To close the circle, although the launch has not yet been made official, we have to talk about Xubuntu 23.04. With the permission of an Ubuntu Kylin that we don't usually cover because it is intended only for the Chinese public, it is the last one that is missing. This version is not without controversy, something that is not surprising if we take into account that above it is the same company that half-forces us to use the Snap Store and the also snap version of Firefox.
The thing is that in earlier versions, Xubuntu supported flatpak packages after installing from scratch, but have backtracked on that. Snap packages are proprietary to Canonical and while support can be added, they didn't take kindly to adding it by default. In fact, Ubuntu 23.04 supports them better, but you have to take a walk to install them, and incidentally use GNOME Software.
Highlights of Xubuntu 23.04
- Supported for 9 months, until January 2024.
- Linux 6.2.
- xfce 4.18. Article related to captures.
- Removed support for flatpak packages. This is the default, but can be added back.
- New minimal ISO, which from what I've tried (although I could be wrong because I've only done it in a virtual machine) makes much more sense than Ubuntu's. This is an image that weighs less than 2GB (the normal one weighs about 3GB) and with which we can do a minimal installation without having to download the largest image.
- PipeWire as an audio server.
- Package updates, including Firefox 111, GIMP 2.10.34, LibreOffice 7.5.2, PipeWire 0.3.65, Thunderbird 102. Longer list at notes posted for 23.04.
Interested users can now download Xubuntu 23.04 from the button that we will provide below. To update from a previous version, it is recommended to follow our tutorial in which we teach how to update from terminal.