Ubuntu's 'Mantic Minotaur' peeks out of the labyrinth
The next release of Ubuntu will appear in mid-October, and the latest daily builds reveal some of the features of the forthcoming interim release.
Ubuntu 23.10 is codenamed Mantic Minotaur; the adjective means relating to prophecy or divination of the future, and we're sure you know what minotaurs are meant to be. The wallpapers have a suitably labyrinthine theme. Mantic hasn't gone into beta yet – that's scheduled for next week. However, some of what will be in the new release is becoming clear.
The original Ubuntu release schedule, back in 2004, was intended to synchronize with the GNOME project's semiannual releases, so we knew that the default desktop would be the imminent GNOME 45, whose beta we examined in August as well as the changes to its extensions system earlier this month.
One change that should have little to no visible impact is switching the default Firefox browser snap to use Wayland by default. In the event of problems, the above post details how to revert to the X11 version of Firefox, but it looks tricky for non-technical users.