Artful Aardvark Alpha 1 Released!

[Simon Quigley]

"Ten billion ants in this world, and I'm having trouble with just one."

   - Aardvark from The Ant and the Aardvark

The first alpha of the Artful Aardvark (to become 17.10) has now been
released!

This milestone features images for Lubuntu, Kubuntu, and Ubuntu Kylin.

Pre-releases of the Artful Aardvark are *not* encouraged for anyone
needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into
occasional, even frequent breakage. They are, however, recommended for
Ubuntu flavor developers and those who want to help in testing,
reporting, and fixing bugs as we work towards getting this release ready.

Alpha 1 includes a number of software updates that are ready for wider
testing. This is quite an early set of images, so you should expect some
bugs.

While these Alpha 1 images have been tested and work, except as noted in
the release notes, Ubuntu developers are continuing to improve the
Artful Aardvark. In particular, once newer daily images are available,
system installation bugs identified in the Alpha 1 installer should be
verified against the current daily image before being reported in
Launchpad. Using an obsolete image to re-report bugs that have already
been fixed wastes your time and the time of developers who are busy
trying to make 17.10 the best Ubuntu release yet. Always ensure your
system is up to date before reporting bugs.

Lubuntu:
  Lubuntu is a flavor of Ubuntu based on LXDE and focused on providing
  a very lightweight distribution.

  The Lubuntu 17.10 Alpha 1 images can be downloaded from:

    * http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/lubuntu/releases/artful/alpha-1/

  More information about Lubuntu 17.10 Alpha 1 can be found here:

    * https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ArtfulAardvark/Alpha1/Lubuntu

  Also in this milestone is Lubuntu Next, an experimental flavor of
  Ubuntu based on LXQt and focused on providing a modern, lightweight,
  Qt-based distribution.

  The Lubuntu Next 17.10 Alpha 1 images can be downloaded from:

    * http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/lubuntu-next/releases/artful/alpha-1/

  More information about Lubuntu Next 17.10 Alpha 1 can be found here:

    * https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ArtfulAardvark/Alpha1/LubuntuNext


Kubuntu:
  Kubuntu is the KDE-based flavor of Ubuntu. It uses the Plasma desktop
  and includes a wide selection of tools from the KDE project.

  The Kubuntu 17.10 Alpha 1 images can be downloaded from:

    * http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/artful/alpha-1/

  More information about Kubuntu 17.10 Alpha 1 can be found here:

    * https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ArtfulAardvark/Alpha1/Kubuntu


Ubuntu Kylin:
  Ubuntu Kylin is a flavor of Ubuntu that is more suitable for
  Chinese users.

  The Ubuntu Kylin 17.10 Alpha 1 images can be downloaded from:

    * http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntukylin/releases/artful/alpha-1/

  More information about Ubuntu Kylin 17.10 Alpha 1 can be found here:

    * https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ArtfulAardvark/Alpha1/UbuntuKylin


If you're interested in following the changes as we further develop the
Artful Aardvark, we suggest that you subscribe to the
ubuntu-devel-announce list. This is a low-traffic list (a few posts a
week) carrying announcements of approved specifications, policy changes,
alpha releases and other interesting events.

  * http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-announce

A big thank you to the developers and testers for their efforts to pull
together this Alpha release!

On behalf of Ubuntu Release Team,

Simon Quigley