Xubuntu 16.04 LTS "Xenial Xerus" Released

Table of Contents

Here we are again, folks. After six more months of development (two years since the last LTS), we’ve got another fantastic release — Xubuntu 16.04 LTS “Xenial Xerus”!

What’s New?

Xubuntu 16.04 is a 3-year long-term support ( LTS) release. This means it will receive security and stability updates for 3 years (into 2019). LTS releases are recommended for anyone who wants a stable system and may not want to upgrade every 6-9 months.

Xubuntu 16.04 includes improvements made since the last LTS release. I’ve covered these in the past blog posts below.

Release Highlights

Below is a very small subset of the changes found in Xubuntu 16.04. For a complete set, please refer to the release notes.

New Xfce Power Manager plugin in the panel (14.10)
New Xubuntu Light and Xubuntu Dark color schemes in Mousepad and Terminal (15.04)
Xfce Panel Switch, an application to easily create, import, and export panel layouts (15.04)
LibreOffice Writer and Calc (with a new elementary icon theme) are included by default (15.10)
Gnome Software replaces the Ubuntu Software Center for application management (16.04)
10 beautiful new community wallpapers
An innumerable amount of updates to the included applications, including Catfish, MenuLibre, Mugshot, Parole, and Xfce 4.12

Screenshots

The Xubuntu 16.04 desktop features a bright blue wallpaper, a transparent panel, and quick access icons.

Thunar is an easy-to-use, feature-filled file manager.

Xubuntu 16.04 features a handful of games from GNOME, including the venerable Mines.

The Xfce dictionary application makes it fast and easy to look up words online.

GNOME Software is included to make finding new applications a snap.

Xubuntu's documentation is available locally, without an Internet connection.

Parole Media Player, with sound menu integration, is included to make it easy to play your media.

Catfish, a fast, minimalistic file search utility is included to make it easy to find your files.

The Xfce notes application replaces the Sticky notes on your desk with an easy, accessible, always available stack of notes.

Xubuntu 16.04 includes the useful Xfce Panel Switch app to switch between various panel layouts.

GNOME Calculator starts simple but can switch to more powerful calculator modes with a click.

Known Issues

Installer Issues

Ubuntu doesn’t provide \EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI for UEFI systems ( LP: #1366546)
Shutdown/Restart of live session guest does not work in Virtualbox and VMWare ( LP: #1447038)

General Issues

Automatic remount of safely removed USB 3.0 drive ( LP: #792085)
cryptsetup password prompt not shown ( LP: #1359689)
The input box for editing a Wired connection static IP address doesn’t appear correctly ( LP: #1530323)

Xubuntu Issues

Mugshot crashes when trying to capture image (camera currently disabled) ( LP: #1516237)
Mouse cursor lost when unlocking (appears only to affect Intel GPUs) ( LP: #1568604)

Thunar currently has some severe bugs that cause it to crash on file moves and renames. We have included two upstream patches to help alleviate the issue, but you may encounter these in your usage.