Ubuntu 16.10 Remix
Sorry you missed out last time around, but here is one of our multi-desktop Ubuntu remixes. This one has six key desktop environments for you to try out: KDE, Unity, Cinnamon, MATE, XFCE and LXDE. Yes, we have included other desktops in the past, but this is a way for you to try the main desktops that are supported (either officially or sort of unofficially) by Canonical. You can choose the one you want to try from the boot menu. When you want to try another one, you can log out, select a different desktop from the login screen and log back in (login details below). This can sometimes cause problems when the new desktop tries to start a program that clashes with something the last desktop did. The solution, if that happens, is to reboot and start afresh.
This is a live distro for you to experiment with the various desktops – there is no installation option on the remix desktops. Because of the way the remix is done, installation is not possible – it proceeds most of the way through before failing. It doesn’t even have the decency to fail early on! So, we removed the option. Instead, we have included an option to boot from the vanilla Ubuntu ISO image, from where you can install it. Of course, that only gives you the stock Unity desktop but adding one or more of the others is easy. First install Synaptic – this is a far more versatile package manager than Ubuntu’s own offering. Go into the repositories list and enable the universe and multiverse repositories, then hit the refresh button. Now you can install one or more of kubuntu-desktop, cinnamon-desktopenvironment, mate-desktop-environment, xubuntu-desktop or lubuntu-desktop. These are meta-packages that install the whole of the corresponding desktop environment for you.
One advantage of waiting for the remix this time is that quite a few components of the system have been updated since the initial Ubuntu 16.10 release, so you get a more up-to-date and bugfixed set of desktops to play with. Login details: username is ubuntu and the password is blank, which is to say nothing.