The beta release of the Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish distribution has been presented, after the formation of which the package database was completely frozen, and the developers moved on to final testing and bug fixes. The release, which is categorized as a Long Term Support (LTS) release with updates for 5 years through 2027, is scheduled for April 21st. Ready test images are created for Ubuntu, Ubuntu Server, Lubuntu, Kubuntu, Ubuntu Mate, Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu Studio, Xubuntu and UbuntuKylin (China edition).
Major changes:
- The desktop has been updated to the release of GNOME 42, which adds environment-wide dark style settings for the interface and optimizes the performance of GNOME Shell. When you press the PrintScreen button, you can create a screencast or screenshot of a selected part of the screen or a separate window. To preserve the integrity of the design and stability of the user environment in Ubuntu 22.04, versions of some applications from the GNOME 41 branch were left (mostly about applications translated in GNOME 42 to GTK 4 and libadwaita). Most configurations default to a desktop session based on the Wayland protocol, but leave the option to fallback to an X server when logging in.
- Offered 10 color options in dark and light styles. Icons on the desktop are moved to the lower right corner of the screen by default (this behavior can be changed in the appearance settings). In the Yaru theme, all buttons, sliders, widgets, and toggles use orange instead of eggplant. A similar replacement is made in the set of icons. Changed the color of the active window close button from orange to gray, and the color of slider handles from light gray to white.
- The Firefox browser is now only available in Snap format. The firefox and firefox-locale deb packages are replacements for stubs that install a Snap package with Firefox. For users of the deb package, there is a transparent process for migrating to snap by publishing an update that will install the snap package and transfer the current settings from the user's home directory.
- To increase security, the os-prober utility is disabled by default, which finds boot partitions of other OSes and adds them to the boot menu. It is recommended to use the UEFI bootloader to boot alternative operating systems. To return the automatic detection of third-party OSes in /etc/default/grub, you can change the GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER setting and run the "sudo update-grub" command.
- Disabled access to NFS partitions using the UDP protocol (the kernel was compiled with the CONFIG_NFS_DISABLE_UDP_SUPPORT=y option).
- The Linux kernel has been updated to release 5.15. Updated versions of packages: 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-Des KTOP-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 enabled. To preserve backward compatibility, the iptables-nft package is available, which provides utilities with the same command line syntax as in iptables, but translates the resulting rules into nf_tables bytecode.
- OpenSSH does not support digital signatures based on RSA keys with a SHA-1 hash ("ssh-rsa") by default. The "-s" option has been added to the scp utility to work over the SFTP protocol.
- Ubuntu Server builds for IBM POWER systems (ppc64el) have dropped support for Power8 processors, builds are now built for Power9 CPUs ("--with-cpu=power9").
- The formation of installation assemblies working in live mode for the RISC-V architecture is provided.
- Kubuntu offers the KDE Plasma 5.24.3 desktop and the KDE Gear 21.12 application suite.
- Xubuntu continues to ship the Xfce 4.16 desktop. The Greybird theme set has been updated to version 3.23.1 with support for GTK 4 and libhandy, which improved the unification of GNOME and GTK4 applications with the common Xubuntu style. The elementary-xfce 0.16 set has been updated with many new icons. Used text editor Mousepad 0.5.8 with support for saving sessions and plug-ins. Improved work with thumbnails in Ristretto 0.12.2 image viewer.
- In Ubuntu MATE, the MATE desktop has been updated to patch release 1.26.1. Styling has been moved to a variant of the Yaru theme (used in Ubuntu Desktop), adapted to work in MATE. The main cast includes the new GNOME Clocks, Maps and Weather applications. Updated set of indicators for the panel. By removing proprietary NVIDIA drivers (now downloaded separately), eliminating duplicate icons and removing old skins, the size of the installation image has been reduced to 2.8 GB (it was 4.1 GB before cleaning).
- Ubuntu Budgie features a new release of the Budgie 10.6 desktop. Updated applets.
- Updated Ubuntu Studio 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, MyPaint 2.0.1.
- Lubuntu builds have switched to the LXQt 1.0 graphical environment.
- Beta releases of two unofficial editions of Ubuntu 22.04 are available for testing - Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix 22.04 with Cinnamon desktop and Ubuntu Unity 22.04 with Unity7 desktop.
Source: opennet.ru