14 DAY TRIAL // Canonical today released the Final Beta release of its forthcoming Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) operating system, allowing anyone to see what they prepared for this new Ubuntu version that will be hitting the streets on October 19, 2017.
First and foremost, Ubuntu 17.10 is shipping with a refreshed desktop environment, powered by the latest GNOME 3.26 release, highly customized by Canonical to resemble the look and feel of its deprecated Unity user interface. This is also the first release of Ubuntu to ship without Unity in more than six years.
On top of that, Wayland is now used as default display server instead of X11, but you can still use X.Org Server if you choose the "Ubuntu on Xorg" option from the login screen, which is now powered by GNOME's GDM (GNOME Display Manager) instead of LightDM. Under the hood, Ubuntu 17.10 Final Beta is powered by Linux kernel 4.13.
Window control buttons moved on the right after seven years
With these major changes, Canonical also moved the window control buttons to the right after more than seven years, and if you haven't used GNOME in a while, you'll be surprised to see how cool Ubuntu 17.10 is on your laptop or workstation. Not to mention that you'll finally be able to use the latest Nautilus version.
Default apps now include GNOME's Calendar, Simple Scan, Logs, Caribou, and Settings, which replaces the Ubuntu Control Panel with a much modern design. With this release, Canonical also extended driverless printing support to more devices, including Apple AirPrint, Wifi Direct, IPP Everywhere, and Mopria.
The latest LibreOffice 5.4 office suite is also installed by default in Ubuntu 17.10, which lets users try the vanilla GNOME 3.26 desktop environment if they install the gnome-session package and choose the "GNOME" session from the login screen. This means that the Ubuntu GNOME flavor has been officially deprecated.
32-bit installer images are no longer available
Another important change of the Ubuntu 17.10 Final Beta release is that it doesn't offer installation images (ISOs) for 32-bit (i386) architectures for Desktop and Server, so you can only install it on 64-bit capable computers. On the server side of things, Ubuntu 17.10 Final Beta comes with QEMU 2.10, DPDK 17.05.2, Open vSwitch 2.8, and libvirt 3.6.
If you want to install Ubuntu 17.10 Final Beta and take it for a test drive, you can download the 64-bit ISO right now from our website. In addition, you can also download Kubuntu 17.10 Beta 2, Xubuntu 17.10 Beta 2, Lubuntu 17.10 Beta 2, Ubuntu MATE 17.10 Beta 2, Ubuntu Studio 17.10 Beta 2, Ubuntu Kylin 17.10 Beta 2, and Ubuntu Budgie 17.10 Beta 2.
