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Lubuntu Changelog

What's new in Lubuntu 22.10

Nov 3, 2022
  • Support lifespan
  • With 22.10 being an interim release, it will follow the standard non-LTS support period of nine months, which means 22.10 will be supported until July 2023. Our development focus going forward will be on 23.04 and future releases, so only critical bugfixes and security updates will be provided. We STRONGLY recommend upgrading to 23.04 once it is released, before 22.10 hits end of life. If this is not suitable for you, but you still enjoy new features on a regular basis, we would recommend staying on 22.04 LTS with Lubuntu’s Backports enabled.
  • NOTABLE CHANGES:
  • LXQt:
  • A bug in LXQt results in duplicate menu entries for the Calamares installer, showing the following:
  • SYSTEM INSTALLER AND POTENTIAL INSTABILITY:
  • Lubuntu uses the Calamares system installer in place of the Ubiquity installer that most other flavors use. While we are ensuring 22.04 LTS’ Calamares follows the upstream LTS cycle, we decided to get ahead of the curve by shipping Calamares 3.3 Alpha 2 in 22.10.
  • Here are the factors that went into this decision:
  • Users will benefit from Calamares 3.3’s improved featureset and code cleanup.
  • Calamares is now a community project. We are committed to supporting the development of Calamares, and are actively involved in submitting bugs and testing feedback upstream. This is partially for the benefit of the Calamares project as well.
  • We now have an extremely thorough test suite covering a wide variety of install types. We have already tested for (and caught a few) bugs, and are confident this release will work for the vast majority of usecases extremely well.
  • Our development Matrix(/Telegram/IRC) channel has a variety of skilled volunteers (that you can certainly join!) who will be happy to help if you find a Calamares bug.
  • Firefox, and the move to snap:
  • An ongoing concern within the Ubuntu and Lubuntu communities has been the increased startup times for the Firefox web browser due to using the Snap package format instead of the traditional Debian-based package format used for the rest of the system. After careful consideration, taking into account the fast-paced technical improvements in modern web technology, the work required to keep Lubuntu users secure after the release, and Canonical’s commitment to Firefox as the default web browser for Ubuntu, we made the decision to keep this as-is.
  • That being said, the existing issues to watch out for include:
  • On a fresh boot of a Lubuntu system, the snap needs to decompress into memory the first time you run it. This will result in the browser launching noticeably slower.
  • Snaps ship with confinement enabled by default, in order to properly isolate the application from the rest of the system. While this eases the update process, if you need to pass through a device to Firefox (such as a smartcard), some manual work will be required.
  • Artwork:
  • The default wallpaper for 22.10 is from one of our Lubuntu Members, Aaron Rainbolt:
  • Ubuntu Pro Advertisement:
  • It has come to our attention that Ubuntu Pro integration in apt is a bit too aggressive. We understand (and agree with some of) the concerns; at this current point in time, apt does not silence that message when using -qq either. We also understand that, with Canonical being the corporate sponsor of Ubuntu, they are entitled to put product advertisement in Ubuntu. The most reasonable compromise in our opinion is to allow the user to turn it off if they so desire, and Canonical (as noted in the bug report) is working on a better long-term solution for this.
  • DKMS issues and workaround:
  • Dynamic Kernel Module Support (DKMS) is a core package which handles the (low-level) loading of kernel modules once installed. An example of this would be installing Broadcom drivers, for specific network adapters. The DKMS version shipped by default in 22.10 has a bug causing third-party kernel modules to not be properly built or signed on Secure Boot systems, breaking support for hardware that requires those drivers if Secure Boot is enabled. If you are planning on installing Lubuntu offline, note that you will need to manually download and update to the fixed version.
  • The easiest way to work around this issue on Lubuntu Kinetic is to simply run sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade before attempting to install third-party drivers on your system. If that’s not an option, and if you have familiarity with the command line, you can find a workaround in this bug report. Thank you to Aaron Rainbolt, one of our project members, for assisting with this.
  • We agree this bug is far from ideal. Had this issue been addressed a day or two sooner, 22.10 users would likely not come across this in the first place. That being said, the Ubuntu Release Team and Ubuntu Stable Release Updates Team made the informed decision to accept this immediately following 22.10’s finalization. If they did make the decision to accept it earlier, that would require last-minute re-verification of all ISOs, delaying 22.10’s release until tomorrow or later.
  • Updated:
  • LXQt 1.1.0
  • Qt 5.15.6
  • Mozilla Firefox as shipped in the snap package, at the time of release this is version 106.
  • LibreOffice 7.4.2
  • VLC 3.0.17
  • Featherpad 1.3.0
  • Discover Software Center 5.25.5