14 DAY TRIAL // A few minutes ago, on January 4, 2015, the maintainers of the Lubuntu operating system, a lightweight, official edition of Ubuntu Linux based on the LXDE desktop environment, were happy to announce the release of Lubuntu 16.04 LTS Alpha 1 (Xenial Xerus).
The first Alpha build of Lubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) is now available for download and testing (see the download link at the end of the article), and unfortunately, it still ships with the GTK-based LXDE (Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment) desktop environment.
It would appear the Lubuntu developers don't yet want to rebase the operating system on the Qt-based LXQt desktop environment, the next-gen version of LXDE, because it is still in development. And considering the fact that Xenial Xerus is an LTS (Long-Term Support) release, we won't be seeing LXQt in Lubuntu 16.04.
"Hi folks, the 1st milestone release of what will be our 16.04 LTS is now out in the wild. I’m only posting the release notes link, as it is important you know of issues (none are computer critical) so that you don’t waste your time reporting an issue we already know of," reads today's announcement.
Lubuntu won't ship with Mir
Earlier today, Lubuntu developer Rafael Laguna made a joke on the project's Facebook page about Lubuntu shipping Mir with LXQt and the fact that the next major version of the operating system will be a rolling-release one. Of course, the developer posted "Happy Fools Day" later in the post.
Those of you who would like to take Lubuntu 16.04 LTS Alpha 1 (Xenial Xerus) for a test drive can download the Desktop or Alternate Live ISO images for 64-bit, 32-bit or PowerPC (PPC) hardware architectures right now from Softpedia. Please keep in mind, though, that this is a pre-release version, not suitable for production use.