14 DAY TRIAL // The first and only Ubuntu MATE 14.10 Release Candidate has been announced by its developers and is now out and ready for testing. The final version of the system is just around the corner, so this is as close to the stable version as possible.
Some months ago, a few developers, including one from MATE and one from Canonical, put together an Ubuntu MATE Remix edition, which had great success. The distro is not officially part of the Ubuntu ecosystem, but things are in motion and that will happen very soon. Users can still call it a Remix, which is the term, in this case, for a distro that uses Ubuntu and it's not yet part of the family.
Despite the fact that Ubuntu MATE is still not a recognized flavor, the developers have kept the same release schedule with Ubuntu 14.10, which is the distro's base, although the current RC release doesn't really fit anywhere. Regular Ubuntu releases don't get RC versions, but we can't complain. It's always good to see what the devs have been up to and what they are doing in anticipation of the launch.
Ubuntu MATE 14.10 final version is really, really close
The stable version of Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn) and Ubuntu MATE 14.10 will land on October 23, if everything goes according to plan. They haven't missed a beat yet and all the versions arrive when they should, although the hours keep changing.
"Ubuntu MATE 14.10 release candidate is now available for download. This is the last release prior to the final 14.10 release and fixes a few issues that were present in Beta 2."
"People tell us that Ubuntu MATE is stable. You may, or may not, agree. This release candidate has been focused on fixing broken things and improving what was already present in Beta 2," says Martin Wimpress, one of the Ubuntu MATE developers.
As it was to be expected, some of the reported changes for the RC are just small upgrades for various packages, most of them from Debian upstream, such as mate-screensaver 1.8.1-1, marco 1.8.2, mate-applets 1.8.1, atril 1.8.1, caja 1.8.2, and mate-panel 1.8.1. Also, the latest Caja Dropbox indicator is now available from the PPAs and Plymouth has been fixed. Users can now see the splash screen and it's now possible to use the full disk encryption (it wasn't possible to enter the password in Plymouth).
You can download Ubuntu MATE 14.10 RC right now from Softpedia. It's pretty stable, so you can install it and update it past the launch date.