14 DAY TRIAL // Lubuntu maintainer and LXQt developer Simon Quigley is reporting on some of the upcoming highlights of the Lubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) operating system, due for release later this year on October 19, 2017.
We reported a few weeks ago on the availability for public testing of the first Lubuntu 17.10 images with the LXQt desktop environment, which are currently dubbed Lubuntu Next. These are now shipping with the latest LXQt 0.11.1 desktop environment, but an LXDE flavor is also out so LXQt won't become the default, yet.
We're getting closer and closer to the first Alpha milestone of the Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) operating system, and Lubuntu is participating in the early testing phase as an opt-in flavor. The Alpha 1 is expected later this month, on June 29, 2017, so we thought you should be aware of some changes in Lubuntu.
Lubuntu 17.10 Alpha 1 dropping GNOME MPlayer for GNOME MPV
The biggest change of the upcoming Lubuntu 17.10 Alpha 1 release is the replacement of GNOME MPlayer with GNOME MPV as default media player, and it also looks like Lubuntu's network management stack will be moved to dhcpcd, a DHCP and DHCPv6 client.
Lubuntu 17.10 Alpha 1 will also likely launch with both an LXQt and LXDE flavor, so if you don't like LXQt, you'll still be able to use your beloved LXDE desktop environment. Best of all, the Lubuntu team will ask the community which apps they think should be included by default in the final Lubuntu Next 17.10 release.
"As part of this release, submit a call for community feedback regarding applications included by default, benchmarking, etc.," says Simon Quigley in his latest blog post. "For Alpha 2, finalize the applications included in the Lubuntu Next image and start work on a Ubiquity slideshow."
Simon Quigley was recently recognized as an LXQt developer, so he's now working hard to improve the user experience for the LXQt flavor of Lubuntu, and it just happens that he might rebase the Lubuntu Next images on the soon-to-be-released LXQt 0.12 desktop environment before the final launch of Lubuntu 17.10.