You can download all Ubuntu flavors from Softpedia

Aug 29, 2014 08:10 GMT  ·  By

The Ubuntu 14.10 Beta 1 (Utopic Unicorn) flavors have been released and users can now download and test them properly.

As it was to be expected, not all of the Ubuntu flavors have been released. The only participants to this new development release are Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu GNOME, UbuntuKylin, Xubuntu and the Ubuntu Cloud images.

Canonical is no longer releasing intermediary Ubuntu versions for quite a while now, with the exception of the final Beta, which arrives right before the official release. In any case, the Ubuntu development cycle is pretty transparent and users can download the daily Ubuntu images anytime they wish and this really negates the need for any kind of Beta release. This looks very much like the rolling release model, although it's only applied for the development cycle.

"Pre-releases of the Utopic Unicorn are *not* encouraged for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even frequent breakage. They are, however, recommended for Ubuntu flavor developers and those who want to help in testing, reporting and fixing bugs as we work towards getting this release ready. Beta 1 includes a number of software updates that are ready for wider testing. This is quite an early set of images, so you should expect some bugs," reads the official announcement.

You have to keep in mind that Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn) will be supported for a period of only nine months and it will be the host of numerous and important changes. If you're not interested in trying something new, you might want to keep Ubuntu 14.04 LTS in place. You will also have the option to upgrade from one version to another.

A long-term support version might not be the best place to introduce a new feature, so the devs need a testing ground for all kinds of technologies and new packages. For example, this is just the kind of version for the introduction of a new display manager like Mir or for a new version of Unity. So far, nothing out of the ordinary has been proposed for Ubuntu 14.10 and it looks like it's going to be a regular release, with fixed bugs, a new kernel, and maybe a couple of new features.

In fact, you can download the 14.10 Beta 1 images for Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu GNOME, Ubuntu Kylin, and Cloud from Softpedia and Canonical, respectively.

Remember that this is a development version and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended for testing purposes only.