Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 500

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is issue #500 for the week February 20 – 26, 2017, and the full version is available here.

In this issue we cover:

The issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

  • Paul White
  • Chris Guiver
  • Elizabeth K. Joseph
  • Vishnu Narayanan
  • David Morfin
  • Jim Connett
  • And many others

If you have a story idea for the Weekly Newsletter, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki!

Except where otherwise noted, content in this issue is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License BY SA Creative Commons License

Zesty Zapus Beta 1 Released

The first beta of the Zesty Zapus (to become 17.04) has now been released!

This milestone features images for Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu GNOME, Ubuntu Kylin, Ubuntu Studio, and Xubuntu.

Pre-releases of the Zesty Zapus are not encouraged for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even frequent breakage. They are, however, recommended for Ubuntu flavor developers and those who want to help in testing, reporting, and fixing bugs as we work towards getting this release ready.

Beta 1 includes a number of software updates that are ready for wider testing. This is still an early set of images, so you should expect some bugs.

While these Beta 1 images have been tested and work, except as noted in the release notes, Ubuntu developers are continuing to improve the Zesty Zapus. In particular, once newer daily images are available, system installation bugs identified in the Beta 1 installer should be verified against the current daily image before being reported in Launchpad. Using an obsolete image to re-report bugs that have already been fixed wastes your time and the time of developers who are busy trying to make 17.04 the best Ubuntu release yet. Always ensure your system is up to date before reporting bugs.

Kubuntu

Kubuntu is the KDE based flavor of Ubuntu. It uses the Plasma desktop and includes a wide selection of tools from the KDE project.

The Kubuntu 17.04 Beta 1 images can be downloaded from:

More information about Kubuntu 17.04 Beta 1 can be found here:

Lubuntu

Lubuntu is a flavor of Ubuntu based on LXDE and focused on providing a very lightweight distribution.

The Lubuntu 17.04 Beta 1 images can be downloaded from:

More information about Lubuntu 17.04 Beta 1 can be found here:

Ubuntu Budgie

Ubuntu Budgie is a flavor of Ubuntu featuring the Budgie desktop environment.

The Ubuntu Budgie 17.04 Beta 1 images can be downloaded from:

More information about Ubuntu Budgie 17.04 Beta 1 can be found here:

Ubuntu GNOME

Ubuntu GNOME is a flavor of Ubuntu featuring the GNOME desktop environment.

The Ubuntu GNOME 17.04 Beta 1 images can be downloaded from:

More information about Ubuntu GNOME 17.04 Beta 1 can be found here:

Ubuntu Kylin

Ubuntu Kylin is a flavor of Ubuntu that is more suitable for Chinese users.

The Ubuntu Kylin 17.04 Beta 1 images can be downloaded from:

More information about Ubuntu Kylin 17.04 Beta 1 can be found here:

Ubuntu Studio

Ubuntu Studio is a flavor of Ubuntu configured for multimedia production.

The Ubuntu Studio 17.04 Beta 1 images can be downloaded from:

More information about Ubuntu Studio 17.04 Beta 1 can be found here:

Xubuntu

Xubuntu is a flavor of Ubuntu based on the Xfce desktop environment.

The Xubuntu 17.04 Beta 1 images can be downloaded from:

More information about Xubuntu 17.04 Beta 1 can be found here:

If you’re interested in following the changes as we further develop the Zesty Zapus, we suggest that you subscribe to the ubuntu-devel-announce list. This is a low-traffic list (a few posts a month or less) carrying announcements of approved specifications, policy changes, alpha releases, and other interesting events.

A big thank you to the developers and testers for their efforts to pull together this Beta release!

Originally posted to the ubuntu-devel-announce mailing list on Fri Feb 24 00:34:19 UTC 2017 by Simon Quigley on behalf of the Ubuntu Release Team

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 499

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is issue #499 for the week February 13 – 19, 2017, and the full version is available here.

In this issue we cover:

The issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

  • Elizabeth K. Joseph
  • Simon Quigley
  • Chris Guiver
  • Jim Connett
  • And many others

If you have a story idea for the Weekly Newsletter, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki!

Except where otherwise noted, content in this issue is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License BY SA Creative Commons License

Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS Released

The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the release of Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS (Long-Term Support) for its Desktop, Server, and Cloud products, as well as other flavours of Ubuntu with long-term support.

Like previous LTS series’, 16.04.2 includes hardware enablement stacks for use on newer hardware. This support is offered on all architectures except for 32-bit powerpc, and is installed by default when using one of the desktop images. Ubuntu Server defaults to installing the GA kernel, however you may select the HWE kernel from the installer bootloader.

As usual, this point release includes many updates, and updated installation media has been provided so that fewer updates will need to be downloaded after installation. These include security updates and corrections for other high-impact bugs, with a focus on maintaining stability and compatibility with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

Kubuntu 16.04.2 LTS, Xubuntu 16.04.2 LTS, Mythbuntu 16.04.2 LTS, Ubuntu GNOME 16.04.2 LTS, Lubuntu 16.04.2 LTS, Ubuntu Kylin 16.04.2 LTS, Ubuntu MATE 16.04.2 LTS and Ubuntu Studio 16.04.2 LTS are also now available. More details can be found in their individual release notes:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/XenialXerus/ReleaseNotes#Official_flavours

Maintenance updates will be provided for 5 years for Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Cloud, Ubuntu Base, and Ubuntu Kylin. All the remaining flavours will be supported for 3 years.

To get Ubuntu 16.04.2

In order to download Ubuntu 16.04.2, visit:

http://www.ubuntu.com/download

Users of Ubuntu 14.04 will be offered an automatic upgrade to 16.04.2 via Update Manager. For further information about upgrading, see:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/XenialUpgrades

As always, upgrades to the latest version of Ubuntu are entirely free of charge.

We recommend that all users read the 16.04.1 release notes, which document caveats and workarounds for known issues, as well as more in-depth notes on the release itself. They are available at:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/XenialXerus/ReleaseNotes

If you have a question, or if you think you may have found a bug but aren’t sure, you can try asking in any of the following places:

Help Shape Ubuntu

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/get-involved

About Ubuntu

Ubuntu is a full-featured Linux distribution for desktops, laptops, clouds and servers, with a fast and easy installation and regular releases. A tightly-integrated selection of excellent applications is included, and an incredible variety of add-on software is just a few clicks away.

Professional services including support are available from Canonical and hundreds of other companies around the world. For more information about support, visit:

http://www.ubuntu.com/support

More Information

You can learn more about Ubuntu and about this release on our website listed below:

http://www.ubuntu.com/

To sign up for future Ubuntu announcements, please subscribe to Ubuntu’s very low volume announcement list at:

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

Originally posted to the ubuntu-announce mailing list on Fri Feb 17 01:45:12 UTC 2017 by Adam Conrad

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 498

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is issue #498 for the week February 6 – 12, 2017, and the full version is available here.

In this issue we cover:

The issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

  • Elizabeth K. Joseph
  • Paul White
  • Chris Guiver
  • Jim Connett
  • And many others

If you have a story idea for the Weekly Newsletter, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki!

Except where otherwise noted, content in this issue is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License BY SA Creative Commons License