Xubuntu 21.04 Testing Week

March 25, 2021 — , — — ,

We’re delighted to announce that we’re participating in another ‘Ubuntu Testing Week’ from April 1st to April 7th with other flavours in the Ubuntu family. On April 1st, the beta version of Xubuntu 21.04 ‘Hirsute Hippo’ will be released after halting all new changes to its features, user interface and documentation. Between April 1st and the final release on April 22nd, all efforts by the Xubuntu team and community should be focused on ISO testing, reporting bugs, fixing bugs, and translations.

It has been a year since we last did a collaboration with other Ubuntu flavors for an Ubuntu Testing Week, which was done for Xubuntu 20.04 LTS. That event was a major success, as a large volume of testers participated and it was announced on various linux news sites and podcasts. Alan Pope (aka Popey) from Canonical, Rick Timmis from the Kubuntu team, and Bill from the Ubuntu Mate team helped spread the word about the previous event in this clip from Big Daddy Linux Live (BDLL) on how the event came about, its goals, as well as points on how to test. You won’t want to miss being part of the event this year! Read on to learn how.

During the testing week you can download the daily ISO image and try it out, though you are welcome to start from today. You can test without changing your system by running it in a VM (Virtual Machine) with software like VMWare Player, VirtualBox (apt-install) and Gnome Boxes (apt-install), or you may run it from a USB, SD Card, or DVD, to test if your hardware works correctly. You can use software like Etcher and Gnome Disks (apt-install) to copy the ISO to a USB Drive or SD Card, while apps like Brasero (apt-install) and Xfburn (apt-install) can be used to burn it to DVD. We encourage those that are willing, to install it either in a VM or on physical hardware (it requires at least 15GB of hard disk space) and use it for a few days, as more bugs can be discovered and reported this way.

There are a variety of ways that you can help test the release, including trying out the various live session and installation test cases from the ISO tracker, which take less than 30 minutes to complete (example 1, example 2, example 3 below). If you find a bug, you’ll need a Launchpad account to file it against the package the app is bundled in, which you can find by watching this Easy Bug Reporting By Example video. If the bug is found in the installer, you can file it against ubiquity, or you can file it against the linux package, if your hardware isn’t working.

Please test apps that you regularly use, so you can identify bugs and regressions that should be reported, especially as the recently released Xfce 4.16 is bundled in this release. You can learn about what else is new in this release in the Release Notes. New ISO files are built everyday, and you should always test with the most up-to-date ISO. It is easier and faster to update an existing daily ISO file on Linux with the command below (you’ll need to run it in the terminal from within the folder with the ISO file).

$ zsync http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/daily-live/current/hirsute-desktop-amd64.iso.zsync

We look forward to you joining us to make Xubuntu 21.04 an even bigger success, and hope that you will also test out the other Ubuntu flavours. The success of the previous event was mentioned by the former Ubuntu Desktop Lead Martin Wimpress (aka Wimpy) in the Ubuntu Podcast Season 13 Episode 03 at 20:21 where he said,

“… It is definitely paying dividends. In the nicest way possible, they made members of the Desktop Team cry today. We had our weekly team meeting where we go through all the bug reports to triage them and usually there are some, and there were pages of them and we didn’t get through them all. So we are scheduling another bug triage meeting later this week in order to pick up where we left off from. But this is great because we are actually getting decent bug reports that we can work with and [take] action [on] and improve what will be the final release in 3 weeks time. So for all the tears that were shed, it was definitely a worthwhile endeavor because these are bugs that other people would encounter when they install 20.04 for the first time. So thank you everyone that was involved in that effort. It was much appreciated.”

You are welcome to chat with us live in our dedicated telegram groups ( Ubuntu Testers, Xubuntu Development ) or IRC channel ( #ubuntu-quality on freenode ). In order to assist you in your testing efforts, we encourage you to also read our Quality Assurance (QA) guide and new testers wiki. We look forward to your contributions, your live chatting, and hopefully your participation in  future testing sessions. Follow the #UbuntuTestingWeek hashtag on twitter and facebook for the latest news. Happy bug hunting and don’t forget to spread the word!

Xubuntu 20.10 released!

October 26, 2020 — , —

The Xubuntu team is happy to announce the immediate release of Xubuntu 20.10!

Xubuntu 20.10, codenamed Groovy Gorilla, is a regular release and will be supported for 9 months, until July 2021. If you need a stable environment with longer support time we recommend that you use Xubuntu 20.04 LTS instead.

The final release images are available as torrents and direct downloads from xubuntu.org/download/.

As the main server might be busy in the first few days after the release, we recommend using the torrents if possible.

Xubuntu Core, our minimal installation option, is available to download from unit193.net/xubuntu/core/ [torrent, magnet]. Find out more about Xubuntu Core here.

We’d like to thank everybody who contributed to this release of Xubuntu!

Highlights and Known Issues

Highlights

  • GitHub: At the beginning of this cycle, we transitioned all of our codebases to a single location to make getting started easier for new contributors. Check out the new Xubuntu GitHub!
  • Transifex: We’ve made it easier than ever to contribute translations to Xubuntu! Transifex brings all of our projects together in a single place, and removes various barriers to contributing.
  • Documentation: A small team of new and past contributors joined together this cycle to refresh our documentation. Every chapter received significant updates, and will soon become available.

Known Issues

  • Users with AMD graphics may still experience significant graphical issues. Since the release of 20.04, this issue has been found to be more widespread and also affects MATE users.

For more obscure known issues, information on affecting bugs, bug fixes, and a list of new package versions, please refer to the Xubuntu Release Notes.

The main Ubuntu Release Notes cover both many of the other packages we carry and more generic issues.

Support

For support with the release, navigate to Help & Support for a complete list of methods to get help.

Xubuntu is now on GitHub!

May 23, 2020 — ,

On Tuesday, May 18th, the Xubuntu Team voted to migrate some of our infrastructure away from Launchpad to GitHub for code hosting, while translations are now on Transifex. Here’s a summary of the changes:

  • We have a new GitHub organization, under the Xubuntu name. Each subteam has an equivalent in the new organization.
  • All codebases have been migrated to GitHub.
  • All translations have moved to Transifex.
  • Every codebase moved to GitHub has been mirrored on Launchpad. This supports our daily package builds, and allows community members to continue using only Launchpad if they choose.

The following functionality has not changed:

  • Issues are still reported on Launchpad for each package, and ubuntu-bug continues to work as it always has.
  • PPAs and daily package builds will continue to be updated as normal.

Why GitHub?

We’ve chosen to move to GitHub to make it easier for individuals to contribute to the project. As one of the largest platforms for software development, this is where we can reach the largest number of potential contributors while eliminating various barriers to entry. Here’s just some of the reasons we’re moving:

  • Ubuntu and many of its flavors already host their code on GitHub.
  • Many of our upstream and downstream projects are already on GitHub or have mirrors there.
  • GitHub’s Web IDE simplifies contributions. Non-technical users can easily submit changes to their favorite projects, and maintainers can accept them just as easily.
  • Discoverability is improved. All of Xubuntu’s projects can be found from a single page.

Why Transifex?

Transifex is a popular, web-based translation platform. They support open source projects by making their solutions free for any FOSS project, and have long been the translation solution for our primary upstream, Xfce. With their simple GitHub integration, we were able to quickly and easily move and have our translations automatically syncing in both directions.

To find all of our projects needing translators and to sign up, just visit our public page: https://www.transifex.com/xubuntu/public/

Okay, Great! Now What?

We encourage everybody to join us in breaking in our new platforms. Here’s how you can get started:

  • Watch and star our projects! Watching a project will keep you in the loop for the latest changes. Starring a project will make it easier to find in the future, and help you discover similar projects.
  • Fork our projects! Forking a repository makes a copy under your own profile. Make some changes and submit a pull request to include them in Xubuntu.
  • Join the translations team! Xubuntu is used all around the world. Help us localize our software and documentation to make a global impact.

Don’t know where to begin? Checkout our Get Involved page to learn how you can contribute to our Artwork, Development, Documentation, Marketing, and Quality Assurance. Here’s some links to help you get to the right place:

Xubuntu 20.04 released!

April 23, 2020 — , —

The Xubuntu team is happy to announce the immediate release of Xubuntu 20.04. Xubuntu 20.04, codenamed Focal Fossa, is a long-term support (LTS) release and will be supported for 3 years, until April 2023.

The Xubuntu team has been hard at work for the last six months of this development cycle improving both the Xfce desktop environment and the Xubuntu user experience following our 19.10 release, which introduced Xfce 4.14 for the first time. We were thrilled by the response to the Ubuntu Testing Week, which helped us make 20.04 another great and stable release.

The final release images are available as torrents and direct downloads from xubuntu.org/download/.

As the main server might be busy in the first few days after the release, we recommend using the torrents if possible.

Xubuntu Core, our minimal installation option, is available to download from unit193.net/xubuntu/core/ [torrent, magnet]. Find out more about Xubuntu Core here.

We’d like to thank everybody who contributed to this release of Xubuntu!

If you are upgrading from Xubuntu 18.04, check out this What’s New video.

Highlights and Known Issues

Highlights

  • A brand new dark theme was added, Greybird-dark, complementing the default Greybird theme. Both themes are available to snap and flatpak apps.
  • Six community wallpapers are bundled from winners of the Community Wallpaper Contest.
  • With the EoL (End of Life) of Python 2, we no longer ship it by default. Additionally, apt-offline and pidgin-libnotify are no longer included.

Known Issues

  • Users with AMD graphics may experience significant graphical issues and should consider waiting until the release of 20.04.1 later this year.
  • Window decorations are not displayed with tightvncserver. Users depending on VNC are advised to wait until 20.04.1 or use an alternative window manager for VNC until this is resolved.

For more obscure known issues, information on affecting bugs, bug fixes, and a list of new package versions, please refer to the Xubuntu Release Notes.

The main Ubuntu Release Notes cover both many of the other packages we carry and more generic issues.

Support

For support with the release, navigate to Help & Support for a complete list of methods to get help.

Xubuntu 20.04 Community Wallpaper Contest Winners

April 1, 2020 — —

The Xubuntu team are happy to announce the results of the 20.04 community wallpaper contest!

We want to send out a huge thanks to every contestant. Each contest becomes more and more successful. For the 16.04 contest, we had 92 submissions; For 18.04 there were 162; and this time around there was an incredible 237 submissions! Great work! All of the submissions are browsable on the 20.04 contest page at contest.xubuntu.org.

Without further ado, here are the winners:

  • Untitled by Luca Reichmann (CC-BY 4.0)
  • “Sunset” by Kacperu (CC-BY 4.0)
  • Untitled by Anna Ceccarelli (CC-BY 4.0)
  • “Lighthouse” by Dominik Czernetzky (CC-BY 4.0)
  • Untitled by Nesimi Acarca (CC-BY 4.0)
  • “Campos de Castilla” by David Arias Gutierrez (CC-BY 4.0)

Note that the images listed above are resized for the website. For the full size images, make sure you have the package xubuntu-community-wallpapers installed. The package is installed by default in all new Xubuntu 20.04 installations.

With Beta Freeze now in effect, these wallpapers may take a little longer than usual to land in the daily images. Keep a look out!

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