the release of the distribution , which falls into the category of long-term support (LTS) releases, with updates provided for 5 years until April 2025. Installation and boot images have been created for , , , , Ubuntu
Budgie, , and UbuntuKylin (China edition).
Key :
- The desktop has been updated to the release , which introduced a 'Do Not Disturb' mode for temporarily hiding new notifications, added a separate app for managing GNOME Shell extensions, redesigned login and unlock interfaces, revamped most system dialogs, added the ability to launch applications using a discrete GPU on hybrid graphics systems, implemented folder renaming functionality in overview mode, and included an option for parental controls in the initial setup wizard, among other features.
- The default Yaru theme has been redesigned to include a third fully light variant alongside the previously available dark (dark headers, dark background, and dark controls) and light (dark headers, light background, and light controls) modes. A new design for the system menu and application menu has been suggested. New folder icons have been added, optimized for display on both light and dark backgrounds.
A new interface for changing theme variants has been implemented.
- Performance optimization for GNOME Shell and the window manager has been conducted. CPU load has been reduced and delays during animation rendering while manipulating windows, moving the mouse, and opening overview mode have been cut down.
- Support for 10-bit color depth has been added.
- Fractional scaling support has been implemented for X11, which was previously available only when using Wayland. This feature allows for optimal sizing of elements on high pixel density (HiDPI) screens, where interface elements can be scaled not just at 2x, but at 1.5x.
- A new splash screen displayed during boot has been added.
- The icon for quick navigation to the Amazon online store has been removed.
- previously the kernel 4.12 was offered). A kernel-preempt option with Real-Time patches is provided for real-time systems. . As in the fall release, the LZ4 algorithm is used for compressing the kernel and the initial boot image initramfs, reducing boot time due to faster data unpacking. Notable changes compared to the 4.15 kernel used in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS include support for AMD Rome CPUs, Radeon RX Vega M and Navi GPUs, Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC, Intel Cannon Lake platforms, Raspberry Pi models 2B, 3B, 3A+, 3B+, CM3, CM3+, and 4B, significant improvements in power management, enhanced support for USB 3.2 and Type-C, a new API for mounting, io_uring interface, pidfd, and support for AMD SEV (Secure Encrypted Virtualization) in KVM.
- System components and development tools have been updated: Glibc 2.31, BlueZ 5.53, OpenJDK 11, rustc 1.41, GCC 9.3, Python 3.8.2, ruby 2.7.0, Ruby on Rails 5.2.3, php 7.4, perl 5.30, go 1.13.
- User and graphical applications have been updated:
Mesa 20.0, Qt 5.12.8, PulseAudio 14.0-pre, Firefox 75.0, Thunderbird 68.7.0, LibreOffice 6.4.2, GIMP 2.10.18, VLC 3.0.9. - Server and virtualization applications have been updated:
QEMU 4.2, libvirt 6.0, Bind 9.16, HAProxy 2.0, OpenSSH 8.2 (with support for FIDO/U2F two-factor authentication tokens and the ability to place configuration settings in /etc/ssh/sshd_config.d/*.conf). TLSv1.3 support has been enabled in Apache httpd. - Support for WireGuard VPN has been added.
- The chrony precise time synchronization daemon has been updated to version 3.5 and additionally isolated from the system through a system call filter connection.
- Development of the experimental ability to install on a root partition with ZFS has continued. The ZFSonLinux implementation has been updated to the release with support for encryption, hot-swappable devices, the 'zpool trim' command, speed improvements for the 'scrub' and 'resilver' commands. The zsys daemon is being developed for managing ZFS, allowing multiple parallel systems with ZFS on a single computer, automating snapshot creation, and managing the distribution of system and user session data. Different snapshots can contain various system states, enabling switching between them. For example, in case of issues after an update, it will be possible to revert to an old stable state by selecting a previous snapshot. Snapshots can also be used for transparent automatic backups of user data.
- Compared to the previous LTS release, Snap Store has replaced Ubuntu Software as the default interface for searching and installing regular and snap packages.
- Builds of packages for the i386 architecture have been discontinued. To continue supporting legacy applications that remain in 32-bit form or require 32-bit libraries, a separate set of offered.
- In the system , used for storing network interface settings, added support for configuring virtual SR-IOV network devices, GSM modems (via the NetworkManager backend), and WiFi parameters (bssid/band/channel). There is also the possibility to set the ipv6-address-generation option for NetworkManager and emit-lldp for networkd.
- Python 3.8 has been added to the base package, and packages with Python 2.7 have been moved to the universe repository and are not included by default. Remaining packages in the distribution tied to Python 2.7 have been rewritten to use the interpreter /usr/bin/python2. The file /usr/bin/python is no longer installed by default (to create /usr/bin/python linked to Python 3, it is necessary to install the python-is-python3 package).
- By default, an ISO image of Ubuntu Server with the Subiquity installer is offered for all supported architectures, performing the installation in Live mode. Subiquity supports operations such as disk partitioning, language and keyboard layout selection, user creation, network connection configuration, RAID, LVM, VLAN setup, and network interface aggregation. Notable new features include an automated installation mode using a JSON profile and the ability to install the bootloader on multiple disks at once (allowing booting from any disk in case the bootloader is damaged). Additionally, fixes have been made to simplify the use of encryption, installation on multipath disks, and improve reliability when using disks already set up with other systems.
- In KDE Plasma 5.18 desktop, KDE Applications 19.12.3, and Qt Framework 5.12.5 are provided by default. The music player Elisa 19.12.3, which has replaced Cantata, is used by default. Updates include latte-dock 0.9.10, KDEConnect 1.4.0, Krita 4.2.9, and Kdevelop 5.5.0. Support for KDE4 and Qt4 applications has been discontinued. KDE PIM has been removed from the base package and should now be installed from the repository. An experimental session based on Wayland is offered (after installing the plasma-workspace-wayland package, an optional “Plasma (Wayland)” option appears on the login screen).
- : The MATE desktop has been updated to version An interface has been added for updating firmware using fwupd. Compiz and Compton have been removed from the distribution. Window thumbnails are displayed in the panel, task switcher (Alt-Tab), and desktop switcher. A new applet for notifications has been proposed. The Evolution mail client is used instead of Thunderbird. An applet for switching between different GPUs in systems with hybrid graphics (NVIDIA Optimus) is offered during the installation of proprietary NVIDIA drivers, which can be selected in the installer.
- : The application menu applet is enabled by default. and a custom applet for managing network settings.
An interface for quick switching between desktop layouts (Budgie, Classic Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu Budgie, Cupertino, The One
and Redmond) has been added.
GNOME Firmware and GNOME Drawing applications have been included in the main set.
Integration with GNOME 3.36 has been improved. The Budgie desktop has been updated to version 10.5.1. Font smoothing and hinting settings have been added. The applet with the system tray is disabled by default (due to operational issues). The applets have been adapted for HiDPI screens. - : In Ubuntu Studio, the settings for Jack Master, additional devices, and layers to PulseAudio are separated. Updated RaySession 0.8.3, Audacity 2.3.3, Hydrogen 1.0.0-beta2, Carla 2.1-RC2,
Blender 2.82, KDEnlive 19.12.3, Krita 4.2.9, GIMP 2.10.18,
Ardour 5.12.0, Scribus 1.5.5, Darktable 2.6.3, Pitivi 0.999, Inkscape 0.92.4, OBS Studio 25.0.3, MyPaint 2.0.0, Rawtherapee 5.8. - In The appearance of a dark theme has been noted. The interface design of applications installed from deb packages, snap, and flatpak has been unified. The apt-offline package, which requires Python 2 for operation, as well as the pidgin-libnotify package, have been excluded from the base set. Versions of Xfce applications 4.14 have been updated.
- became the first LTS release to offer a graphical environment by default (version 0.14.1 is provided) instead of LXDE. The Discover Software Center 5.18.4 is used for managing application installation.
- Ubuntu with a Deepin desktop environment. The project is currently an unofficial edition of Ubuntu, but the developers of the distribution are negotiating with Canonical to include UbuntuDDE in the official distributions of Ubuntu.
Source: opennet.ru
