Ubuntu 14.10 is also called Utopic Unicorn

Sep 26, 2014 07:10 GMT  ·  By

Canonical has just announced that the final Beta for Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn) has been released and is now available for download and testing.

Canonical only releases a single Beta version during the entire six-month development cycle, four weeks before the final version is made available. This has been the case for a while now, but not all flavors follow the same trend.

The new Ubuntu 14.10 is called Utopic Unicorn and the release made today covers the Desktop, Server, Cloud, and Core products. Although this is a Beta release for the operating system, it's pretty close to the final build and representative of the final product.

What the Canonical devs are saying about Ubuntu 14.10

"The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the final beta release of Ubuntu 14.10 Desktop, Server, Cloud, and Core products. Codenamed 'Utopic Unicorn', 14.10 continues Ubuntu's proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution."

"The team has been hard at work through this cycle, introducing new features and fixing bugs. This beta release includes images from not only the Ubuntu Desktop, Server, Cloud, and Core products, but also the Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu GNOME, Ubuntu Kylin, Ubuntu Studio and Xubuntu flavours," says Canonical's Adam Conrad.

If you are already using the Ubuntu 14.04 LTS branch, you won't notice any major differences. In fact, at a glance, the two systems look almost identical. The truth is that Ubuntu 14.10 comes with much newer packages, a brand new kernel, AppArmor updates, Unity updates, and more.

Users should not expect too many cosmetic changes for Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn), so some of you might be disappointed by the new release if you were expecting something more. Neither the Unity 8 nor the new Mir display server is ready to be deployed, so it will be a while until something really tangible is seen.

In fact, Canonical is still using packages from the GNOME 3.10.1 branch, so that means they are not prepared to jump to the next version. It's possible that Ubuntu 15.04 will use the GNOME 3.14 packages directly, but it's still a long time until then.

Where to get the new Ubuntu 14.10

If you want to test the new release you can download Ubuntu 14.10 Beta from Softpedia. It might seem OK to use on a daily basis, but keep in mind that it's not called a Beta for nothing. It still in development and the team is still working to fix bugs and other issues.

Ubuntu 14.10 Final Beta (12 Images)

Ubuntu 14.10 main desktop
Ubuntu 14.10 dashUbuntu 14.10 file manager
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