14 DAY TRIAL // The Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) GNU/Linux operating system is only six days apart and, according to the release schedule, it just entered Final Freeze development stage on Thursday, October 12, 2017.
Work on Ubuntu 17.10 begun six months ago, on April 20, when the toolchain was uploaded to the repository, with the main goal of replacing our beloved Unity user interface with the latest GNOME 3 desktop environment. Two Alpha and Beta milestones later, Ubuntu 17.10 is now officially in Final Freeze stage.
"As of now, artful has entered the Final Freeze period in preparation for the final release of Ubuntu 17.10 next week," said Adam Conrad, Software Engineer at Canonical, in a mailing list announcement. "The current uploads in the queue will be reviewed and either accepted or rejected as appropriate by pre-freeze standards."
Of course, this means that developers won't be able to update any of the packages they maintain, except for those that fix critical bugs affecting the ISO images or the installer. Patches for 0-day security vulnerabilities are also welcome during the Final Freeze stage, which will last until next week, on October 19, 2017.
Release Candidate images coming soon for community testing
Those who want to help test the ISO images of Ubuntu 17.10, as well as any of the official flavors that participate in this final testing, should keep an eye on our news section or Ubuntu's community channels as Canonical plans to build a set of Release Candidate (RC) images for community testing.
As you are aware, Ubuntu 17.10 is only available for 64-bit (amd64) architectures, while the rest of the flavors still offer ISO images for 32-bit installations. The Release Candidate images of Ubuntu 17.10 and other opt-in flavors should be available for public testing early next week, most probably on Monday, October 16, 2017.
The final release of Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) and all of the official flavors, including Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Ubuntu Studio, Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Kylin, and Ubuntu Budgie, are hitting the streets on October 19. Ubuntu 17.10 will be shipping with the recently released GNOME 3.26.1 desktop environment by default.