14 DAY TRIAL // As we've reported earlier, Canonical is preparing to announce the immediate availability for download and testing of the first Beta release for its Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu GNOME, Ubuntu Kylin, Kubuntu, as well as Ubuntu MATE, which became an official release this week.
While you can already download Lubuntu 15.04 Beta 1 or just read our in-depth report and view the screenshot tour, in this piece of article we took the Xubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) Beta 1 release for a test drive and created a quick and painless screenshot tour for your viewing pleasure. This release is powered by Linux kernel 3.18.0 and includes many packages from the forthcoming Xfce 4.12 desktop environment.
“This is the first beta towards the final release in April. The first beta release also marks the end of the period to land new features in the form of Ubuntu Feature Freeze. This means any new updates to packages should be bug fixes only, the Xubuntu team is committed to fixing as many of the bugs as possible before the final release,” was stated in the announcement.
It features a gorgeous theme and a beautiful wallpaper
To our surprise, the Xubuntu 15.04 Beta 1 features a gorgeous theme and a beautiful wallpaper. The Thunar file manager gets improved keyboard navigation, light-locker’s settings are now handled by xfce4-power-manager, an intelligent hiding mode has been added to the Xfce Panel, and the Xfce window manager received window previews and support for corner-tiling and CSD client-side decorations).
Moreover, the LightDM GTK Greeter Settings utility has been added, improved support for multiple monitor was implemented in the Display dialog, and the Appearance dialog from the Control Panel now displays previews of icon themes and GTK themes’ palettes. Also, the Albatross, Orion, and Bluebird themes have been removed from this release.
Xubuntu 15.04 Beta 1 uses many Xfce 4.12 packages
Among the applications included in Xubuntu 15.04 Beta 1, we can mention Firefox 34.0, Thunderbird 31.4.0, Thunar 1.6.5, Catfish 1.2.2.1, LightDM GTK Greeter 2.0.0, Menulibre 2.0.6, Mugshot 0.2.5.1, xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin 1.4.3, xfce4-power-manager 1.4.2, as well as various components from the development version of the upcoming Xfce 4.12 desktop environment.
Download Xubuntu 15.04 Beta 1 right now from Softpedia. We remind everyone who wants to test this release of Xubuntu that it is unstable and it is not recommended to be deployed on production machines. Live CD ISO images are available for both 32 and 64-bit computer platforms.
