14 DAY TRIAL // Ubuntu GNOME 14.04 LTS Beta 2 (Trusty Tahr) has been made available by its developers featuring a small number of changes and updates. It follows the release of the Ubuntu base (with the only beta in this release cycle) and Kubuntu.
This is a very important event for the Ubuntu GNOME developers because 14.04 (Trusty Tahr) is their first LTS version as an official Ubuntu flavor, and this means that they need to be very careful not to mess anything up.
Unfortunately for Ubuntu GNOME, the release of GNOME 3.12 has arrived a little too late for the integration in their distribution. They explained the situation in detail and they can only hope that the community will understand.
Unlike the Ubuntu 14.04 LTS base and Kubuntu 14.04 LTS, there aren't many changes from the previous release. One of the most important announcements involves the LTS period, which has been extended to three years.
“We’re preparing Ubuntu GNOME 14.04 LTS, the Trusty Tahr, for distribution in 17th of April 2014. With this final Beta (Beta 2) release, you can see what we are trying out in preparation for our next stable version,” reads the official announcement.
A number of other features and changes have been implemented. GNOME Shell 3.10 has been included by default (this is a great relief for users who thought that they would have to settle with GNOME Shell 3.8), many other apps have now been updated to GNOME 3.10, gnome-weather, gnome-maps, gnome-photos, and gnome-music (all new GNOME apps) are all available to install from the official repositories, and the GNOME Classic session has been included.
As you can expect, there are quite a few problems remaining, but they should be fixed in time for the final release. According to the developers, nvidia-prime won't work when using GDM (Gnome display manager), GNOME Shell crashes with SIGABRT in g_thread_abort(), users can't select which drive to resize when using “install alongside” in Trusty, GDM doesn't work in multiple displays with the NVIDIA driver (nvidia-331), and the GNOME Shell desktop is just a white blank screen after switching users.
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 (Trusty Tahr) is expected to land on April 17 and will feature three year of LTS support.