ReleaseNotes

Revision 4 as of 2017-09-21 08:53:43

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Introduction

These release notes for Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) provide an overview of the release and document the known issues with Ubuntu 17.10 and its flavors.

Support lifespan

Ubuntu 17.10 will be supported for 9 months until July 2018. If you need Long Term Support, it is recommended you use Ubuntu 16.04 LTS instead.

Official flavour release notes

Find the links to release notes for official flavors here.


Get Ubuntu 17.10

Download Ubuntu 17.10

Images can be downloaded from a location near you.

You can download ISOs and flashable images from from:

Upgrading from Ubuntu 17.04

To upgrade on a desktop system:

  • Open the "Software & Updates" Setting in System Settings.

  • Select the 3rd Tab called "Updates".
  • Set the "Notify me of a new Ubuntu version" dropdown menu to "For any new version".
  • Press Alt+F2 and type in "update-manager -cd" (without the quotes) into the command box.
  • Update Manager should open up and tell you: New distribution release '17.10' is available.
    • If not you can also use "/usr/lib/ubuntu-release-upgrader/check-new-release-gtk"
  • Click Upgrade and follow the on-screen instructions.

To upgrade on a server system:

  • Install the update-manager-core package if it is not already installed.

  • Make sure the Prompt line in /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades is set to normal.

  • Launch the upgrade tool with the command sudo do-release-upgrade -d.

  • Follow the on-screen instructions.

Note that the server upgrade will use GNU screen and automatically re-attach in case of dropped connection problems.


Updated Packages

Linux kernel 4.12

Ubuntu 17.10 is based on the Linux release series 4.12.

Ubuntu Desktop

  • The Ubuntu Desktop now uses GNOME instead of Unity.

  • On supported systems, Wayland is now the default display server. The older display server is still available: just choose "Ubuntu on Xorg" from the cog on the log in screen.

  • The Settings app has been redesigned.

  • System Log has been replaced by Logs, an app to view logs from the systemd journal.

  • The default on screen keyboard is GNOME's Caribou instead of Onboard.

  • Simple Scan has a new workflow and design and is now part of core GNOME.

  • Calendar now supports recurring events.

  • LibreOffice has been updated to 5.4.

  • Apps provided by GNOME have been updated to 3.26. For more details about GNOME 3.26, see their Release Notes.

  • The Amazon app now loads in the default web browser.
  • Window control buttons are back on the right for the first time since 2010.

  • The Ubuntu GNOME flavor has been discontinued. If you are using Ubuntu GNOME, you will be upgraded to Ubuntu.

  • Install gnome-session and choose "GNOME" from the cog on the login screen if you'd like to try a more upstream version of GNOME. If you'd like to also install more core apps, install the vanilla-gnome-desktop metapackage (not available yet).

Ubuntu Server

qemu 2.10

Qemu has been updated to the 2.10 release.

Since the last version was 2.8 see both Changelogs of 2.9 and 2.10 for details.

Among many other changes there is one that might need follow on activity by the user/admin: Image locking is added and enabled by default. This generally makes execution much safer, but can break some old use cases that now explicitly have to opt-in to ignore/share the locks by tools and subcommands using the --force-share option or the share-rw dqev property.

libvirt 3.6

Libvirt has been updated to version 3.6. See the Changelogs for details.

DPDK 17.05.2

Ubuntu 17.10 includes the latest release of DPDK that has stable updates: 17.05.2.

See the Release Notes as well as the stable release announcement stable .1 announcement stable .2 and for more detail.

This made it possible to integrate Open vSwitch 2.8.

Open vSwitch 2.8

Open vSwitch has been updated to 2.8.

Please read the release notes for more detail.

Remember that since version 2.7 you need to specify dpdk devices via dpdk-devargs.

Known issues

As is to be expected, with any release, there are some significant known bugs that users may run into with this release of Ubuntu 17.10. The ones we know about at this point (and some of the workarounds), are documented here so you don't need to spend time reporting these bugs again:

Desktop

  • Bluetooth audio devices cannot be used in the Greeter. This will cause issues for people using the accessibility features such as screenreaders at the login screen. Once logged in everything should work as expected.
  • Some admin utilities will not work with GNOME on Wayland since the apps have not been adapted to use PolicyKit to only use admin privileges for the specific functions needed. As a workaround, you can use the Ubuntu on Xorg session.

  • The Color Emoji feature of GNOME 3.26 is not available in Ubuntu 17.10.


More information

Reporting bugs

Your comments, bug reports, patches and suggestions will help fix bugs and improve the quality of future releases. Please report bugs using the tools provided.

If you want to help out with bugs, the Bug Squad is always looking for help.

Participate in Ubuntu

If you would like to help shape Ubuntu, take a look at the list of ways you can participate at

More about Ubuntu

You can find out more about Ubuntu on the Ubuntu website and Ubuntu wiki.

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