release – Page 3

28 Feb

Lubuntu 15.04 Beta 1

We’re preparing Lubuntu 15.04, Vivid Vervet, for distribution in April 2015. With this Beta pre-release, we are now at the stage of being semi stable. However pre-releases are not suitable for a production environment.

Note: this is an beta pre-release. Lubuntu pre-releases are NOT recommended for:

regular users who are not aware of pre-release issues
anyone who needs a stable system
anyone uncomfortable running a possibly frequently broken system
anyone in a production environment with data or workflows that need to be reliable

Lubuntu Pre-releases ARE recommended for:

regular users who want to help us test by finding, reporting, and/or fixing bugs
Lubuntu developers

Read the release notes before downloading.

21 Feb

Lubuntu 14.04.2 available

Lubuntu developers are proud to announce that (with a delay of two weeks) version 14.04.2 of the fast and lightweight operating system is now available for download via this
link.

Release Manager Walter Lapchynski explains: we had to delay the release for two weeks because of problems with X meta-packages which caused us numerous re-spins. But we wanted to do it right in order to maintain stability of existing installations and – on the other hand – roll up accumulated stable updates into updated images to reduce download requirements for new deployments.
Jens Leineweber, Head of Lubuntu Press adds in: and because we want our users to experience a stable environment even for computers with low resources, we decided to not release a .2 version of the alternate installation. That’s due to the fact, that we were not able to fix all the bugs brought to our attention.

One major issue the team is fighting with is the debian-installer that causes troubles. Once again Walter Lapchynski: we’ve been asked a lot lately to stop doing alternates in lieu of netboot, but that’s not really a good solution.

The Lubuntu Team will now team up with the Ubuntu Release Team and Servers Team to develop a possible low resource version of the Ubiquity installer.

Caution: before you install Lubuntu, we advice you to have a read of the
Release notes!

23 Oct

The blue Unicorn set free!

After the success[1] of their first Long-Term-Support (LTS) version in April this year, the Head of the Developer Team, Julien Lavergne, has finished work on the Utopic Unicorn which can now be downloaded at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Lubuntu/GetLubuntu.

Acting Release Manager, Walter Lapchynski, shortly after the release: “This cycle we mainly focused on fixing known bugs. But”, he adds “there is a downside, too: due to several serious bugs, we had to skip PPC versions of the Unicorn. We recommend using of the LTS version for now and do hope, that we are able to present a PPC Version in April next year. For the moment we are still working on our plans to implement LXQt in either 15.04 or 15.10.”

The Unicorn itself comes with eliminated known bugs[2], software such as Pcmanfm, Openbox and LightDM brought to state of the art technology and new wallpapers which were sent in by Lubuntu users via Flickr [3]. Artwork Director Rafael Laguna explains: “We try to get a little contest going each cycle in which we offer a chance for users to become part of this great distribution.”

What is Lubuntu?

As the name suggests, Lubuntu is the lightweight of the Ubuntu family. Based on the LXDE technology, Lubuntu takes only 512 MB RAM for simple actions such as surfing the internet or word processing with LibreOffice. Once again Walter Lapchynski: “We do recommend to have at least a Pentium 4 or Pentium M or AMD K8 with 1 GB RAM to prevent advanced internet services like Google+, Youtube, Google Docs and Facebook from failing to work.”

[1] https://twitter.com/montyjanderson/status/505362281468006400
[2] For issues and features common to Ubuntu, please refer to the Ubuntu release notes.
[3] https://www.flickr.com/groups/lubuntu1410contest/

23 Sep

Lubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn Final Beta

Testing has begun for the Final Beta (Beta 2) of Lubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn. Head on over to the ISO tracker to download images, view testcases, and report results. If you’re new to testing, anyone can join and they don’t have to be
Linux Jedis or anything. You can find all the information you need to get started here.

Please note that we especially need testers for PPC chips and Intel Macs. We have a special section discussing it here. In particular, if you have an Intel Mac, I have a few questions for you that might help us trim down the workload of the testing team.

Also, if you have a PPC chip, we’re about the only distro actively supporting this architecture. However, we are community supported, so without formal testing, the arch will lose more support. So please, join in testing!

28 Aug

Lubuntu Utopic Unicorn 14.10 β1

We’re preparing Lubuntu 14.10, the Utopic Unicorn, for distribution in
October 2014. With this early Beta pre-release, you can see what we are
trying out in preparation for our next version (with 3.16.0-11 Ubuntu Linux kernel). Remember that this is an early beta pre-release, so don’t use it on daily production computers.

We’d like you to join us for testing, especially if you have a PPC machine. We didn’t have PPC testers this release, do there is no PPC release.

Read the release notes before getting the disc images, and contact us with feedback.

02 Aug

Lubuntu Utopic Unicorn α2

Second alpha for Lubuntu Utopic Unicorn released. This is just for testing, don’t use it as a stable system. This snapshot includes the 3.15.0.6 Ubuntu Linux kernel which is based on the the upstream v3.15 Linux kernel. The 3.15 release includes mixed mode UEFI support, as well as improvements to suspend and resume times, open-source graphics drivers, newer laptop support ACPI and power management, ext4 filesystem, audio and sound, to name a few; additional highlights are described here. A few problems still present:

Alt + F2 shortcut does not work
power manager has wierd black background on lxpanel
iBus does not support certain keyboard layouts (affected chromium, not firefox, now resolved with current version of the browser)

Only standard PC images, due to the lack of testers, Lubuntu won’t drop Mac ISOs, we need more time and machines for testing. More info and download here.

28 Jul

Lubuntu 14.04.1 LTS

It’s already available Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS, the first update on Trusty Tahr, a recommended by-default setup for all flavours including, of course, Lubuntu. This comes with extended support (until 2019). Various bugs that required updates are rolled into this update:

A bug for btrfs has been found, this is scheduled to be fixed in 14.04.2
A bug affecting Alt-F2 is still present
For PPC the bug affecting the resizing of partitions is still there

You can get it here, and read the release notes here.

26 Jun

Lubuntu 14.10 alpha 1

Phill Whiteside, our QA and test head, is proud to communicate:

It’s that time again: time to officially start testing for this cycle. Alpha 1 is set to be released Thursday, so we need to test over the next couple days. You can see the rest of the schedule for the cycle here, by the way.

All images are available at QA. If you’re not familiar with testing, it’s an easy process and a simple way to get involved. More information is in the Testing area. Testers needed!

27 Mar

Trusty Tahr β2

Almost there! A new beta has been released at the mirrors, Lubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr beta 2. You already know all the stuff: a few improvements, updated packages, lots of fixes, etc. Look, we were busy:

pcmanfm 1.2.0 (folder settings, dual pane view, menu editing)
artwork (new icons, theme update, more compatibilities)
new interface for lxsession-default-apps
firefox fixings

But still beta, remember. Don’t use in a productive system. Download ISOs from here. Read the release notes here. The schedule calendar is here.

16 Mar

Countdown clock

I’d like to thank our friend and collaborator Corbin Davenport for this. Specially when I used to be a pain in the neck, asking for the new clock day after day, and I must say the result is, as always, really amazing (have a look on your right). You can use it on your own website. Just copy and paste this HTML code:

<iframe src=”http://ubuntuone.com/2mnKK5WN8YIBIS4TCtBBuD” style=”width:170px; height:128px; border:1px;”>There was an error loading the countdown.</iframe>

If you want the original clocks (for Ubuntu too) watch this at Corbin’s website. Lubuntu 14.04 (Trusty Tahr) wil be released following the general Ubuntu release schedule (more or less). Check it out at the release table for dates.