It’s been a while since last post, but no, we’re not dead, just busy preparing everything for 15.04 and it’s new features. Now the icon theme part has been updated since Utopic Unicorn release with a few modifications (see the changelog here) improving integration with LXQt, and we’ll keep working on it.
And remember you can use it with any Linux distro! Download it while it’s hot.
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/505362281468006400Testing 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!
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.
It’s that time of year when Lubuntu asks the community to contribute an artistic touch to the distribution.
We know… We’re late… But here we go again!
Please feel free to join us at Flickr and upload your favourite creation, that’s right, one submission per user this time.
Submissions are accepted until 4th September 23:59:59 UTC+01:00, and the polls will open shortly after that. The polls will be open until 9th September, and the top five wallpapers will be included by default in Lubuntu Utopic Unicorn.
Please make sure to follow the rules, as failing to do so will get you disqualified.
Again, sorry for the late announcement. We actually had another concept in mind for this release, but unfortunately it will have to wait.
Good luck to all contestants and please help us spread the word :).
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:
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.