Roadmap for Lubuntu

[Julien Lavergne]

Hi,

First and following Phill, I want to thank you all for this 13.04
release. Releases after releases, it seems to go smoother than the
last one :-)

However, it's time to think about the future. During the last cycle,
there were a lot of news from Canonical about the future of Ubuntu.
Lubuntu is part of the family, so every big changes in Ubuntu affect
Lubuntu. However, and I want to make it clear for anyone : Lubuntu is
a community project, with its own release schedules, its own choices …

That's said, let's go with some ideas :-) What I'm going to say, it's
a very long proposal, open for discussions. But discussions mean
arguments if you have another opinion ;-)

Next steps are 13.10, and 14.04 which should be a LTS version for
Ubuntu. Last LTS (12.04), I considered that we were not ready for such
commitment. I was also unsure of the work needed to make a good LTS.
With more experience, I have now a better vision of this goal.

So, let's make it simple, I would like Lubuntu 14.04 to be a LTS version.

But claiming we want a LTS its' not enough. First, we need to make it
stable enough, so we can safely claim it's a LTS, because people who
install a LTS want a stable system. But, I also would like to make it
sexy enough to be proud of it, to make people happy to recommend it. I
would like to make it THE release of Lubuntu, the reference of all
Lubuntu releases. To achieve it, I have several goals in mind, items
that I consider we need to finish for the LTS, and I think we can
finish them :

- Finish lxsession, to make the system fully customizable and able to
run minimal set of applications by default (I'll talk about it later,
when you will be able to test it properly).
- Fully translatable : it's vital to make it available in a maximum of languages
- Artwork : finish the icon theme for a GTK environment, finish the
other pieces of the artwork and its integration, to make Lubuntu even
more beautiful

Another item I would like to add, but I'm not sure we will be able to
make it, it's an off-line documentation, or a nice manual.

Of course, we need also the usual bug fixes and small improvements
everywhere, but the main focus should be on those topics.

Also, soon we will need to decide which applications we want in this
LTS. We should do it in an other discussion, but it's the right time
to do big changes if we consider they are good.

Considering all the big changes which may happen for 13.10, I'm also
thinking of the possibility to not do a proper 13.10 release,
depending of the state of 13.10 after all the big structural changes,
and near feature freeze. Again, it can be reconsidered in due time,
but we may keep this in mind. I'm prepared to drop 1 release if we can
do a very good 14.04 LTS.

And after 14.04 ?

Well, you probably know that Canonical is pushing for a Qt switch over
GTK, but also by changing it's display manager (MIR). You may know
also that LXDE is thinking about switching to Qt too, by joining
forces with Razor-qt desktop environment. All those changes may be an
opportunity to start another adventure, using Razor-qt as a base. It's
also a reason to release 14.04 as a LTS, because it could be the final
release with LXDE and GTK.  We will also be free to make very big
changes for 14.10, because we know we have a LTS behind to recommend,
for a long time.

To prepare this, I'll also work on a specific session (call QLubuntu,
pronounce it “Cute Lubuntu” ;-)), to test during 13.10 and 14.04, if
the option to go with Qt is possible.

So, what do you think about it ? :-)

Regards,
Julien Lavergne