Thanks to all the hard work from our contributors, we are pleased to announce that Lubuntu 16.04.3 LTS has been released!

What Is Lubuntu?

Lubuntu is an official Ubuntu flavor based on the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment (LXDE). The project’s goal is to provide a lightweight yet functional distribution. Lubuntu specifically targets older machines with lower resources, but also runs great on newer hardware. Along with a simple but usuable graphical user interface, Lubuntu comes with a wide variety of applications chosen for their small footprint so you can browse, email, chat, play, and be productive.

What’s The Difference Between Lubuntu 16.04.2 LTS?

Lubuntu 16.04.3 is a set of images produced for convenience so that a fresh install of the latest Lubuntu LTS does not require as many updates after install (as Lubuntu continues to release Stable Release Updates and security fixes to make your experience as smooth as possible and to fix any bugs, if you want to help us out with this, see below, we always need more help), but is not a new major release of Lubuntu in and of itself. If you do system updates regularly, you are already running Lubuntu 16.04.3 LTS, and if you install Lubuntu on a system using a Lubuntu 16.04.2 LTS image or a previous point release and do system updates, that system will then be running Lubuntu 16.04.3 LTS.

Where Can I Download It?

On the Ubuntu cdimage server, we have images for the following architectures:

amd64 (commonly referred to as 64-bit)

i386 (commonly referred to as 32-bit)

The release notes are here if you wish to read them. We have left out some notes that are common to all flavors, so read the Ubuntu release notes if you wish.

This release does NOT include PowerPC, although users of the PowerPC platform can still receive updates. This is due to the fact that PowerPC users would be left with an unsupported kernel because PowerPC is no longer supported in the non-LTS releases.

System Requirements

Lubuntu is a good operating system for many old computers, but not for all of them. Some computers have too little horsepower or memory. A rule of thumb is that the computer should not be more than 10 years old.

Memory (RAM)

For advanced internet services like Google+, YouTube, Google Drive, and Facebook, your computer needs at least 1 GB of RAM.

For local programs like LibreOffice and simple browsing habits, your computer needs at least 512 MB of RAM.

Processor (CPU)

The minimum specification for CPU is Pentium 4 or Pentium M or AMD K8. Older processors are too slow and the AMD K7 has problems with Flash video.

Known Bugs

To see the list of known bugs, please take a look at our release notes.

How Do I Get Support?

Our support channel is #lubuntu on freenode IRC. If you don’t have an IRC client, go here, type in a nickname, press start, state your question and press Enter to speak. Please be patient as we have a limited amount of people in this channel, and people are not always online. We also have the lubuntu-users mailing list if you do not get a response on IRC. You do not need to subscribe to the mailing list to ask a question, you can just send an email to lubuntu-users AT lists DOT ubuntu DOT com.

How Do I Contribute My Time?

We always need more help! If you would like to contribute your time to helping Lubuntu, head over to our Getting Involved page. We need help with Reporting bugs, Translations, Tests/QA, Code and patches, Artwork, Documentation, and Marketing/Press. If you have any questions about contributing, please join #lubuntu-devel on freenode or email the lubuntu-devel mailing list at lubuntu-devel AT lists DOT ubuntu DOT com. You can also join our new Telegram group, which is bridged to the #lubuntu-devel channel on IRC.