The distro uses the GNOME 3.26.1 desktop environment

Oct 18, 2017 16:47 GMT  ·  By

Ubuntu contributor Didier Roche shared today the last blog article for the development cycle of the Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) operating system, which is expected to launch tomorrow, October 19.

During Ubuntu 17.10's six-month development cycle, Didier Roche managed to keep the community updated with the migration of the Unity user interface to the GNOME 3 desktop environment, which is the default session for the Artful Aardvark release. The GNOME 3.26.1 packages will be used in Ubuntu 17.10, running on top of the next-generation Wayland display server.

Those who want to use X11 instead of Wayland will find the "Ubuntu on Xorg" session via the login screen, GDM (GNOME Display Manager), which supports lots of other sessions that are available for installation from the main repositories. Among these, there's a vanilla GNOME 3.26 session without Canonical's modifications, and the Unity desktop, if you install the unity-session or gnome-session packages.

"More sessions are available in the Ubuntu archives around GNOME technologies: the Unity and vanilla GNOME ones," said Didier Roche. "The first one is available as soon as you install the unity-session binary package. The vanilla GNOME session simply appears once gnome-session is installed. After a reboot, GDM is presenting all of them for selection when login in."

Ubuntu 17.10 launches October 19 only for 64-bit systems

The wait is finally over, and you'll be able to download the Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) operating system tomorrow, October 19, 2017, but only for 64-bit computers as Canonical decided to drop support for 32-bit installations, though existing installs will still be supported with security patches until the end of life of the respective Ubuntu release you're running.

Ubuntu 17.10 is powered by the Linux 4.13.4 kernel, which could soon be upgraded to a newer release once the operating system lands. Of course, if you're running Ubuntu 17.04 (Zesty Zapus) or Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus), you can also upgrade to Ubuntu 17.10 on the release day. Upgrade instructions will be available shortly on our website to guide you through the migration process from Unity to GNOME.

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