Ubuntu Flavor sync meeting notes: 14 Sep 2026

Flavors & Remixes
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Representatives from the Ubuntu Flavors along with various Canonical and community leads met on April 27th 2026 to discuss the upcoming release of Ubuntu 26.10 Stonking Stingray among other desktop and flavor developments:

Introductions

@ilvipero kicked off both sessions with a few reminders of the basic rules of flavor sync meetings.

  • What?
    A flavor sync meeting is a recurring meeting between parties involved in the development and release of Ubuntu and Ubuntu flavors. It happens every 2 months, therefore we have 3 flavor sync meetings for each Ubuntu release. We usually have 2 sessions for each meeting, to accommodate time zones.
  • Who?
    Ubuntu flavors, Ubuntu developers, upcoming flavors, derivatives, and anyone interested is welcome to join the flavor sync meetings. Quick note, the meetings are focused on the challenges and issues of the upcoming release of Ubuntu. In order to give everyone time to speak, we need to be aware of time constraints. If a topic appears to be very complex and time consuming, we can move it to Discourse discussion or schedule a separate meeting.
  • How?
    Ubuntu flavor sync meetings are not streamed nor recorded. This is done on purpose to encourage honest, sometimes difficult questions and conversations. Highlights of the flavor sync meetings are posted on the Ubuntu Discourse, to encourage ongoing conversation around the topics discussed and relevant to the development of Ubuntu releases.

More information about the Ubuntu flavor sync meetings can be found on this announcement post .

Flavor Round Table

  • Lubuntu
    • Mir 2.29 is our target for 26.10, which will need an FFE. Saviq from Mir volunteered to file that, Simon has yet to follow up with him once Mir 2.29 hits Debian Unstable.
    • Installer and SDDM fixes related to the Wayland session.
    • What is the current status of the proposed pocket? (2500+ packages currently there)
      • Perl is a huge transition, 600+ packages, that should clear things up once migrated. Potentially intersecting with abseil. Glibc was mentioned. ginggs and paride followed up from the Release Team.
  • Kubuntu:
    • Progressing well, focusing on bugfixes from now on.
    • New Kubuntu Council elected
    • Less reliant on PPAs
  • Ubuntu Budgie
    • Quietish release - much more focus on upstream matters. The Ubuntu timescales and upstream timelines haven’t coincided this time.
    • We’ll make much of this 6 months effort available for testing - concentrating on making these much larger changes for the 27.04 cycle.
    • 26.10 is now basically feature complete - hopefully all major bugs have been addressed.
    • Looking forward to 27.04 - ideas being formulated and will be published soonish.
  • Ubuntu Cinnamon
    • A bit delayed on wallpapers/UI freeze
    • Not going to rush LightDM 1.33.1 to make release team happy, will rather send updates through SRUs
    • Might use new wiki for dev docs
  • Ubuntu Kylin - No issues to report
  • Ubuntu Mate
    • Fixed previous issues with ISO building,
    • Fixed newest issues with ISO building,
    • Conflict between onboard and libgjs0 packages is nearly solved, what should make ISO builds successful,
    • No network connection is the only issue,
    • New team established
  • Ubuntu Unity
    • Started work on establishing proper organizational structures (like kubuntu for example),
    • Started work on fixing conflicts preventing installing Lomiri alongside Unity Desktop (but likely will be finished in next cycle),
    • Fixed nux policy violation,
    • Replaced some MATE applications with Lomiri counterparts in the seed
  • Edubuntu
    • Shaping up to be a good release. Feature complete, and a rather uneventful release.
    • Sonic Pi (described in Ubuntu Studio) added to Music Education tools
    • @itzswirlz is considering looking at examples of FOSS in higher education to improve the tertiary seed. (Collaboration with Stevens Institute of Technology when???)
  • Ubuntu Studio
    • Also an uneventful release.
    • Upload of wallpapers coming shortly
    • Audio Configuration tool is now more streamlined to a tabbed interface.
    • “Ubuntu Studio Installer” now allows for the selection and deselection of individual packages.
    • Inclusion of “Sonic Pi” which is an IDE for making music in a python-like manner - inspiration for inclusion is a DJ that uses similar tools in her live shows and music-making.
  • Xubuntu

Community Council elections

Flavor spec

@merlijn-sebrechts reviewed the latest changes and comments on the work-in-progress Ubuntu Flavor spec.

Test observer feedback

  • Test observer
  • Test observer repo
  • Xubuntu @bluesabre
    • Test Observer
    • Manual Test Suite Instructions
      • Links to GitHub file browser, symlinks to actual tests
      • Test instructions themselves are not discoverable
      • Remaining tests are not discoverable
      • Tests reported are completely text-entry, prone to bad data entry
      • Users do not have a clear path for what to do
      • Proposed workaround: Render the markdown files to HTML, link to the static test suite pages
    • Reporting test results
      • Unclear process to mark images passing/failed
    • Image link text is not clearly clickable, not easy to select (surprise click event handling)
      • Alternative download links (zsync, et. al) not available
  • Add OpenQA based automated behavioral testing? https://open.qa/

A fake flavor for testing ?

  • Should there be a fake flavor mainly created to test processes and technologies, with low risks ?
  • Could use Miriway as the basis of this flavor, so we can stress things like SRU processes with a minimal Wayland based desktop.
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Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 963
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Ubuntu 26.04 Resolute Raccoon is not the upcoming release but 26.10 Stonking Stingray, right?

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Edited, thank you for spotting it!

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As the Miriway maintainer I’m intrigued by this: All I really know of flavors is that they seed different packages from the archive. But I’m sure there’s a lot of process and testing protocols that I’m unaware of.

The latter (“stress things like SRU processes” etc) seems to be the point of this proposal. Which also interests me with my other “hat” of software engineer - a lot of what I do and care about is improving processes for creating and delivering software.

conclusion: I’m interested in helping this happen, but would need a lot of support from those more familiar with how flavors work now and an interest in developing the processes involved.

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