---
title: Ubuntu Desktop Weekly Update – December 15th 2017
description: Here’s the last newsletter for 2017, we’ll be back in the new year. On
  behalf of the whole Desktop Team I wish you all a happy holiday and a peaceful 2018.
  GNOME Some important fixes landed in fonts-noto-emoji.  🍔  🍺 🧀 Work continues on
  removing as much gtk2 as we can. A fresh 18.04 install now only installs  […]
url: https://canonical.com/blog/ubuntu-desktop-weekly-update-december-15th-2017?format=md
---

1. [Blog](https://canonical.com/blog)
2. Article

---

[Will Cooke](https://canonical.com/blog/author/willcooke "More about Will Cooke")

15 December 2017

# Ubuntu Desktop Weekly Update – December 15th 2017

---

Share the article

Here’s the last newsletter for 2017, we’ll be back in the new year. On behalf of the whole Desktop Team I wish you all a happy holiday and a peaceful 2018.

## GNOME

Some important [fixes](https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/fonts-noto-color-emoji/0~20171204-1) landed in fonts-noto-emoji.  🍔  🍺 🧀

Work continues on [removing](https://launchpad.net/bugs/1585903) as much gtk2 as we can. A fresh 18.04 install now only installs three gtk2 rdepends: Firefox, Thunderbird and libgtk2-perl (for debconf). Firefox 58 (in beta) has dropped the gtk2 dependency.

Found and [fixed](https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=791363) a shadow offset bug in gtk+ related to the fraction scaling work.

## General

The [MIR](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/spice-vdagent/+bug/1200296) for spice-vdagent is progressing. This adds some nice features to guest systems running with GNOME Boxes such as copy-and-paste between host & guest and arbitrary screen resolution support.

We’ve ported our Selenium autopackage tests for Chromium over to Firefox as well. This makes a wider range of automatic integration tests available to Firefox.

Avahi: We received the patch for advertising services on localhost. It is actually a one-liner! Courtesy of [Rithvik Patibandla](https://github.com/rithvikp1998) one of the GSoC 2017 Open Printing students. 18.04 will ship the complete driverless printing fun, including USB.

We’re looking for more help to verify the Unity 7 fixes. If you can spare an hour or two please see [this thread](https://community.ubuntu.com/t/unity-stack-sru-for-ubuntu-16-04-help-verify/2420) for more info.

## Snaps

A couple more upstream projects have merged our snapcraft.yaml files in to their trees. You can see the current state of the GNOME snaps we are maintaining [here.](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopTeam/GNOMESnaps)

## Updates

* Chromium
  + Updated chromium beta to 63.0.3239.84 and updated snap in beta channel
  + Updated chromium dev to 64.0.3282.14 and updated snap in edge channel
  + Updated chromium stable to 63.0.3239.84 (all supported series + bionic-proposed), snap in candidate channel
* Libreoffice
  + Promoted 5.4.3 snap to stable channel

[Get in touch

Interested in running Ubuntu in your organization?](https://ubuntu.com/about/contact-us/form)

## Sign up for our newsletter

Get the latest Canonical news and updates in your inbox.

Work email:

\*I agree to receive information about Canonical's
products and services.

By submitting this form, I confirm that I have read and agree to [Canonical's Privacy Policy](https://canonical.com/legal/dataprivacy).

Sign up

## Share on

---

## Related posts

[### Canonical joins the Open Secure AI Alliance](https://canonical.com/blog/open-secure-ai-alliance)

Canonical is now part of the Open Secure AI Alliance, announced by NVIDIA with partners across cloud computing, cybersecurity, enterprise software, open source foundations, and...

[Canonical](https://canonical.com/blog/author/canonical)

28 August 2026

[### Arduino® VENTUNO™ Q is available for pre-order with Ubuntu pre-installed](https://canonical.com/blog/arduino-ventuno-q-is-available-for-pre-order-with-ubuntu-pre-installed)

London, UK – August 25, 2026 – Following our initial collaboration announcement in March 2026, Canonical and Arduino (a subsidiary of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.) are excited...

[Canonical](https://canonical.com/blog/author/canonical)

25 August 2026

[### Advantech AOM-2721 is now Ubuntu Certified](https://canonical.com/blog/advantech-aom-2721-ubuntu-certified)

Canonical announces that the Advantech AOM-2721 is officially joining the list of Ubuntu Certified Hardware.

[Mikhail Khazov](https://canonical.com/blog/author/khazov-m)

13 August 2026

[### Canonical integrates NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Lightning with Ubuntu for always-on AI agents](https://canonical.com/blog/nvidia-nemotron-3-5-lightning)

Canonical is pleased to announce that NVIDIA’s newly introduced NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Lightning, an open, customizable model built for always-on AI agents, is now available on...

[Canonical](https://canonical.com/blog/author/canonical)

11 August 2026
