Ubuntu Unity 23.10 'Mantic Minotaur' has now been released. Ubuntu Unity 23.10 continues to use Unity 7.7, which has undergone maintenance. Our primary focus for this release has been to gradually migrate away from Nux in UnityX, which is progressing well. Nux is holding us back from offering Wayland support without Xwayland. We were also pre-occupied with adding support for CUPS 2.0 in Unity (printing), which has now been pushed back by Ubuntu to 24.04. A Lomiri variant of Ubuntu Unity is also in progress, and was supposed to be released today. Unfortunately, some app launcher-related bugs held us back, and we’re unable to make it available for download with the release announcement, but we hope to be able to do so within the next few days.
This release is meant to be evolutionary, not revolutionary. We are still working out which applications and features work best in the overall educational ecosystem. As always, feedback is appreciated. New apps: Startup Disk Creator: This will help users and administrators make an easy USB drive from a .iso image of any Ubuntu flavor. GNOME Videos: Video player. GNOME Music: Music player. Backup: Backup utility. Basic256: Teaches students the BASIC programming language (@eeickmeyer, our technical lead, first learned to program in this language when he was 10 years old on a Commodore VIC-20!) Extension Manager: An easy way to add and administer GNOME Shell extensions. OpenBoard: A whiteboard application for teachers. Mnemosyne: A flashcard application. Convertall: A powerful standalone unit converter (Bonus: GNOME Shell can also convert units, just ask it!)
MATE Desktop has been updated to 1.26.2 with a selection of bugs fixes and minor improvements to associated components. caja-rename 23.10.1-1 has been ported from Python to C. libmatemixer 1.26.0-2+deb12u1 resolves heap corruption and application crashes when removing USB audio devices. mate-desktop 1.26.2-1 improves portals support. mate-notification-daemon 1.26.1-1 fixes several memory leaks. mate-system-monitor 1.26.0-5 now picks up libexec files from /usr/libexec. mate-session-manager 1.26.1-2 set LIBEXECDIR to /usr/libexec/ for correct interaction with mate-system-monitor. mate-user-guide 1.26.2-1 is a new upstream release. mate-utils 1.26.1-1 fixes several memory leaks.
This is a standard release supported for 9 months packed full of all sorts of new capabilities. If you want a well tested and longer term support then our 22.04 LTS version is supported for 3 years. The new release has many new core updates as well as v10.8 version of budgie itself: The kernel is v6.5. GNOME 45 stack with budgie’s new magpie window manager. v1.7 of our very own budgie-extras giving you a whole host of optional ways to customise your experience. A brand new ISO utilising our very own budgie-desktop-installer. We are really pleased with this fantastic new way of installing budgie, working very closely with brilliant Canonical developers. We also inherit hundreds of stability, bug-fixes and optimizations made to the underlying Ubuntu repositories.
This version features Plasma 5.27, delivering a smoother and more user-friendly experience. It also includes updates to KDE Apps, Firefox as the default browser, and LibreOffice in the full installation. Kubuntu 23.10 supports a Plasma Wayland session for testing and introduces Flatpaks with installation instructions. However, there are some known issues, including problems with the installer and live session. The release is supported for nine months, and users can provide feedback via Facebook or Twitter.
IPFire 2.27 - Core Update 180 has been released, featuring an updated toolchain with glibc 2.38, GCC 13.2.0, and binutils 2.41 for improved hardware support and security. Notably, support for ReiserFS has been deprecated in the Linux kernel, impacting IPFire users. This update also includes various bug and security fixes, a patch for a cURL heap buffer overflow, and numerous package updates. In addition, there are cleanup efforts to remove unused functionality from network scripts and monthly rotation of wtmp files. Overall, this release represents a significant step in advancing IPFire as a firewall. Users interested in supporting the project are encouraged to donate.
The 5.5.5 release includes updates to the Kernel, Limine boot-loader, and the TV Panel. New process utilities, iotop-py and Htop, have been compiled in OE. The Linux kernel is now at version 5.15.135, and the Limine boot-loader has been updated to version 4.20231006.0. The release marks a return to NetworkManager and an update to the Global IP TV Panel to MK5. Additionally, a fix for the ROX right-click menu is included in this release. These changes were made on various dates in October 2023.
For Bookworm, we are using a compositor called Wayfire. This uses a standard Wayland library called wlroots, which is used by several modern Wayland compositors. And because Wayfire works a lot better as a Wayland compositor on Raspberry Pi than Mutter did, Wayland is now the default mode of operation for the desktop. (With one caveat - for now, Wayland is only the default on Raspberry Pi 4 and 5. The performance of Wayfire on earlier platforms is still being optimised, so for now they will continue to run the old X11 display server and the Openbox window manager, but at some point these platforms will also be switched to Wayfire.) If you boot Raspberry Pi OS on a Pi 4 or 5, you will now get a Wayfire desktop.
Sparky 2023.10, released on October 11, 2023, introduces several updates and improvements. It features Linux kernel 6.5 as the default, includes updated packages from Debian 'trixie' and Sparky 'sisters' testing repositories, and boasts new additions like the rpi-imager utility to all images. The release also incorporates various desktop environments, such as LXQt, KDE Plasma, MATE, Xfce, and MinimalGUI (Openbox) and MinimalCLI (text mode). Notable software updates include GCC 13.2.0 as the default compiler, Firefox 115.3.0 ESR, Thunderbird 115.3.1, and various desktop environment updates. If you have Sparky rolling installed, updating is sufficient, and a reinstallation is unnecessary. The live user password remains "live." You can find the new semi-rolling ISO images on the download page.
bluestar-linux-6.5.6-2023.10.08-x86_64 has been released and is available for download.