Ubuntu 16.10 'Yakkety Yak' Released, Let's See What's New In Ubuntu 16.10

And finally after 6 months of development, Ubuntu 16.10 ‘Yakkety Yak’ has been released today. There is definately something new, improved and fixed in this release. Let’s see what new has been introduced in Yakkety Yak.

​Ubuntu 16.10 ‘Yakkety Yak‘ was a much talked about Ubuntu distro regarding several features it was expected to come up with. It was expected to release with Unity 8 but later on, declared that Unity 8 will be available to test but not as the default desktop. And there were several other features that people talked about it after Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. Well, here it is today, Yakkety Yak. Don’t forget to take the poll after this article about whether you’ll be upgrading to Yakkety Yak or not. But first, let’s see what’s new in Ubuntu 16.10.

If you are expecting too much new stuff in this release then let me tell you that it’s a minor release. You’ll notice a couple of improvements as you boot into the desktop. These improvements make the distro a bit faster, smoother and finer.

Ubuntu 16.10 is shipping with Unity 7.5 version. The latest version contains several fixes and improvements. The biggest improvement that brought into Unity 7.5 is the improved Low graphic mode. Now it will be better user experience with Ubuntu 16.10 even if you’re on Low graphics hardware or using it in virtual machine. Below is the video that shows improvements with Low graphics mode –

There will be faster experience in Ubuntu in virtual machine. You don’t have to enable Low graphics mode as the system automatically enables it when need to.

Along with the latest stable Unity version 7.5, Unity 8 is also available to test. When one month back I tried Unity 8 on my AMD laptop, even the pointer was not working correctly. I was unable to open any app or system settings. Now Unity 8 also is getting shape. Today when I tried, things were working better than before. Though it does not support AMD so I did not expect it to work better on my laptop.

The first improvements  I noticed in Ubuntu 16.10 after first boot was the nautilus. Nautilus has been updated to version 3.20 which contains several visual changes and fixes.

Ubuntu 16.10 ships with Linux kernel 4.8. Linux kernel 4.8 supports more hardware including touch screen support for Microsoft Surface 3, amdgpu OverDrive support, etc. Check out Kernel Newbies for more in depth information.

All the apps have been updated to their latest versions including Thunderbird email client, Firefox browser, LibreOffice, etc. that make it more stable.

Yakkety Yak is now availale to download from the official website. Click the downlod button to give it a try.