14 DAY TRIAL // Ubuntu GNOME 14.04 LTS Beta 1 (Trusty Tahr) has been released alongside the other flavors, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and Edubuntu. This is not a large update, if we compare it with the previous Alpha release, but it does feature some important updates.
Even if it doesn’t seem from the release notes the Ubuntu GNOME 14.04 LTS Beta 1 (Trusty Tahr) is a very important release, you have to keep in mind that this is the first Long Term Support version for Ubuntu GNOME and they have to do things just right.
Long Term Support means that the developers will continued to provide updates for the distribution for very longtime. In the case of Ubuntu GNOME it’s probably five years, although a consensus hasn’t been reached yet. They can’t rush the development process and they have to provide the most stable software possible.
This is the reason why Ubuntu GNOME will be using GNOME Shell 3.10 and a lot of the packages from the GNOME 3.12 release. The fact is that the development for Ubuntu GNOME 14.04 LTS has started quite a while ago and GNOME 3.12 will not be out in time for them to adopt it.
Even more, the base distribution, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, also uses packages from GNOME 3.10, which make things quite clear for the Ubuntu GNOME developers.
Also, the gnome-weather, gnome-maps, gnome-photos and gnome-music packages are available in the official repositories, but they won’t be available on the final ISO.
Ubuntu GNOME users will also get the GNOME Classic session, which will help them adjust if they are still missing the old GNOME 2 interface. Just select GNOME Classic from the login screen.
As you can imagine, there are still some problems with the GNOME flavor of Ubuntu. For example, the Accounts menu item in Empathy opens the Ubuntu Online Accounts dialog instead of the Empathy Accounts dialog, the CTRL +SHIFT+ALT+R key combination for screen recording is not working, you can’t resize the partitions in the installer, nvidia-prime is not working with GDM, and a few others.
Check the announcement for more details about this release. Download Ubuntu GNOME 14.04 LTS Beta 2 (Trusty Tahr) right now from Softpedia.
Remember that this is a development version and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended for testing purposes only.
Ubuntu GNOME 14.04 LTS Beta 1 (Trusty Tahr) is expected to land on April 17, but a second Beta will be released by the end of March.
