Lubuntu For Linux

It's that time of the year, the time when a new version of Ubuntu comes out with a new version, followed by a plethora of interesting and purposeful official flavours.

Lubuntu, the well-established lightweight flavor of Ubuntu is also back with a new release. Lubuntu 23.10, code-named Mantic Minotaur is the 25th release of Lubuntu. This release marks the 11th release of Lubuntu since the switch to the LXQt desktop environment.

As expected, 23.10 is an interim release (also known as non-LTS release), and this means that it will only be supported for nine months (until July 2024).

Lubuntu 23.10 introduces the latest LXQt desktop environment version 1.3.0. This is a good thing since 1.3.0 was actually available when Lubuntu 23.04 rolled out a couple of months ago, but unfortunately it didn't make the cut, so to speak.

LXQt 1.3.0 comes with a series of important changes and improvements. For starters, I have to point out that the DE is based on Qt 5.15 (which is the last LTS version of Qt 5). Of course, according to the developers, the work for Qt 6 support has begun, but it didn't make it in this release.

The OS' file manager, the PCManFM-Qt app and its library have received improvements. The main goal of the Lubuntu team is to migrate the KF6 API/library for Qt6. This release fixes an issues where the PCManFM-Qt was preventing desktop items from shaking during configuration changes.

We can now disable the smooth scrolling feature in all view modes (it was only available in the compact modes in the last few versions).

Other noteworthy changes include the new DOM plugin enabled by default in the LXQt panel, some LXQt session improvements (such as the added support for procps-ng 4.0.0).

Besides the base changes that Lubuntu 23.10 inherits from Ubuntu 23.10, the OS now ships with Python 3.11.5, PHP 8.2, GCC 13.2, GlibC 2.38, Ruby 3.2, Golang 1.2, and Firefox 117 (as a snap).

Lubuntu 23.10 remains faithful to Calamares (its system installer of choice) that has been in use since the launch of Lubuntu 22.10. Last but not least, there a new community-created wallpaper (also used in the login screen).

Lubuntu 23.10 is yet another step forward, and the last release before the official release of the the 24.04 LTS version. For what is suppose to be an interim release, Lubuntu 23.10 provides a lot of interesting changes which allow use to see the general direction of 24.04 LTS.