14 DAY TRIAL // As part of today's Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) Final Beta release, Simon Quigley and hard working folks from the Lubuntu team had the great pleasure of announcing the release of Lubuntu 16.10 Beta 2.
The Beta 2 (Final Beta) milestone marks the end of the development cycle of the upcoming Ubuntu 16.10 operating system and its derivatives, including Lubuntu, of course, which means that the work on this new release is almost over, and most of the big features have already been implemented.
"We’re preparing Lubuntu 16.10, Yakkety Yak, for distribution in October 2016. With this first beta you can get a glimpse of what the next version will contain. We have some interesting things happening," reads the release notes. "This Yakkety Yak snapshot includes Linux kernel 4.8."
Powered by Linux kernel 4.8 and the LXDE desktop environment
There are good news and bad news for the final release of Lubuntu 16.10, depending on how you see things. Let's start with the good news, as this second Beta pre-release comes pre-installed with the latest Release Candidate of the soon-to-be-released Linux 4.8 kernel (estimated arrival is set for October 2, 2016).
Of course, most of the core components and applications have been updated to their latest versions, some borrowed from the Ubuntu base, but the bad news, for some us, is that we will still have the LXDE desktop environment on the final Lubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) release.
So what happened with the promised LXQt desktop integration? Well, it appears that the Lubuntu team didn't manage to test LXQt enough to ship it into Lubuntu 16.10, so they've postponed it for the next major release, Lubuntu 17.04. However, you'll most probably be able to install it from the main software repositories.
Lubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) will hit the streets on October 13, 2016, but until then you can now download the Beta 2 Live ISO images for either 64- or 32-bit PCs. Please try to keep in mind that there are some known issues you need to be aware of before jumping into the beta testing bandwagon.