14 DAY TRIAL // The upcoming Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn) was just announced a week ago by Mark Shuttleworth, and now the developers have published the release schedule for the upcoming distribution, although the release dates are not yet completely certain.
The fact that Canonical announces the exact launch dates for the next Ubuntu version days after the development has started is one of the strong points of the distribution. There are very few teams out there capable of delivering a new operating system on time, and Canonical is one of them.
Once the release date has been established, it will not be broken. Until now, not even a single release has been delayed and the Ubuntu developers managed to always ship the operating system on the day that was announced six months before.
The release schedule for the Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn) has been announced, but it's not all about the final date. It also sets the launches for the intermediary dates, which are still followed by some of the flavors, like Kubuntu and Xubuntu for example.
“It'll look pretty familiar to most, as being nearly identical to the 13.10 schedule, but with a few bits shuffled to match what we did in 14.04, and with an extra week added to get us back on a half-year schedule. If anyone has any major complaints, or wants to bikeshed about moving a date, let me know,” said Canonical's Adam Conrad.
Ubuntu no longer gets development versions before launch, with the exception of a single Beta late in the cycle. Users can test the operating system because a Daily build is available at all times. Some of the other flavors chose to stick with the old release pattern of Alphas and Betas.
The first Alpha build of the flavors based on Ubuntu 14.10 will arrive on June 26, the second Alpha will be available on July 31, the first Beta will be ready on August 28, and the final Beta will be released on September 25. Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn) is expected to arrive on October 16.
The release schedule for Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn) is not finalized and some of the dates might change, but it's very likely that the launch will hover around the October 16 date.
Canonical has already released the Daily builds for Ubuntu 14.10. They are pretty much identical with Ubuntu 14.04, except for the fact that they are less stable and there is nothing to be seen, at least for a couple of months.