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.
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 on GitHub (code, marketing materials, and more)
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.
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.
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!
We’re delighted to announce that we’re participating in an ‘Ubuntu Testing Week’ from April 2nd to April 8th with other flavors in the Ubuntu family. On April 2nd, we’ll be releasing the beta release of Xubuntu 20.04 LTS, after halting all new changes to its features, user interface and documentation. And between April 2nd and the final release on April 23rd, all efforts by the Xubuntu team and community are focused on ISO testing, bug reporting, and fixing bugs.
So, we highly encourage you to join the community by downloading the daily ISO image and trying it out, though you are welcome to start from today. There are a variety of ways that you can help test the release, including trying out the various testcases for live sessions and installations on the ISO tracker (Xubuntu is found at the bottom of the page), which take less than 30 minutes to complete (example 1, example 2, example 3 below).
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 running it in the live session from a USB, SD Card, or DVD, so you can also test if your hardware works correctly. There are a number of software like etcher and Gnome Disks that can copy the ISO to a USB Drive and SD Card. We encourage those that are willing, to install it either in a VM or on physical hardware (it requires at least 6GB of harddisk space) and use it continuously for a few days, as more bugs can be reported this way.
If you find a bug in the installer, you can file it against ubiquity, or if you find a bug not in an application but in the live session from the booting to the shutdown, you can file it against casper. If you can’t figure out which package to file a bug against after watching the video above, then please file it with the Xubuntu Bugs Team.
Please test apps that you regularly use, so you can identify bugs and regressions that should be reported. 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 by running the command below in the folder containing the ISO, after right-click on the folder and select ‘Open in Terminal’ from the context menu (example).
We hope that you will join the community in making Xubuntu 20.04 a success, and hope that you will also take time to also test out the other Ubuntu flavors (Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu, Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu Kylin, Ubuntu MATE, and Ubuntu Studio), as we will all benefit from that. We look forward to your contributions, your live chatting and for your return to future testing sessions. Happy bug hunting.
All submissions must adhere to the Terms and Guidelines, including specifics about subject matter, image resolution and attribution.
After the submission deadline, the Xubuntu team will pick 6 winners from all submissions for inclusion on the Xubuntu 20.04 ISO, and will also be available to other Xubuntu version users as a xubuntu-community-wallpaper package. The winners will also receive some Xubuntu stickers.
Any questions?
Please join #xubuntu-devel on Freenode for assistance or email the Xubuntu developer mailing list if you have any problems with your submission.
