Ubuntu 14.10 Final Beta

The first, and final, beta of Ubuntu 14.10 ‘Utopic Unicorn’ is now available to download. 

Other Ubuntu flavors have issued alpha and beta milestones for testing, but this beta marks the first formal development release of Ubuntu with Unity.

With all hands on polishing up the RTM builds of Ubuntu for Phones ahead of the first handset launch before year’s end, little attention has been given to bringing new features to the desktop.

There’s not even a new default desktop wallpaper.

It’s not an exact clone of 14.04 LTS, however. There’s a lick of paint here, a band-aid there, and a round of package bumps for LibreOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird and so on. The majority of the GNOME stack remains on 3.10 (Nautilus, Totem, Rhythmbox, Eye of GNOME, etc.).

If you planned to take it for a ride to revel in the newness you’ll need to temper expectations accordingly. This is the first Ubuntu milestone in nearly six years of coverage that even I am struggling to find big differences in.

Despite the beta tag the OS performs great —testament to the strict quality assurance framework Ubuntu has in place. While there is little compelling to make upgrading a must-do come next month, those who like to have some of the latest software will want to jump aboard the Unicorn.

Key changes since 14.04 LTS

• Linux Kernel 3.16
• Unity 7.3.1 (bug fixes)
• LibreOffice 4.3.1
• Mozilla Firefox 32
• Mozilla Thunderbird 31
• 12 New Wallpapers

The next point release of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS is likely feature the Utopic Unicorn kernel. If you plan on keeping trust in Trusty, rest assured you’ll be getting the latest hardware support in due course