Xubuntu For Linux

Xubuntu has always been an odd fish, and definitely one of the most interesting official Ubuntu flavors since it combines elements of Xfce, GNOME, and MATE, as well as core elements and native apps of each.

Xubuntu 22.10 Kinetic Kudu is the result of almost two years of work and considering that incorporating all the aforementioned elements takes a lot of time, the team behind the project really does deserve praise.

Xubuntu 22.10 was released on October 20, 2022, and is set to receive updates for 9 months until July 2023.

As expected, most of the changes and improvements of Ubuntu 22.10 carry over to Xubuntu. Of course, there are a lot of specific changes, but probably the most surprising is that Xubuntu 22.10 hasn't made the switch to Pipewire. However, fans of Pipewire can install it by following pretty much the same instructions provided by Ubuntu MATE. https://ubuntu-mate.org/blog/ubuntu-mate-kinetic-kudu-release-notes/#pipewire-on-ubuntu-mate-2204

At its core, Xubuntu 22.10 is powered by the Linux Kernel 5.19, same as Ubuntu 22.10. The Xfce desktop is built around the Xfce 4.17, a development version, which may come as a bit of a disappointment (fret not, Xfce 4.18 will probably release at the end of this year or in the first quarter of next year, 2023).

This version of Xfce desktop also brings updates to its native set of apps such as AppFinder (4.17.0), Catfish (4.16.4), Mousepad (0.5.10), Panel (4.17.3), PulseAudio Plugin (0.4.4), Ristretto (0.12.3), Screenshooter (1.5.4), Task Manager (1.5.4), Terminal (1.0.4), and Thunar (4.17.9).

The Xfce panel is getting middle-click support, the PulseAudio plugin introduces a new recording status indicator, Screenshooter gets WebP support, and Thunar (the file manager) has a massive list of under-the-hood changes and improvements,

For the first time in its history, Xubuntu gets the libadwaita (the famous GTK 4 library), and all the changes associated with GNOME 43. GNOME comes with its own core updates such as updates for Disk Usage Analizer (43.0), Mines (40.1), Software (43.0), Sudoku (43.0), Rythmbox (3.4.6) and Simple Scan (42.5).

MATE comes with updates for Atril (1.26.0), Engrampa (1.26.0), and Calculator (1.26.0).

The most impressive thing about Xubuntu in general, and 22.10 in particular is just how well it manages to implement both GNOME and MATE. This means that GNOME GTK4 rendered apps are look quite at home on the Xfce desktop environment.

The default elementary-xfce icon set also gets a few extra changes, and the default Greybird GTK theme gets window decorations and OpenBox support. In short, Xubuntu has objectively never looked better than it does right now.

To conclude, Xubuntu 22.10 Kinetic Kudu is a surprisingly good release, and it successfully paves the way for the next version of Xfce desktop (4.18) which is sure to make everything even better.