this is not suitable for you, but you still enjoy new features on a regular basis, we would recommend staying on Lubuntu 22.04 LTS with Lubuntu’s Backports enabled.

We are in the process of landing updates to Lubuntu Update Notifier for all currently-supported stable releases to add a graphical path to version upgrades.

Installation

You can download Lubuntu 23.10 here. If you would like to upgrade your existing 23.04 installation, please visit our manual page describing the process. Common Ubuntu instructions can be found here.

Known Issues and Notable Changes

System Installer

We are once again utilizing Calamares 3.3 Alpha 2 in Lubuntu 23.10, as it has proven to be highly reliable since its initial use in Lubuntu 22.10.

During testing, we did note that if you attempt to create an encrypted installation without a passphrase, Lubuntu will be installed unencrypted. This is unlikely to be a problem for most users as disk encryption requires a passphrase for it to be effective. More information can be found here.

Artwork

We have a new wallpaper (which is also used as at the login screen), created one of our Lubuntu Members; Walter Lapchynski, with a bit of assistance from Ubuntu Studio’s Erich Eickmeyer. Thanks to both Walter and Erich.

Common Release Notes

Please also check the Ubuntu Release Notes for more common issues and bugs affecting all 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:

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. New features and bugfixes in core Ubuntu components can be found here.

Lubuntu Manual

The Lubuntu Team has been hard at work in polishing the Lubuntu Manual to make it easy for new and experienced users alike to use their system more productively. The manual 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!

Versions of the Lubuntu Manual:

While the documentation for previous releases will be kept in the Git repository, they will not be published anywhere.

Need help quickly? The Lubuntu Manual can be accessed via the “Lubuntu Manual” desktop icon.

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. More information about contributing can be found here.

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!

We would also like to thank the following past members for their dedication to the project. Without you, Lubuntu would not be what it is today. Thank you!

Global Team

The Lubuntu Global Team has been created to foster communities in non-English languages and locales. An up-to-date list of our communities 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.

11 Aug

Lubuntu 22.04 Backports PPA Released With LXQt 1.3

The Lubuntu Team is happy to announce that the Lubuntu Backports PPA with LXQt 1.3 is now available for general use. You can find details on enabling it below.

What is the Lubuntu Backports PPA?

Our Backports PPA is modeled after Kubuntu’s. It exists to provide the latest LXQt desktop stack on top of a stable Ubuntu base. (The concept could also be considered similar to KDE Neon.)

As time goes on, our development focus will continue to be on new releases, and we plan on landing and testing changes there prior to pushing them to Backports. That being said, this is a perfect middle ground between stability and new features that users of all experience levels will be able to enjoy.

Is this a separate edition of Lubuntu?

Nope, this is still the same Lubuntu you know and love, you’re just getting new features available on the regular releases earlier than everyone else on the LTS release. You’re jumping on an in-between track.

Okay, so how do I enable it?

The Backports PPA is available here. You can add the PPA using the following command:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lubuntu-dev/backports

Please note that upgrades from 22.04 to 22.10 or 23.04 are NOT supported once Backports is enabled. This is an issue we are actively working on.

Please let us know (Matrix preferred) if anything is off. One thing to note, IF YOU ENABLED THE BACKPORTS STAGING PPA AS PART OF THE CALL FOR TESTING, PLEASE DISABLE IT.

You, yes you, can help

If you have some time, please consider joining us. If you would like to help us continue the development of the project long-term, you can donate to the Lubuntu project here.

30 Mar

Lubuntu 23.04 Beta Released!

Thanks to all the hard work from our contributors, Lubuntu 23.04 Beta has been released. With the codename Lunar Lobster, Lubuntu 23.04 will be the 24th release of Lubuntu, the tenth release of Lubuntu with LXQt as the default desktop environment.

Support lifespan

With 23.04 being an interim release, it will follow the standard non-LTS support period of nine months, which means 23.04 will be supported until January 2024. Please note that 23.04 is still in Beta, and is not officially supported until its scheduled release on April 20, 2023.

You can download 23.04 Beta here. If you would like to upgrade your existing 22.04 LTS or 22.10 installation, please visit our manual page describing the process. Common Ubuntu instructions can be found here.

Known Issues and Notable Changes

LXQt

LXQt 1.2 is now shipped by default. More information on its initial and point releases can be found here: 1.2.0 | 1.2.1

System Installer and Potential Instability

Lubuntu uses the Calamares system installer in place of the Ubiquity installer that most other flavors use. While we are ensuring 22.04 LTS’ Calamares follows the upstream LTS cycle, we decided to get ahead of the curve by shipping Calamares 3.3 Alpha 2 in 23.04.

Here are the factors that went into this decision:

Additionally, you may notice that the main Ubuntu Desktop does not ship with Ubiquity this cycle. Instead, it ships with a new snap-based Ubuntu Desktop Installer. While flavors are free to switch to the new installer, Lubuntu is still evaluating this decision (preliminary performance, usability, and design assessments continue to show Calamares as the clear leader between the two choices).

Firefox, and the move to snap

An ongoing concern within the Ubuntu and Lubuntu communities has been the increased startup times for the Firefox web browser due to using the Snap package format instead of the traditional Debian-based package format used for the rest of the system. After careful consideration, taking into account the fast-paced technical improvements in modern web technology, the work required to keep Lubuntu users secure after the release, and Canonical’s commitment to Firefox as the default web browser for Ubuntu, we made the decision to keep this as-is.

That being said, the existing issues to watch out for include:

  • Snaps ship with confinement enabled by default, in order to properly isolate the application from the rest of the system. While this eases the update process, if you need to pass through a device to Firefox (such as a smartcard), some manual work will be required.

We recommend consulting the Snapcraft Forums with any issues related to Snaps in general. More information on the Firefox snap specifically can be found here.

Common Release Notes

Please also check the Ubuntu Release Notes for more common issues and bugs affecting all 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:

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. New features and bugfixes in core Ubuntu components can be found here.

Lubuntu Manual

The Lubuntu Team has been hard at work in polishing the Lubuntu Manual to make it easy for new and experienced users alike to use their system more productively. The manual 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!

Versions of the Lubuntu Manual:

While the documentation for previous releases will be kept in the Git repository, they will not be published anywhere.

Want an easy way to access the manual? Don’t worry, it’s now an (opt-out) desktop icon.

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. More information about contributing can be found here. 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!

In addition, we would also like to recognize some very active contributors on our Discourse forum.

We also wanted to give a special mention to Julien Lavergne, our Project Lead Emeritus and Founder. Without you, the Lubuntu project would not exist today. Thank you.

Global Team

The Lubuntu Global Team has been created to foster communities in non-English languages and locales. An up-to-date list of our communities 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.