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!

25 Feb

Xenial Xerus Beta 1 released

The Lubuntu Release Team is happy to announce the first beta milestone of Xenial Xerus (to become 16.04 LTS in April) has now been released! A few bug fixes have come since the last alpha, but one piece of excitement is that this new milestone includes the 4.4 kernel that will be shipping with the final product.

Make sure to read the release notes to be aware of known bugs and workarounds. Your help would be most appreciated in terms of helping confirm/troubleshoot/triage those bugs, as well as filing any new bugs you find.

Speaking of bugs, though we’re still working on LXQt for a future release, we do expect to have some bug fixes for LXDE in the final release, so make sure to keep watching for announcements, especially on the Lubuntu Development mailing list.

For Release Notes and downloads, please see the Lubuntu Wiki.

To everyone that helped make this release possible, thank you. To those that would like to help, please get in touch (especially those of you that have PowerPC machines!).

18 Feb

Lubuntu 14.04.4 released

Another LTS step version has been released, upgrading AMD64, i386 and PowerPC systems. Lubuntu 14.04.4 fixes lots of bugs fixes and improvements, specially within the kernel:

  • Refresh hardware support in LTS releases for carefully-selected hardware
  • Roll up accumulated stable updates into updated images to reduce download requirements for new deployments
  • Maintain stability of existing installations
  • Various bugs that required updates are rolled into this update.

You can grab the new ISOs in the Downloads section. More details on the (several) changes can be found here. Don’t forget to read the Release Notes. More images here.

29 Jan

Xenial Xerus alpha 2

The second alpha of the Xenial Xerus (to become 16.04) has now been released! As usual, you are asked to read the release notes so that you are aware of issues and thus save you time filing them again. But, please do test it as widely as possible. Features:

  • LXQt is still in development, as such Xenial Xerus is GTK based
  • This Xenial Xerus snapshot includes the v4.3 kernel. 16.04 will ship with the 4.4 kernel which is available for testing
  • As this is an LTS, there will be a new PPC version released

Release Notes and downloads at the wiki page.

04 Jan

Xenial Xerus alpha 1

Hi folks, the 1st milestone release of what will be our 16.04 LTS is now out in the wild. I’m only posting the release notes link, as it is important you know of issues (none are computer critical) so that you don’t waste your time reporting an issue we already know of. If you find new issues, please follow the reporting section at the bottom of the notes.

Grab it while it’s hot!

23 Apr

Lubuntu 15.04 Vivid Vervet is here

As expected, the next version of Lubuntu is here. It’s known as a bug release, as we’re preparing the next generation Qt based desktop. Lots of bugs have been fixed, and there’re many improvements. Artwork has been redesigned too, with a smoother and unified overall look and feel.

Remmarkable changes are:

  • General bug fix release as we prepare for LXQt
  • Many LXDE components have been updated with bug fix releases
  • An update of the artwork (more icons, theme update, more compatibilities …)
Check out the full list of included applications. More data at the official website.
You can read the release notes here. Grab it while it’s hot here.