The beta release of the Ubuntu 22.04 "Jammy Jellyfish" distribution has been announced, after which the package base has been completely frozen, and developers have moved on to final testing and bug fixing. The release, classified as a long-term support (LTS) version, will receive updates for 5 years until 2027, with a planned release date of April 21. Ready test images have been created for Ubuntu, Ubuntu Server, Lubuntu, Kubuntu, Ubuntu Mate, Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu Studio, Xubuntu, and UbuntuKylin (the edition for China).
Key Changes:
- The desktop has been updated to the GNOME 42 release, adding universal dark theme settings for the interface and optimizing the performance of GNOME Shell. The PrintScreen button now offers the ability to create a screencast or screenshot of a selected area of the screen or a separate window. To maintain the integrity of the design and stability of the user environment, some applications from the GNOME 41 branch have been retained in Ubuntu 22.04 (mainly those that were transitioned to GNOME 42 on GTK 4 and libadwaita). For most configurations, the default session is based on the Wayland protocol, but users can choose to revert to using the X server at login.
- Ten options for color themes in dark and light styles have been proposed. The default desktop icons have been moved to the bottom right corner of the screen (this behavior can be changed in the appearance settings). In the Yaru theme, all elements of buttons, sliders, widgets, and switches have switched from eggplant color to orange. A similar change has been made in the icon set. The color of the close button of the active window has changed from orange to gray, and the color of slider handles has changed from light gray to white.
- Firefox browser is now only available in Snap format. The deb packages for firefox and firefox-locale have been replaced with placeholders that install the Snap package with Firefox. For users of deb packages, a transparent transition to Snap is provided through the release of an update that will install the Snap package and transfer current settings from the user's home directory.
- To enhance security, the os-prober utility is disabled by default, which finds boot partitions of other operating systems and adds them to the boot menu. To boot alternative OSes, it is recommended to use the UEFI bootloader. To restore automatic detection of third-party OSes, you can change the GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER setting in /etc/default/grub and run the command 'sudo update-grub'.
- Access to NFS shares using the UDP protocol is disabled (the kernel is built with the CONFIG_NFS_DISABLE_UDP_SUPPORT=y option).
- The Linux kernel has been updated to version 5.15. Package versions have been updated: GCC 11.2, Python 3.10, Ruby 3.0, PHP 8.1, Perl 5.34, LibreOffice 7.3, BlueZ 5.63, CUPS 2.4, NetworkManager 1.36, Mesa 22, Poppler 22.02, PulseAudio 16, xdg-desktop-portal 1.14, PostgreSQL 14. The transition to the new branches of OpenLDAP 2.5 and BIND 9.18 has been made.
- By default, the nftables packet filter is in use. To maintain backward compatibility, the iptables-nft package is available, providing utilities with the same command line syntax as iptables, but translates the received rules into nf_tables bytecode.
- In OpenSSH, support for RSA key-based digital signatures with SHA-1 hash ('ssh-rsa') is disabled by default. The scp utility has been enhanced with the '-s' option for SFTP protocol support.
- Support for Power8 processors has been discontinued in Ubuntu Server builds for IBM POWER systems (ppc64el); builds are now compiled for the Power9 CPU ('--with-cpu=power9').
- Working live-install builds have been created for the RISC-V architecture.
- Kubuntu features the KDE Plasma 5.24.3 desktop and the KDE Gear 21.12 application suite.
- Xubuntu continues to deliver the Xfce 4.16 desktop. The Greybird theme set has been updated to version 3.23.1 to support GTK 4 and libhandy, improving the unification of GNOME and GTK4 application styles with Xubuntu's overall theme. The elementary-xfce 0.16 set has been updated, offering many new icons. The Mousepad 0.5.8 text editor has been included with session saving and plugin support. Improvements have been made to thumbnail handling in the Ristretto 0.12.2 image viewer.
- In Ubuntu MATE, the MATE desktop has been updated to the corrective release 1.26.1. The stylistic design has been translated to the Yaru theme variant (used in Ubuntu Desktop), adapted for use in MATE. New applications GNOME Clocks, Maps, and Weather have been included in the main set. The indicator set for the panel has been updated. By removing proprietary NVIDIA drivers (which now load separately), eliminating duplicate icons, and removing old themes, the installation image size has been reduced to 2.8 GB (down from 4.1 GB before cleaning).
- Ubuntu Budgie now features a new release of the Budgie 10.6 desktop. Applets have been updated.
- Ubuntu Studio has updated versions of Blender 3.0.1, KDEnlive 21.12.3, Krita 5.0.2, Gimp 2.10.24, Ardour 6.9, Scribus 1.5.7, Darktable 3.6.0, Inkscape 1.1.2, Carla 2.4.2, Studio Controls 2.3.0, OBS Studio 27.2.3, and MyPaint 2.0.1.
- The Lubuntu builds have transitioned to the LXQt 1.0 graphical environment.
- Beta releases of two unofficial Ubuntu 22.04 editions are available for testing — Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix 22.04 with the Cinnamon desktop and Ubuntu Unity 22.04 with the Unity7 desktop.
Source: opennet.ru
