The Xubuntu team is pleased to announce the immediate release of Xubuntu 14.04. Xubuntu 14.04 is an LTS (Long-Term Support) release and will be supported for 3 years.

The final release images are available as Torrents and direct downloads at http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/14.04/release/

As the main server will be very busy in the first days after the release, we recommend using the Torrents wherever possible.

For support with the release, navigate to Help & Support for a complete list of methods to get help.

Highlights, changes and known issues

The highlights of this release include:

Light Locker replaces xscreensaver for screen locking, a setting editing GUI is included

The panel layout is updated, and now uses Whiskermenu as the default menu

Mugshot is included to allow you to easily edit your personal preferences

MenuLibre for menu editing, with full Xfce support, replaces Alacarte

A community wallpapers package, which includes work from the five winners of the wallpaper contest

GTK Theme Config to customize your desktop theme colors

Updated artwork, including various enhancements to themes as well as a new default wallpaper

Some of the known issues include:

Xfce4 Power Manager does not restore screen power (1259339), see the release notes for details and workarounds

Window manager shortcut keys don’t work after reboot (1292290)

Sorting by date or name not working correctly in Ristretto (1270894)

Due to the switch from xscreensaver to light-locker, some users might have issues with timing of locking; removing xscreensaver from the system should fix these problems

IBus does not support certain keyboard layouts (1284635). Only affects upgrades with certain keyboard layouts. See release notes for a workaround.

To see the complete list of new features, improvements and known and fixed bugs, read the release notes.

Other efforts and thanks

As always, contributors to Xubuntu have worked on various projects not directly visible in the release. While any of these would be worth mentioning, the following are a few we felt may be of interest to the community:

QA efforts, including ISO and package testing as well as bug reporting and triaging

Marketing projects, including work on a flyer to promote Xubuntu for people still running Windows XP

Website updates, including a theme refresh

While many of the improvements in Xubuntu since the last LTS are, indeed, not directly visible. Some of the major improvements have been in design and theming, and as such we hope that you don’t see them – good design should be invisible.

Thanks to everybody contributing to Xubuntu! As always, new contributors are always welcome to join us. There are various different tasks to do, from testing daily ISOs and new package versions to writing and translating documentation to fixing bugs. To learn more about contributing, read the Get Involved section on the Xubuntu website.