Canonical has released the final beta of Ubuntu 17.10 Artful Aardvark for Desktop, Server, and Cloud products. It represents the last major development before the release candidate which ships a week before the final release, which itself is scheduled for the October 19. Ubuntu 17.10 is not an LTS so it’ll be supported for just nine months.
Lukasz Zemczak, posting in the mailing list, said:
“The beta images are known to be reasonably free of showstopper CD build or installer bugs, while representing a very recent snapshot of 17.10 that should be representative of the features intended to ship with the final release expected on October 19th, 2017.”
The new beta release is available for all of the different Ubuntu spins including Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Cloud products, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu Budgie, UbuntuKylin, Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Studio, and Xubuntu. At its core, it comes with Linux 4.13, currently the newest kernel release.
In terms of user-facing changes, this release is the first to use GNOME since 2010 because Canonical decided to ditch its attempts to continue developing Unity and its convergence vision. With its switch to GNOME, it has also adopted the Wayland display server which is now quickly dethroning X11.
If you’re eager to check out how Ubuntu looks, now is a good time to try. It’s more or less feature complete without major bugs. If you do find any bugs, make sure you file any bugs with Canonical so they can be squashed. You can find the list of downloads in the source link below.
Source: Ubuntu Mailing Lists