The Xubuntu team is proud to announce the Beta2 release of Xubuntu 12.04, Precise Pangolin!

Updates for this release include

• The i386 images use a non-PAE kernel to support a bigger variety of machines
• Pavucontrol is now used over xfce4-mixer
• Some default shortcuts have been changed and some added, see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Xubuntu/Roadmap/Specifications/Precise/DefaultShortcutKeys#Detailed_specification for the complete list
• Lots of appearance tweaks and improvements, including fixes for Ubiquity, Plymouth and the Greybird theme
• New branding

Try it!

Visit the download page to give it a try. Be sure to report your testing results to help the Xubuntu developers – see the ISO testing tracker. Bugs can be reported in Launchpad. If you are looking for support, please see the #ubuntu+1 or #xubuntu IRC channels on irc.freenode.net. Before testing this release, make sure to review the release notes.

Our new branding

Along with the Beta 2 release of Xubuntu, we are proudly presenting our new branding, including a brand new and shiny logo, refreshed website looks and the few-days-old wallpaper for Precise. Our website also includes a page for Xubuntu marketing resources, including PNG and SVG versions of the new logo as well as some shiny, new web banners for public use.

Without further babble, our new logo in all its glory

The new logo has a more condensed look and features a more saturated blue. To avoid being superfluous on blue, the logotype is printed on dark grey. It can also be easily replaced with white on darker backgrounds.

The picmark is still based on the Xfce mouse, but it’s more simplified and designed to work better in different contexts and sizes. While the picmark has lost some similarity with the Xfce mouse, reducing the complexity is a logical step from the last logo change.

Xubuntu Precise wallpaper: a better experience for dual-head users

The new wallpaper consists of two parts to give dual-head users a better experience with default wallpapers for once. Here’s the wallpaper in one, wide piece.

As some of you notice, the wallpaper has lots of elements previously seen on the Xubuntu wallpapers. That’s right, it’s intentional. Time to give some homage for the old times. We don’t want to go too rusty or dusty, so there’s some nice green stuff in, too.

The right side of the wallpaper with the flying bird will be the default wallpaper. If you don’t like birds, rather just watch a more plain wallpaper, need to set a wallpaper to the other monitor too or just for fun: we encourage you to try out the left side too!

There’s no certainty that we will keep on providing these wide wallpapers in the future releases, so starting from now is the right time to give feedback. Do you love it? Do you hate it? Should every operating system provide such wallpapers? Should we stick to providing one wallpaper only to keep the decision-making to a minimum? Express your thoughts at the Xubuntu-devel mailing list or the #xubuntu-devel IRC channel on Freenode.