Xubuntu 12.10 "Quantal Quetzal" Released

Sean Davis
Tour
October 20, 2012

Table of Contents

You’ve patiently waited for the latest and greatest in Xfce and Xubuntu for the last six months. October 18th has come and gone, and the wait is over. Now, presenting Xubuntu 12.10, featuring XFCE 4.10 in its most polished and optimized configuration…

Introducing the Quantal Quetzal

On April 23 of this year, Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical and father of Ubuntu, announced the latest release’s codename. In a blog post that featured the letter ‘Q’ 40 times across a mere 6 paragraphs (an outstanding feat in and of itself), Mark outlined that the Quantal Quetzal would continue to focus on quality and stability throughout the development cycle. The Xubuntu Team maintained these goals throughout the development cycle and put together yet another top-notch operating system.

What’s New in Xubuntu 12.10?

Everything. Seriously, see the release notes. But if you really want me to be specific, here’s the latest:

Linux 3.5.0-17 (based on 3.5.5)
Xfce 4.10
Completely rewritten offline documentation
All configuration launchers are now consolidated in the Settings Manager
Updated artwork (see below)
Updated applications: Abiword 2.9.2+svn, Catfish 0.4.0.2, Firefox 16.0.1, gmusicbrowser 1.1.9, gThumb 3.0.2, Parole 0.3.0.3, Pidgin 2.10.6, Thunar 1.4.0, Thunderbird 16.0.1, Transmission 2.61, Ubuntu Software Center 5.3.14.2, and XChat 2.8.8

How about a little demo video?

Screenshots

What would a new Xubuntu release be without the latest from the Shimmer Project? Check out the screenshots of Xubuntu 12.10 in action.

Xubuntu 12.10 Desktop — The Xubuntu desktop has received a very modern and clean interface refresh with the latest version of Greybird.

Parole Media Player was significantly upgraded as it moved to a minimalistic interface and playbin2.

Catfish also significantly upgraded as it moved to a minimalist interface powered by GTK+3.

Productivity in Xubuntu — Xubuntu has your typical productivity apps: a word processor, calculator, dictionary, and note-taking application.

Xubuntu ships with the latest version of Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird to connect you to the Internet.

Sacrifices

Some interesting challenges were presented in this release. Ubuntu has made the push for GTK+3 and Python 3 to be standard. This is welcome but costly when some applications still depend on previous versions of the same toolkits. Some sacrifices had to be made to keep Xubuntu 12.10 on a standard CD-ROM (a task other teams have given up on). The Live CD bade farewell to several games (only Sudoku and Mines remain), GIMP Image Editor, Gnumeric, Synaptic Package Manager, and the Startup Disk Creator. Thankfully, these are all easily installable from the Ubuntu Software Center!

Get Xubuntu 12.10 “Quantal Quetzal”

Well, you’ve read about it and heard about it, now why don’t you install it? First, check the known issues to ensure you won’t be negatively affected. If you’re good to go, you can either install from the latest disc image from Xubuntu.org or upgrade from Xubuntu 12.04 using these handy instructions.

So, what do you think of the latest and greatest Xubuntu release? Let me know in the comments!