The Xubuntu team is proud to announce the Alpha3 release of Xubuntu 12.10, Quantal Quetzal!
We don’t have any major changes from the Alpha2, but there are a few known issues you should be aware of:
There are no alternate images for this release
The image is still oversized for 700M CDs (see related bugs: 1028486, 1029552), please use a USB stick, DVD or other method for installing these oversized images
All applications using Gtk3 currently have some mismatched colors in menus and buttons because of a bug in the Unico engine (1016713). A fix has been applied upstream but has not yet made it to Xubuntu.
The installer locks when attempting to do the “Install Xubuntu 12.10 alongside…” auto-resize (1027461), manual method for editing partitions and resizing works
Visit the download page to give it a try. Be sure to report your testing results to help the Xubuntu developers – see the ISO testing tracker. Bugs can be reported in Launchpad. If you are looking for support), please see the #ubuntu+1 IRC channel on irc.freenode.net. Before testing this release, make sure to review the release notes.
In the past year the Xubuntu project has gone from zero to four social media outlets for sharing our project updates, news and discussions. All of these resources are linked at the bottom of every page on Xubuntu.org.
The most exceptional thing about this experience is that not only did three of the four outlets already exist as fan-created sites, all three of these admins where delighted to add a member of the Xubuntu leadership team as an admin and have their page made Official by the project. As our intention was to not only reach more users through these resources, but also to involve more people in the project, for each of these resources we’ve asked them to keep on running the groups as they used to.
This was a page created by Knez Nenc and diligently maintained with not only Xubuntu.org news, but other news related to news around Xubuntu’s default applications and reviews about Xubuntu.
Laurent M. Vizcaïne has been maintaining this Xubuntu Users group on LinkedIn, which provides a professional forum for Xubuntu users to share questions and experiences.
Our most recent addition, Ton van Z syncs the latest Xubuntu news to this Facebook page for followers on Facebook, which also allows users to post notes on the “wall” for discussion with others.
So thank you to all these admins for their excellent work and enthusiasm for cooperation that exemplify the spirit of our community.
Are you running a fan page on another social media outlet that you’d like to see become an official resource for the Xubuntu project in that space? Please get in touch by emailing me, Elizabeth Krumbach, at lyz@ubuntu.com.
The Xubuntu team is proud to announce the Alpha2 release of Xubuntu 12.10, Quantal Quetzal!
Updates for this release include
Xfce 4.10
Updated applications, including GIMP 2.8 and gThumb 3.0.1
In addition, starting from the Quantal cycle, Xubuntu will not support Wubi installations.
Visit the download page to give it a try. Be sure to report your testing results to help the Xubuntu developers – see the ISO testing tracker. Bugs can be reported in Launchpad. If you are looking for support), please see the #ubuntu+1 IRC channel on irc.freenode.net. Before testing this release, make sure to review the release notes.
Known issues
All applications using Gtk3 currently have some mismatched colors in menus and buttons because of a bug in the Unico engine (Bug:1016713).
While we’ve been using “Greybird” as our default theme for a few releases now, I’ve continuously worked on it. The goal was not only to ensure the quality of the theme in terms of a flawless Xfce4 and Gtk3 performance and extras like supporting Unity or Compiz, but also to visually keep it up-to-date.
More contrast
After having had a tendency to soften colors and contrasts, I’ve decided to take a (bold?) step and counter this tendency. This is why the changes for the upcoming Quantal release might seem more drastic then between the releases before. After playing with it for a while, I realized that going this direction half-way wouldn’t work well, so while I’m aware that there might be quite a bit of whining (partly because people may miss the “old Greybird”, partly because change always provokes whining) I really hope that many and most of you will fall in love with the changes the way I did while working on it.
Built around Gtk2
Since the Xfce developer community decided a while ago not to port their (and consequently: our) desktop to Gtk3 in the next release (4.12) and instead to postpone that until performance and memory issues with Gtk3 would be fixed (keeping my fingers crossed), I built the refresh of Greybird around Gtk2. As this will be the main platform for our users’ desktop experience, I’ll try my best to port all the changes to Gtk3 as perfectly as possible, so that hopefully no-one will notice whether an app is Gtk2 or Gtk3 (because I firmly believe that users shouldn’t have to care about things like that).
So, without much further ado and blathering, here goes a representational compilation for our Greybird refresh.
Screenshot compilation of Greybird’s refresh
Testing
If any of you feel like testing this, feel free to download the tarball @github or git-clone the repository to easily stay up to date.
Feedback
Constructive feedback – either via the Mailing list or on IRC – is always appreciated!
The author of this post is Simon Steinbeiß, who is the Xubuntu Artwork Lead. In addition to Xubuntu, he works extensively on the Shimmer Project and the Xfce Design SIG.
It is the time to submit your ideas on how to make Xubuntu better: the brainstorming phase for the 12.10 roadmap is on now! It is also a good time to start contributing, since every item needs an assignee – without assignees, even good ideas will not be approved – thus not implemented.
Everybody is welcome to submit ideas to the roadmap brainstorm until the end of week 19 (13th of May). To do this, edit the table in the section New features, major bugs, improvements to community on the roadmap page for Quantal. Please add new ideas to the end of the table so it is easier to follow submissions.
If you are willing to implement a feature too (or work on an item when “implementing” is not applicable), you can add yourself to the assignee field on any item with no assignee, including your own submission. Please note that the default application specifications will need assignees as well. Feel free to add yourself as an assignee to any of these too, even if they had an assignee already – multiple assignees will most probably lead to better objectivity.
If you set yourself as assignee to any item and are not an active member in the Xubuntu community, please send an email to the Xubuntu development mailing list to introduce yourself quickly. Unless we hear from assignees before the end of week 20 (20th of May), ideas will not be approved anyway. Approving will happen during week 20 by the Xubuntu team.
The process to create the roadmap for Xubuntu 12.10
To read more about approving and the roadmap phases generally, refer to the Roadmap phases or refer to the partly simplified infographic above.
