Canonical's Adam Conrad has announced that Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) is officially open for development, and it looks like the first daily build ISO images are already available for download.

Now that the release schedule of the upcoming Ubuntu 17.10 operating system is published, the time has come to monitor its development cycle more closely because Ubuntu is going through some though times these days with the move from the Unity user interface to GNOME as default desktop environment after six years.

Announced on April 28, 2011, Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) was the first release of the popular operating system to introduce the controversial, yet modern at that moment in time Unity UI, which relied on various components of the GNOME Stack. And now, Ubuntu 17.10, due for release on October 19, 2017, is returning to GNOME 3.

First daily builds still use the Unity 7 desktop

As expected, the first daily build ISO images of Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) are based on the current stable release of the operating system, Ubuntu 17.04 (Zesty Zapus), which means that the Unity 7 desktop environment is still there. But it will be replaced in the coming months when the Alpha 2 milestone hits the streets.

Ubuntu 17.10 will be yet another standard version, which Canonical will support for nine months with security updates, until July 2018, so it's the perfect testbed for the GNOME 3 migration. Most probably, Canonical will concentrate on offering users the best GNOME desktop experience ever.

If you want to be the first to try Ubuntu 17.10, you can download either the 32-bit or 64-bit Live ISO images right now from our website. Kubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, and Xubuntu also have daily build ISOs available to download on the official FTP server. Please note that these builds are not recommended for daily use.