Introduction

The Xubuntu team is happy to bring you the latest and greatest software the open source community has to offer. This is their latest result: Xubuntu 8.10, which brings a host of excellent improvements built on the rock solid Xfce 4.4.2 desktop environment.

For Ubuntu see https://wiki.ubuntu.org/IntrepidIbex/TechnicalOverview
For Kubuntu see https://wiki.kubuntu.org/IntrepidIbex/Kubuntu

Download

Get it while it's hot. ISOs and torrents are available at:

• http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/8.10/ (Xubuntu)
  http://releases.ubuntu.com/releases/8.10 (Ubuntu)
  http://releases.ubuntu.com/releases/edubuntu/8.10 (Edubuntu add-on)
  http://releases.ubuntu.com/releases/kubuntu/8.10 (Kubuntu)
  http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/8.10/ (UbuntuStudio)
  http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/mythbuntu/releases/8.10/ (Mythbuntu)

Local mirrors are also available:

• Australia

• Bulgaria

• Canada

• Canada

• Portugal

• Portugal

• South Africa

• United Kingdom

• United States

Upgrading from Xubuntu 8.04

To upgrade from Xubuntu 8.04, press Alt+F2 and type in "update-manager -d" (without the quotes) into the command box. Update Manager should open up and tell you: New distribution release '8.10' is available. Click Upgrade and follow the on-screen instructions.

New Features since Xubuntu 8.04

Abiword 2.6

Ubuntu brings you the newest Abiword 2.6.4 word processor with tons of bug-fixes and new features, some of which include:

• The ability to embed gnumeric charts into your documents;
• A new collaboration plugin allowing users to collaboratively work on the same document in real-time;

• Improved support for Microsoft Office and OpenOffice documents;

• You can now drag and drop images in and out of AbiWord documents;

• the ability to open files on remote shares, ie. samba, ftp or ssh shares; and
• much more!

Improved Multimedia Experience

Xubuntu 8.10 provides an improved multimedia experience by including the Listen Multimedia Player. With Listen, you can:

• Organize your music collection;
• Browse Shoucast Webradio and Podcats;
• Read lyrics and have access Wikipedia informations about artists or albums at your fingertips;
• Broadcast by interfacing with your icecast server;
• Record streaming media; and
• Visualize good times with the built-in graphical visualizer.

Find what you're looking for with Catfish

With Xubuntu 8.10, you'll find an option to "Search for Files" in the Places menu. Clicking this will present you with the widely popular, light-weight search front-end called Catfish. Catfish enables you to quickly and easily search for your documents, music, pictures, videos, and more.

For the technically inclined, Catfish is a frontend for different search engines (daemons).

You can employ find, slocate, locate, doodle, tracker, beagle, strigi and pinot - what ever tickles your fancy!

Easily manage your secrets

Xubuntu 8.10 includes the well known secret keeper Seahorse. Seahorse is a GTK front end for GnuPG - the Gnu Privacy Guard program. It is a tool for secure communications and data storage. Data encryption and digital signature creation can easily be performed through a GUI and Key Management operations can easily be carried out through an intuitive interface.

X.Org 7.4

X.Org 7.4, the latest stable version of X.Org, is available in Intrepid. This release brings much better support for hot-pluggable input devices such as tablets, keyboards, and mice. At the same time this will allow the great majority of users to run without a /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. A new failsafe X is introduced, to give better tools for troubleshooting X startup failures.

Two of the older nvidia binary drivers are not available for X.Org 7.4 yet, so users of these drivers will be automatically switched to the corresponding open source drivers.

Linux kernel 2.6.27

Ubuntu 8.10 includes Linux kernel 2.6.27, a significant release with better hardware support and numerous bug-fixes.

Encrypted private directory

The ecryptfs-utils package was recently promoted to Ubuntu main, with support for a secret encrypted folder in your Home Folder (by Michael Halcrow, Dustin Kirkland, and Daniel Baumann).

You can help test this new feature by going to Applications → Accessories → Terminal and typing:

• sudo aptitude install ecryptfs-utils

• ecryptfs-setup-private

Network Manager 0.7

Xubuntu 8.10 ships Network Manager 0.7 (by Dan Williams and others), which comes with long-expected features, such as:

• system wide settings (i.e., no need to log in in order to get a connection)
• management of 3G connections (GSM/CDMA)
• management of multiple active devices at once
• management of PPP and PPPOE connections
• management of devices with static IP configurations
• route management for devices

More information can be found on the Network Manager wiki.

DKMS

DKMS (by Dell) is included in Xubuntu 8.10, allowing kernel drivers to be automatically rebuilt when new kernels are released. This makes it possible for kernel package updates to be made available immediately without waiting for rebuilds of driver packages, and without third-party driver packages becoming out of date when installing these kernel updates.

Samba 3.2

A lot of new features have been added in Samba 3.2 amongst them:

• clustered file server support
• encrypted network transport
• ipv6 support
• better integration with the latest version of Microsoft Windows™ clients and servers.

PAM authentication framework

Xubuntu 8.10 features a new pam-auth-update tool, which allows simple management of PAM authentication configuration for both desktops and servers (by Steve Langasek). Packages providing PAM modules will be configured automatically, and users can adjust their authentication preferences by running sudo pam-auth-update.

More information can be found in the Ubuntu wiki.

Totem BBC plugin

Xubuntu 8.10 features a new plugin for the Totem movie player that fetches free digital content from the BBC. To enable it, start Totem (Applications -> Multimedia -> Movie Player), enable the plugin (Edit -> Plugins -> BBC content viewer) and select "BBC" from the drop-down labelled "Playlist".

Thanks to the BBC and Collabora for their work developing this feature.

Known Issues

There are several known bugs that users may run into with Xubuntu 8.10. We have documented them here for your convenience along with any known workarounds.

• The Live CD's detection of nVidia hardware incorrectly selects the 'nv' driver even for hardware not supported by that driver, preventing X from running on some systems. This issue will be fixed in daily builds immediately after Beta and will be resolved for the Xubuntu 8.10 final release. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/261977

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

If you plan to do an installation of the release candidate, be sure to head to the Testing page. With just a few minutes of your time, you can really help to improve Xubuntu and Ubuntu. We have two different tests; one takes just a short time, and the other is more thorough.

Participate in Xubuntu

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

• http://www.ubuntu.com/community/participate/ and http://xubuntu.org/devel

Help Spread the Word About Xubuntu 8.10

A new banner is available to help spread the word about the Xubuntu 8.10 release:

• http://xubuntu.org/promote/intrepid/countdown

You can add the banner to your website to help others find the wonders of Xubuntu.

More Information

You can find out more about Xubuntu on our website and wiki.

To sign up for future Xubuntu and Ubuntu development announcements, please subscribe to Ubuntu's development announcement list at:

• http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-announce