Xenial Xerus – 16.04.5

This is the final point release for Xubuntu 16.04 “Xenial Xerus”. As Xubuntu has a 3-year support cycle, this release will be supported until April 2019. There have not been any major changes from the Xubuntu team for this point release, but there have been a number of other improvements and security updates for other components.

16.04.5 is expected to be released tomorrow, August 2, 2018. If you have a few moments, feel free to do some testing and make sure everything is working as well as we think it is!

Bionic Beaver – 18.04.1

This is the first point release for Xubuntu 18.04 “Bionic Beaver”. At this time, users of Xubuntu 16.04 should begin receiving notifications to upgrade to this release. There have been a few updates from the Xubuntu team, and others are still on their way. Download 18.04.1 here.

Catfish 1.4.6

The latest release of Catfish features a greatly improved thumbnail manager and numerous bug fixes. With 23 translation updates, this is the most localized release to date! Finally, Catfish 1.4.6 is the first release as an official Xfce project. Check out my earlier blog post for more details.

Xfce4 Panel Profiles 1.0.8

Formerly known as Xfpanel Switch, Xfce4 Panel Profiles has joined the Xfce family. This application makes it incredibly easy to backup, restore, and share panel layouts with other Xfce users. The latest release improves profile management and includes a number of translations. Find out more about the latest updates on the release announcement.

Xfce Releases

There were 7 new Xfce releases in July, including the two applications listed just above. These releases feature a number of improvements and translation updates, with Xfwm4 4.13.1 featuring an astounding 81 non-translation updates!

The following components have been updated in Xubuntu 18.10 since July 1st.

Applications

Libraries

Panel Plugins

Thunar Plugins

What to Expect in August?

With the summer months coming to a close, kids are back in school and everybody is back in front of their computers. This means more updates! Here are some things expected soon:

Updated packaging for the elementary-xfce icon theme. Work on separating this theme from xubuntu-artwork has already been completed. We are now just waiting for some sponsored uploads. The benefit of this change is that the elementary-xfce icon theme is now available in Debian!

Xfce Settings 4.13.5. There have been some improvements to the settings managers that we’ll be releasing soon. One improvement is the removal of the broken icon theme color generation. This worked great with GTK+ 2 themes, but has been pretty broken for GTK+ 3. With this removal, Appearance Settings now loads instantly!

I’ll be taking a look at the Pidgin codebase this month, hoping to improve the theme manager to support system-wide status icon and smiley theme installation. This will make it possible for us to ship the pidgin-elementary themes and further improve our desktop consistency.

There have been a few bugs reported with Thunar in Xubuntu 16.04 in regard to copying and moving files. I’ll be working to update the Thunar version in Xenial to fix these bugs and help folks transition to the latest and great Xubuntu 18.04. (LP: #1514912)

Keep up with the latest Xubuntu developments on our development tracker. Have a great month!