14 DAY TRIAL // Today, September 28, 2016, Softpedia was informed by Canonical's Martin Wimpress about the release and immediate availability of the second and last Beta development milestone of the upcoming Ubuntu MATE 16.10 operating system.
Released as part of today's Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) Final Beta launch, Ubuntu MATE 16.10 Beta 2 is here with an upgraded MATE desktop environment based on the final development snapshots of the recently announced MATE 1.16 desktop, namely MATE 1.15.1, which brings better GTK+ 3 compatibility and many improvements.
"We are preparing Ubuntu MATE 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) for distribution on October 13th, 2016," says Martin Wimpress. "With this *Final Beta* pre-release, you can see what we are trying out in preparation for our next (stable) version. [...] The entire MATE Desktop suite has been upgraded to MATE Desktop 1.15.x."
Another important change in this second Beta pre-release of Ubuntu MATE 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) is that the kernel packages have been upgraded from the long-term supported Linux 4.4 ones that were used until a few days ago to the more recent Linux kernel 4.8, which should be officially released at the end of the month.
Ubuntu MATE 16.10 to ship with MATE 1.16
Other improvements implemented in Ubuntu MATE 16.10 Beta 2 are better GTK+ 3.20 compatibility for the default themes, as well as working Weather forecasts/reports and Compiz support in the Ubuntu MATE Tweak 16.10.8 application, which will be available soon as an update in the distribution's software repositories.
Shortly after today's release of Ubuntu MATE 16.10 Beta 2, early adopters will be receiving the newest MATE 1.16 desktop environment announced officially the other day. Until then, we invite you to download the Ubuntu MATE 16.10 Beta 2 64-bit and 32-bit Live ISO images via our website and take it for a test drive. Don't forget to report bugs!