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.

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 20.04.2 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 20.04.2 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 20.04.2 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 20.04.2 LTS. A brief list of the bugs fixed between 20.04 and 20.04.2 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 & xfs 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, or before starting Calamares, 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.

OEM is not available for Lubuntu

There is no OEM mode available for Lubuntu in 20.04 as reported in this bug. When selected a live session will begin.

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.