Canonical has released the second beta of Ubuntu 15.10, or Wily Werewolf as this release will be known when it arrives in final form next month. The second beta is the first (and last) for the main Unity desktop version of Ubuntu. If you'd like to see a preview of 15.10 before it's finalized, this is your chance.

Unfortunately, like most Ubuntu releases lately, there's not much to see here. Oh sure, there's some revamped scrollbars, Unity 7.3.2, which has some welcome bug fixes and Ubuntu's version of the 4.2.1 Linux kernel, but you won't find any major changes to Unity in this beta or, for that matter, the final release when it arrives. Frankly, Ubuntu 14.04, which was a Long Term Support release, had more changes than this release.

Normally I'd argue that's a good thing. No news is, when it comes to operating systems, good news these days. It could be worse anyway, you could have Windows 10 foisted on you. Except that Ubuntu's October releases have historically been more experimental, less stable releases that tried to push the envelope a little. It's been two years since we've seen that sort of fun-filled, experimental release from Canonical.

There's Unity 8 out there somewhere, under development, and Canonical's vision of "convergence" is seeing some real actually shipping devices on the mobile side. But if you're a desktop Unity fan, patiently waiting for version 8 to arrive, well, keep waiting. Or, if you are craving something shiny and new, check out Kubuntu 15.10 Beta 2, which ships with the brand new Plasma 5.4 desktop environment. Visual changes abound in this Kubuntu release.

Fans of the Unity desktop will just have to console themselves with the knowledge that at least Unity 7.x is, at this point, pretty rock solid and nothing in Ubuntu 15.10 will rock the boat in any way. 

The most noticeable change -- the only visual changes really -- in this release involves the scrollbars. Yes, scrollbars. Canonical's homegrown version has been ditched in favor of the GNOME scrollbars in GTK 3 applications (which accounts for the majority of Ubuntu apps). 

The GNOME scrollbars have been themed a little to look like Ubuntu's old version, but the strange, handle-like thing is gone. The move seems primarily a result of the fact that GNOME's scrollbars more or less now behave just like Unity's did. In other words, there's no need to duplicate scrollbar efforts.

Nothing about the behavior of the scrollbars has changed, all the bad UI decisions remain -- which is to say that even when there's scrollable content Unity will still not show a scrollbar until either you hover the scrollbar or otherwise put the mouse in motion. How do you know there's scrollable content? Well, your guess is as good as mine. At least now though Canonical engineers can move on to something more exciting than maintaining homegrown scrollbars.

The notable exception to the scrollbar change is perhaps the most used application on the desktop: the web browser. Chrome and Firefox both still use completely different scrollbars (both are built against GTK 2, though Firefox is moving toward a GTK 3 release -- if you're lucky it might get here in time for 16.04 next year). LibreOffice also uses its own scrollbars.

The only other notable thing I noticed in the change logs is a new option in the dconf setting panel which lets you control the amount of delay before showing the menu when you press the Alt key (you'll need to install dconf through the Software Center). If you frequently trigger this menu when you meant to alt-tab (but didn't get to tab quick enough), you can eliminate this problem by increasing the delay time.

There are some somewhat bigger changes afoot under the hood in this update, including an updated kernel. Ubuntu 15.10 will ship with the Ubuntu Linux Kernel 4.2.0-11, which is pulled from the upstream 4.2.1 Linux Kernel (this is true for all flavors, not just Unity). Linux kernel 4.2.1 brings better support for Intel Skylake CPUs and AMD GPUs.

This release also sees Mesa 11 arrive, which is notable for bringing OpenGL 4.1 support to RadeonSI and Nouveau drivers. However, as far as I can tell, OpenGL 4.1 with RadeonSI isn't working in Ubuntu 15.10 beta 2.

For the most part Ubuntu 15.10 has made the jump to GNOME 3.16. Ubuntu 15.04 still used a surprising amount of GNOME 3.14 apps and libraries, but most of those have finally been updated to 3.16. Exceptions include Nautilus, which remains at 3.14 (likely due to how heavily Canonical patches it in an effort to retain some functionality of a file browser) and Gedit, which remains at 3.10 (probably because, seriously, it's a text editor, what more do you want from it?).

The application suite has been updated to the latest available version as well, including the hot-off-the-press Firefox 41, LibreOffice 5 and Empathy 3.12.10. 

In my testing this release has been as stable and bug free as a final release, which isn't surprising given the relative minor nature of the changes involved. I still wouldn't suggest using it on your daily machine just yet, but while I normally only update for Spring releases, this is one x.10 that I wouldn't hesitate to install. Updating won't gain you much, but it's correspondingly unlikely to mess up your system.

That said, there are plenty of theme glitches around. The GNOME Image Viewer (Eye of GNOME) gains support for client-side decorations, but apparently lost its GMenu in the process. I also had some problems with a couple of other apps (Evince for one), but in most cases the problem was solved by maximizing and then unmaximizing the window (in other words, force a redraw and most visual glitches will correct themselves).

Canonical should have a release candidate version of Ubuntu 15.10 available on October 16, with the final version coming a week later on October 22, 2015.

Screenshots:

ubuntu-scrollbars-sidebyside.jpg - The new GNOME scrollbars along side the old Canonical created scrollbars
ubuntu-1510-firefox.jpg - Firefox 41 in Ubuntu 15.10, note the different scrollbars.