Today, Canonical announced the availability of the first Alpha release of the upcoming Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) operating system, but only for opt-in flavors that are willing to participate in the Alpha milestones.

Ubuntu 17.10 continues the tradition of the popular and free Linux-based operating system to offer two Alpha and Beta milestones during its entire development cycle. Being the first development release, the Alpha 1 images are mostly based on the latest stable release of the OS, in this case, Ubuntu 17.04 (Zesty Zapus).

This means that they are using the kernel and graphics stacks of Ubuntu 17.04, which include the Linux 4.10 packages, X.Org Server 1.19.3 display server, and Mesa 17.1.2 3D Graphics Library. The systemd init system, however, was upgraded to the latest available release, specifically systemd 233.

Participating in this first Alpha milestone of Ubuntu 17.10 is Kubuntu 17.10, Lubuntu 17.10, and Ubuntu Kylin 17.10, each one coming with its own set of improvements. Make sure you click on those that interest you as we prepared separate articles for Kubuntu and Lubuntu with more in-depth details.

Ubuntu 17.10 Alpha 2 release expected July 27, 2017

As expected Ubuntu itself won't be participating in any of the Alpha releases, nor the first Beta milestone. The only development release that Ubuntu will take part and allow users to test drive it on their personal computers is the Beta 2 (a.k.a. Final Beta) release, which is currently scheduled for September 28, 2017.

Until then, you can try out the Ubuntu 17.10 daily builds if you want to follow the development of the upcoming operating system. The Alpha 2 release is coming next and it's expected next month on July 27, 2017, but also for opt-in flavors, which we hope that will be more than the three that participated in today's first Alpha.

After that, Ubuntu 17.10 will enter Beta stage of development, with the first Beta expected to land on August 31. The final release of the Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) operating system will be unveiled later this year on October 19, and will be using GNOME 3.26 as default desktop environment, deprecating the Ubuntu GNOME flavor.