Ubuntu GNOME 17.04 released with latest GNOME 3.24

The Ubuntu GNOME team has announced release of Ubuntu GNOME 17.04 Zesty Zapus, latest stable release of Ubuntu based official community GNU/Linux distribution featuring GNOME Desktop environment. For the first time in history, Ubuntu GNOME is shipping latest release of GNOME Desktop available till date.

The future of Ubuntu GNOME as a separate distributions was in a dilemma, after the announcement made by Mark Shuttleworth. Mr Mark Shuttleworth, founder and CEO of Canonical, the team behind Ubuntu had announced the decision to stop investing on the idea of convergence and Unity shell. He also declared that, beginning from 18.04 LTS Ubuntu will be shipping GNOME as default desktop environment. This decision questions the need of Ubuntu GNOME as a separate distributions.

Due to change in Ubuntu desktop, Ubuntu GNOME team has decided to merge their resources and efforts with Ubuntu team to make a reliable desktop operating system. Which means, Ubuntu GNOME will be shutting down as a separate distribution.

Some of the key highlights of Ubuntu GNOME 17.04 Zesty Zapus can be summarized as follows:

• Ubuntu GNOME 17.04 proudly features GNOME 3.24.
• GNOME 3.24 introduces Night Light which can automatically reduce the blue light emitted by your computer screen at sunset or whenever you choose.
• The Calendar app now has a Week view.
• For stability, the Evolution stack is still at its GNOME 3.22 versions.
• A few apps are still at their GNOME 3.20 versions: the Files app nautilus and the Terminal app
• The Software app has been updated to 3.22 and now supports GNOME Shell extensions and Flatpak.
• Flatpak 0.8 is now installed by default. Ubuntu Snap (snapd) is still installed. Both Flatpak and Ubuntu Snap are alternative app installation frameworks.
• The chrome-gnome-shell system helper is installed by default.
• The tracker search indexing engine is now sandboxed.
• Several apps are no longer installed for new installs, but will not be automatically removed from existing installs: brasero (a CD burning app), evolution (email suite), seahorse (GPG and SSH key management app), xdiagnose (display troubleshooting app). These apps are still available for install in the Software app.
• gnome-icon-theme is no longer installed for new installs. The default icons have been provided by the Adwaita icon theme instead for the past 2 years. This might cause issues for some older apps that still try to use old stock icon names. If this affects an app you use, please file a bug and install gnome-icon-theme as a workaround.
• gconf is no longer installed by default since it has long been superseded by gsettings. Note that statistics and preferences for the aisleriot card games will be reset when upgrading to 17.04.
• The brand new GNOME Recipes app is available for install but is not installed by default.
• GNOME Games (gnome-games-app) is also available for install.

For more information see release announcement and release notes published by Ubuntu GNOME team.

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Comparing Ubuntu 16.10 flavors : Ubuntu, Ubuntu GNOME, Kubuntu and Xubuntu

It is always interesting to see comparison between different operating systems. To cherish this interest, hecticgeek portal has published a comparison of different Ubuntu flavors, Ubuntu, Ubuntu GNOME, Kubuntu and Xubuntu. This comparison mainly looks over performance, stability and hardware recognition of each flavor. The user is not focusing other aspects like new features, software availability, ..etc as it more likely to find in usual reviews.

Summarizing different factors considered during comparison, all flavors are taking almost comparable time to complete boot process. In terms of memory usage while loading desktop, Kubuntu is outperforming other flavors, even the s called lightweight desktop environment, Xfce. While Ubuntu is slightly doing better considering power usage at idle state.

CREDIT : hecticgeek

Except for Xubuntu 16.10, I also made sure not to make any tweaks or changes to the each operating system yet again to preserve the accuracy of the data (Boot-Up Times, Memory Usage, Power Usage, System Responsiveness and Shutdown Delay mainly), except that for measuring the memory usage I added a shortcut for System Monitor (of each desktop environment) to the taskbar, so that I can avoid opening it through the System Menu which could’ve otherwise increased the memory usage thus negatively effecting the accuracy of the memory usage reading. Whenever possible, I also made sure to disable the update manager from searching for updates for the same reason I just explained. And, except under the Power Usage and System Responsiveness tests, I took 5 samples of all the other tests for coming up with the average values as well.

You can read complete comparative review in hecticgeek portal.

Final beta release is available for Ubuntu 16.10 and 6 community flavors

The Ubuntu team has proudly announced availability of Ubuntu 16.10 beta 2, second and final development beta release of upcoming stable Ubuntu 16.10 Yakety Yak. This release also includes Ubuntu cloud and server editions and also 6 other community flavors namely, Kubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, Lubuntu, Ubuntu Studio, Ubuntu GNOME and Ubuntu Kylin.

Following the tradition of ubuntu releases, this release also ships greatest and latest open source technologies to provide an easy to use, highly configurable and powerful computer operating system. The team was/is working hard to fix bugs in previous development releases and to integrate new features, so that users can be offered with top class experience.

Though beta releases are expected to be almost free from severe bugs, it is not recommended to use it in production servers. This development release can be seen as a feature freeze-release prior to Ubuntu 16.10 final, which is expected to be released on 13th October 2016. Meanwhile, you may experiment with release and report bugs in launchpad to support the project in it's cause to ship a reasonably stable operating system. Before reporting the bug, you may have to ensure that, your installation is completely updated and the bug is not fixed by recent updates.

The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the final beta release of Ubuntu6.10 Desktop, Server, and Cloud products.

Codenamed "Yakkety Yak", 16.10 continues Ubuntu's proud traditionf integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into aigh-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution.  The team has been hard atork through this cycle, introducing new features and fixing bugs.

This beta release includes images from not only the Ubuntu Desktop,erver, and Cloud products, but also the Kubuntu, Lubuntu,buntu GNOME, Ubuntu Kylin, Ubuntu MATE, and Ubuntu Studiolavours.

The beta images are known to be reasonably free of showstopper CD buildr installer bugs, while representing a very recent snapshot of 16.10hat should be representative of the features intended to ship with theinal release expected on October 13th, 2016.

For more information, you can read release announcement published in Ubuntu mailing list.

First beta releases are available for 6 Ubuntu 16.10 community flavors

Ubuntu 16.10 is gradually approaching it's expected delivery date. As a part of development cycle, 6 Ubuntu community flavors has announced availability of first beta release prior to upcoming 16.10 stable release. These community flavors includes Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu GNOME, Ubuntu Kylin, Ubuntu MATE and Ubuntu Studio.

The beta 1 release includes several updates those are ready for wider testing. However, being a development release, it is highly likely to find some bugs in this release. In release announcement, Ubuntu developers also encourages to use latest daily images before reporting any bug as it possible that the bug may be fixed in a newer daily image.

Beta 1 includes a number of software updates that are ready for wider testing. These images are still under development, 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 Yakkety Yak. 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 16.10 the best Ubuntu release yet. Always ensure your system is up to date before reporting bugs.

For more information and download links, you can see official release announcement and release announcement published by Ubuntu MATE project.

Ubuntu GNOME 16.04.1 released

The Ubuntu GNOME team has announced release of Ubuntu GNOME 16.04.1, first point release in Ubuntu GNOME 16.04.x LTS series. Ubuntu GNOME is an official community distribution based on Ubuntu and it features vanilla GNOME desktop.

Ubuntu 16.04.1 comes with all updated packages since after availability of base release Ubuntu 16.04. Also, it fixes all problems which were reported in base release and this is considered as first stable release in 16.04 LTS family.

As per tradition of Ubuntu LTS distributions, Ubuntu will provide option to migrate from previous LTS release only after release of first point release in latest LTS series. This is to ensure that major bugs are not introduced to LTS users. So, by this convention, Ubuntu GNOME 14.04.x LTS will get provision to migrate to 16.04.x series.

The Ubuntu GNOME team is proud to announce the release of Ubuntu GNOME 16.04.1 LTS. This update is recommended for all users. 

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 GNOME 16.04 LTS.

Users of Ubuntu GNOME 14.04 LTS will soon be offered an automatic upgrade to 16.04.1 via Update Manager.

For further details, see release announcement and release notes shared by Ubuntu GNOME team.

Download Ubuntu GNOME 16.04.1

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Comparing Ubuntu 16.04 flavors - Vanilla, Kubuntu and GNOME Editions

It was two weeks back Ubuntu team announced release of Ubuntu 16.04 official flavors which included Vanilla Ubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Ubuntu Kylin, Ubuntu Studio ..etc.

The hecticgeek has published a comparative review of three official Ubuntu flavors Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Ubuntu GNOME. This review examines different aspects of these three distributions including performance, stability, usability and responsiveness.

So after reviewing Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, and especially since this is a LTS (Long Term Support) release, I decided to come up with yet another Ubuntu 16.04 LTS flavors comparison that involves Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Ubuntu GNOME because they come with the 3 main desktop environments of GNU/Linux: Unity, KDE Plasma and GNOME.

But just like the previous one of its kind, this too will be based on the performance aspect and the stability of the each operating system, and I won’t talk about the new features of the desktop or the applications. But as a general introduction, all three flavors use the Kernel 4.4 & Xorg 1.18.3. Ubuntu’s Unity desktop features the version 7.4.0, Kubuntu features the KDE Plasma 5.5.5 (and KDE Applications 15.12), and Ubuntu GNOME features GNOME 3.18 release.

Read complete review in hecticgeek's portal.