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Thanks to all the hard work from our contributors, Lubuntu 18.10 has been released! With the codename Cosmic Cuttlefish, Lubuntu 18.10 is the 15th release of Lubuntu and the first release of Lubuntu with LXQt as the default desktop environment, with support until July of 2019.
NOTICE
What is Lubuntu?
Lubuntu is an official Ubuntu flavor which uses the Lightweight Qt Desktop Environment (LXQt). The project’s goal is to provide a lightweight yet functional Linux distribution based on a rock-solid Ubuntu base. Lubuntu provides a simple but modern and powerful graphical user interface, and comes with a wide variety of applications so you can browse, email, chat, play, and be productive.
Welcome to LXQt
This is the first Lubuntu release with LXQt as the main desktop environment. The Lubuntu project, in 18.10 and successive releases, will no longer support the LXDE desktop environment or tools in the Ubuntu archive, and will instead focus on the LXQt desktop environment. You can find the following major applications and toolkits installed by default in this release:
- LXQt 0.13.0, with many bugfixes and improvements backported from upstream.
- Qt 5.11.1, which is the first point release in the Qt 5.11 series.
- Mozilla Firefox 62, which will receive updates from the Ubuntu Security Team throughout the support cycle of the release.
- The LibreOffice 6.1.2 suite, with the Qt 5 frontend.
- VLC 3.0.4, for viewing media and listening to music.
- Featherpad 0.9.0, for notes and code editing.
- Discover Software Center 5.13.5, for an easy, graphical way to install and update software.
- The powerful and fast email client Trojitá 0.7 to get you to inbox zero in no time.
You can find a variety of other applications installed which aim to enhance your experience while staying out of the way of your normal workflow.
Calamares
Lubuntu has switched to using the Calamares system installer in place of the Ubiquity installer that other flavors use. Calamares is a universal installer framework that aims to be easy, usable, beautiful, pragmatic, inclusive, and distribution-agnostic.
In this cycle our main focus was working out any issues that arose from the switch in installer, especially around the Ubuntu tooling which is geared towards the use of Ubiquity, so it lacks features such as the minimal install, but in the next cycle we are going to put an emphasis on improving feature parity.
Unfortunately though, we had issues with EFI systems and encrypted LUKS systems setting up GRUB correctly. In the meantime, you are encouraged to utilize the enhanced and simple-to-use manual partitioning experience provided by Calamares. Otherwise, the Lubuntu QA Team has been hard at work testing many installation combinations to ensure everything else is working as expected. You can find a full chart of tested installations here.
Thanks to Adriaan de Groot and many others on the Calamares team; without you, Calamares would not have worked as well as it does for us.
Lubuntu Manual
The Lubuntu Team has been hard at work in polishing a Lubuntu Manual book to make it easy for new and experienced users alike to use their system more productively. The book can be found at manual.lubuntu.me.
We will eventually ship this in the default install of Lubuntu, but for now our goal is to polish it and receive feedback from the community, so it will stay published as a website only for now.
The manual is built using Sphinx, and the source can be found on our Phabricator instance here, or if you prefer to use GitHub to contribute, it is mirrored there as well.
We want to thank Lyn Perrine for all the hard work she has put into the Lubuntu Manual recently, because the majority of the text in the manual right now is what she has written. Thank you!
Lubuntu Spanish Community
Throughout this cycle, Lubuntu has started a Spanish community for Spanish speakers (either as a native language or a secondary language) to talk about and contribute to Lubuntu and Linux in general. The group has grown in size and is now larger than our development group.
If you speak Spanish and want to join a friendly community of Linux people with all levels of technical experience, the Lubuntu Spanish community is for you. You can join the Telegram group at telegram.lubuntu.me/español or the IRC channel at #lubuntu-es on freenode.
Thanks to Wolfenprey, GatoOscuro, Hans Möller, and many, many other great community members which make this possible.
Where can I download it?
You can download Lubuntu 18.10 on our downloads page.
Known Issues and Workarounds
Issues with workarounds
The most major and notable problem is that upgrading Lubuntu from 18.04 to 18.10 causes a fair amount of issues. Therefore, we are not officially supporting this upgrade path at this time, however we have prepared a page in the Lubuntu Manual which can help address the problems that arise after the upgrade.
LXQt treats all monitors as one when painting the desktop background. We plan on solving this in a more native way by the 19.04 release, but in the meantime, Lubuntu contributor Hans P. Möller has written a script which can be used as a workaround for treating all of the backgrounds differently.
We have not ported over the "Additional drivers" tab from software-properties-gtk to software-properties-qt, which can be used for installing additional CPU and graphics drivers. As a workaround, you can use the ubuntu-drivers command line tool.
The installer enforces a minimum of 8GB free drive space and 1GB free RAM, but these are not truly the minimum requirements. Remove the "storage" and "ram" lines from the "required" section of /etc/calamares/modules/welcome.conf before running the installer and everything will proceed like normal.
Issues with fixes
The default LibreOffice theme that ships on the ISOs is the default Adwaita theme, which is not consistent with the system theme. This will be fixed in version 1:6.1.2-0ubuntu2.
Trojitá has display issues with some emails related to a QtWebkit issue. This will be fixed in version 5.212.0~alpha2-12ubuntu2.
Both of the above fixes should come as updates within the next week.
Known issues
Trojitá will crash if sorted and resorted several times in succession (LP: #1797665).
QTerminal dropdown shortcut key does not consistently toggle visibility (LP: #1795998).
The only non-Ubiquity issue that affects all Ubuntu flavors (and main Ubuntu) is that DNS stops working after disconnecting from a VPN due to systemd-resolved (LP: #1797415).
Contributing to Lubuntu
Summary on how to help
We can always use more help! No matter your skill level or your technical experience, there's something you can help with that can make a huge difference in Lubuntu. Join us on our chat which is bridged three ways to Matrix, Telegram, and IRC and talk to us there. Whether you know another language, have some spare time to help us test Lubuntu, are good at writing documentation, or just want to stay "in the know," that is the place to be.
Another great method to get involved is bug reporting. If you notice an issue please file a bug using the instructions on the Lubuntu Wiki.
Don't want to file a bug? Let us know what the problem is (in detail, enough that we can reproduce it) and we can assist you in filing one or do it ourselves.
Infrastructure changes in this cycle
Lubuntu has moved off of GitHub and mostly off of Launchpad for the project's workflow. We have decided to go with Phabricator, which is a project hosting platform with all of the main features you expect from competitors such as GitLab. You can find our Phabricator instance here.
Additionally, for translations, where possible we use a Weblate instance, which you can find here. You can also find upstream LXQt's Weblate instance here; we highly encourage people who know more than one language fluently to translate Lubuntu and LXQt so everyone benefits.
New contributors
We would like to thank the following contributors for dedicating some of their time to Lubuntu this cycle. Thank you!
- Simon Quigley
- Walter Lapchynski
- Lyn Perrine
- Rafael Laguna, who has resigned from the project. Thank you for your countless contributions to the project!
- Wendy Hill
- Samuel Banya
- Hans Möller
- Tony Cuesta Escobar (Wolfenprey)
- Dan Simmons
- Many more contributors!
It is not possible to donate to Lubuntu as a project at this time, but if you are feeling generous and would like to donate to individual contributors, here are people who have made donation links public:
Stay Connected!
We publish a newsletter every so often which details the work that is currently happening in Lubuntu, including fixed bugs and additional ways you can help.
For the latest Lubuntu information and announcements follow us on Twitter, Mastodon, or Telegram. We have other social media pages and ways to stay connected which you can find here.
Screenshots
As promised on Twitter, users who tested Lubuntu and submitted their screenshots to us would be credited in the announcement. Here are the submissions:
— GnuXero (@GnuXero26) October 10, 2018
Learning to customize Lubuntu <3 pic.twitter.com/5sVYbG0B2R
— Leandro Ramos (@leandroembu) October 14, 2018
— N0um3n0 (@Cryptodata) October 14, 2018
Marneu, one of our newer r/Lubuntu moderators who uses Lubuntu 18.10 with the i3 window manager, submitted three screenshots: one, two, three.
And of course, while it doesn't count, Dustin Krysak did give us an Ubuntu Budgie screenshot:
Here is the best screenshot yet..... ha ha pic.twitter.com/WanVi9IZNv
— Dustin 🤖 Krysak (@Bashfulrobot) October 11, 2018
Thank you to everyone who submitted screenshots!