Thanks to all the hard work from our contributors, Lubuntu 16.04 LTS has been released! With the codename Xenial Xerus, Lubuntu 16.04 LTS is the 10th release of Lubuntu, and the second long term support release. Lubuntu 16.04 LTS will be supported until April 2019, with three years of support.

What is Lubuntu?

Lubuntu is a flavor of Ubuntu based on the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment (LXDE), as its default GUI. The goal is to provide a very lightweight distribution, with all the advantages of the Ubuntu world (repositories, support, etc.). Lubuntu is targeted at “normal” PC and laptop users running on low-spec hardware. Such users may not know how to use command line tools, and in most cases they just don’t have enough resources for all the bells and whistles of the “full-featured” mainstream distributions.

With many LXDE components, Lubuntu also uses well-known applications, such as Firefox, Openbox, Pidgin, to name a few. The Lubuntu project wiki contains more information on the project.

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)

PowerPC (Macintosh images)

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

What’s improved since 15.10?

General bug fix release as we prepare to switch to LXQt.

Many LXDE components have been updated with bug fixes.

The artwork has been updated with more icons, theme updates, a new wallpaper, etc.

What’s improved since 14.04?

Many under-the-hood improvements, such as the replacement of upstart with systemd. More information is available in the Ubuntu release notes linked above.

A significant amount of LXDE bug fixes and improvements.

Massive artwork improvements.

lubuntu-extra-sessions: In the past, selecting different sessions (netbook, gaming etc.) was installed by default. This is now an optional extra that can be installed by those who want this added functionality.

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 AMD K7 has problems with flash video.

Graphics

Nvidia, AMD / ATI / Radeon and Intel work out of the box, or the system can be tweaked to work fairly easily. You can get help at the Ubuntu Forums. With such graphics, or if you don’t know, try the current Lubuntu version.

How do I get support?

Our support channel is #lubuntu on IRC. If you don’t have an IRC client, click the link in the earlier sentence, type in a nickname, press start, state your question and press Enter to speak.

We also have the lubuntu-users mailing list. You do not need to subscribe to the mailing list to ask a question. Send an email to lubuntu-users AT lists DOT ubuntu DOT com.

How do I contribute?

We always need more help! If you would like to contribute, head over to our Getting Involved page. We need help with Reporting bugs, Translations, Tests / QA, Code & 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.

Known issues

For known issues, please see the release notes.