All Ubuntu flavors are now available for download

Oct 23, 2014 15:01 GMT  ·  By

Ubuntu GNOME 14.10 has been released by the team building it. It's based on Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn) and uses GNOME 3.12 as the desktop environment.

The GNOME flavor of Ubuntu is a newer one, although the devs have already made a few releases. It uses the stock GNOME stack and it’s had great success until now, despite the fact that it doesn't pack the latest version of the desktop environment. The developer has explained more than once why that is happening, but the good news is that people will be able to install GNOME 3.14 packages nonetheless.

The Ubuntu GNOME developers have more features to show than the Ubuntu base used, but that was to be expected, especially after the GNOME stack has been updated from the 3.10 branch to 3.12.

Ubuntu GNOME 14.10 is more than just an update

This latest version of Ubuntu GNOME comes with a few notable features and fixes for various issues, although most of those popped up during the development process and not before. Also, most of the packages from the previous iteration of the distro are still present.

"Ubuntu GNOME is an official flavour of Ubuntu, featuring the GNOME desktop environment. Ubuntu GNOME is a mostly pure GNOME desktop experience built from the Ubuntu repositories. This version is based on the GNOME 3.12 release," is written in the release notes.

The devs have also explained why the GNOME desktop environment is not customized. "Customizing GNOME would take away from our goal of providing GNOME the way GNOME developers intended. Other developers are free to remix Ubuntu GNOME to offer a more custom experience."

GNOME 3.12 might seem a little bit old, but it's not. It's barely a few months old and numerous distros are using it. With the exception of a few OSes that do include a newer GNOME, most of them are still powered by the older one.

Users will find that a number of packages and applications from the GNOME stack are provided by default, like Map and Weather, and a few others are available in the repos, such as Photos, Music, and Polari. Also, users who want a more conservative look can now enable "GNOME Classic session" from the login screen. The rest of the apps that you would expect to find, like Firefox or LibreOffice, have been updated as well.

You can download Ubuntu GNOME 14.10 right now from Softpedia and give it a spin before installing it.

Ubuntu GNOME 14.10 (7 Images)

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