The distribution is now powered by Linux kernel 4.1

Jul 30, 2015 19:13 GMT  ·  By

The Kubuntu development team has announced the immediate availability for download and testing of the second Alpha build of the upcoming Kubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) operating system.

According to the release notes posted by the Kubuntu Team a few minutes ago, Kubuntu 15.10 Alpha 2 uses KDE Plasma 5.3 as the default desktop environment, the latest KDE Applications 15.04.1 software suite, which contains all the KDE apps you love and use everyday on your Kubuntu machine, and a kernel from the upstream Linux 4.1 kernel series.

Additionally, the second Alpha build of Kubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) includes the latest KDE Frameworks 5 software, along with non-KDE applications like the popular Mozilla Firefox 38 web browser and the LibreOffice 4.4 office suite. Of course, there are numerous other under-the-hood improvements, updated packages, and bug fixes in this milestone of Kubuntu 15.10.

Several known issues remain in the Alpha 2 build

Being a pre-release version and all that, Kubuntu 15.10 Alpha 2 contains several known issues that will most probably be addressed in the upcoming milestones. Among these, we can mention problems with the use_libarchive_for_zip_files function, a crash in the Apport-KDE application that occurred when attempting to report bugs, and errors during the installation of the kde-config-telepathy-accounts package.

Moreover, the OEM installation of Kubuntu requires the desktop folderview to be added on the first boot, the kubuntu_langpack_desktop_files.diff file needs to be ported for .desktop gettext support, and there's no possibility to change a user's password via accounts KDE Control Module (KCM) because the kdepasswd package is missing from the default installation.

Those of you who want to test the second Alpha build of Kubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) can do so right now by downloading the Live DVD ISO images for either 32-bit or 64-bit hardware platforms from Softpedia. However, we remind you that these are pre-release versions and are not suitable for deployment on production environments where stability is a must.