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. We have some interesting things happening, so read on for highlights and information.

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

Getting Lubuntu 14.10 Beta 2

Upgrading from Previous Versions

To upgrade to Lubuntu 14.10 from previous releases, follow the Upgrade Instructions.

Download a Disk Image

• Bootable images for standard PCs/laptops/netbooks

Instructions for burning the image to a DVD or USB flash drive can be found on the Burning ISO Howto.

We recommend you learn how to check your image file so your pre-release is as it’s supposed to be. Compare your MD5 checksum with the correct ones found alongside the images.

Beta 2 Highlights

Lubuntu development is currently focused on the transition away from GTK+ to the Qt framework. This is not stable enough for everyday use, so the focus this version is on fixing bugs.

Linux Kernel

The Beta 2 Utopic Unicorn snapshot includes the 3.16.0-11 Ubuntu Linux kernel which is based on the the upstream v3.16 Linux kernel. The 3.16 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.

Known Problems

• The fix for the so-called Shellshock bug in bash was forthcoming at the time of release and is not to be found in these images. Happily, the security team has the fix in the repos. Update your system to version 4.3-9ubuntu3 and you will have the fix.

• There are no PPC images due to a bug preventing booting on 32-bit machines. Booting is successful on 64-bit machines but the images remain untested.

• There is a bug preventing the graphical user interface from booting after installation. This is a known problem affecting all flavors of Ubuntu. Removing "quiet splash" from the GRUB2 options should solve the problem, though it appears that this may not work for VirtualBox installations.

Lubuntu Desktop

• power manager has weird black background on lxpanel

• obconf segfaults with the --tab option

• Online help link in hardinfo under help menu redircters to Berlios.de

Live Session

• lxshortcut does not edit the desktop files on the live session.

• Lubuntu live session cannot write to external media on filesystem or internal drives.

amd64+mac

• Guided partitioning shortcut "max" gives minimum space instead

• notification dialog has horizonal bars

• Desktop image sets LC_TIME based on country, not selected language

Feedback

Development of Lubuntu 14.10, the Utopic Unicorn is ongoing and bugs are fixed every day. Before reporting bugs, please ensure your system is up to date. For verifying installation related bugs, updated disk images are available from Daily bootable images for standard PCs/laptops/netbooks.

Please feel free to contact us with feedback.