Ubuntu Gnome 13.10 Beta 1 Release

I tried the latest Ubuntu Gnome v13.10 Beta 1 Release and was pleasantly surprised how polished it is. Users not crazy about Unity, Cinnamon, or Mate, now have a Gnome Classic desktop without any modifications necessary. This is what traditional Gnome users have been asking for ever since Gnome GTK 2.X  and the developers have been listening. It includes Firefox, LibreOffice, the Ubuntu Software Store, Rhythmbox, Empathy IM, Evolution Mail, Tweak Tool, Shotwell Photo Viewer, Nautilus File Manager, and others. I added Synaptic, Pidgin, Chromium browser, Deluge bittorrent, Screenlets, the Audacious music player. Below are my screen shots and a link where to get it. The official final build is due out on October 17th. This may become my new favorite Ubuntu distro.

Software Updates

• Most of GNOME 3.8 is now included. See the GNOME release notes for more details.
• The Plymouth bootloader theme and login screen have been updated with our new logo designed by Alfredo Hernández.
• The new GNOME Classic session is included. To try it, choose it from the Sessions option on the login screen.
• Ubuntu Online Accounts is no longer included by default (1040193). If you'd like to install it, install gnome-control-center-signon, evolution-data-server-uoa, and whichever of the account-plugin-* packages you want to use.

Infrastructure

Linux Kernel

The Beta 1 Saucy Salamander snapshot includes the 3.11.0.4 Ubuntu Linux kernel which is based on the the upstream v3.11-rc7 Linux kernel. The 3.11 release contains support for KVM and Xen virtualization on 64-bit ARM (AArch64) hardware. There has also been significant progress on making PCI support not be tied to SoC-specific code but to make PCI host controller drivers for ARM work as loadable kernel modules.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can download images and/or torrents for Ubuntu Gnome here:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-gnome/daily-live/current/