Ubuntu 21.10 Released With GNOME 40 Desktop, Many Underlying Improvements

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Ubuntu 21.10 Released With GNOME 40 Desktop, Many Underlying Improvements

Ubuntu 21.10 "Impish Indri" is now officially available as the latest six-month update to Ubuntu Linux and also serving as the last release prior to the next long-term support cycle, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-21.10

[danboid]

What a boring release! The highlight of 21.10 for me is that the MATE file manager should now have support for easily formatting disks, something I think all Linux desktops should've supported 20+ years ago but has been a GNOME exclusive feature until now.

I'm disappointed there are no new ZFS features. I'm presuming this means we won't be seeing ZFS root support in Ubuntu server 22.04? I'm waiting to see the Ubuntu server installer catch up with the Proxmox VE installer for ZFS support.

[TemplarGR]

Why Ubuntu decided to stick with kernel 5.13 and GNOME 40 is beyond me. There was enough time to include both, they could also just wait 10 days more for release if needed. Are they jealous of Debian stable?

[mangeek]

I'm already running it, and I'm glad they managed to get GNOME 40+ in there. A big bummer is that libsdl2 is still at 2.0.14, before the major Wayland features landed in 2.0.16. It would have been nice to hammer on a few SDL apps and games natively instead of Xwayland.

Same for OpenSSL, which is still at 1.1.x, but that's a much bigger ask. I was just hoping we'd see a few months hammering on these bleeding-edge libraries in the rolling release before the LTS landed.

[EvilHowl]

Why Ubuntu decided to stick with kernel 5.13 and GNOME 40 is beyond me. There was enough time to include both, they could also just wait 10 times more for release if needed. Are they jealous of Debian stable?

Debian decided to stick with GNOME 3.38 (!!!!!). Yeah, I know they entered Freeze on January, but come on...

[Steffo]

I'm already running it, and I'm glad they managed to get GNOME 40+ in there. A big bummer is that libsdl2 is still at 2.0.14, before the major Wayland features landed in 2.0.16. It would have been nice to hammer on a few SDL apps and games natively instead of Xwayland.

Same for OpenSSL, which is still at 1.1.x, but that's a much bigger ask. I was just hoping we'd see a few months hammering on these bleeding-edge libraries in the rolling release before the LTS landed.

If you want bleeding edge, you should switch to Fedora.

[user1]

Why Ubuntu decided to stick with kernel 5.13 and GNOME 40 is beyond me. There was enough time to include both, they could also just wait 10 times more for release if needed. Are they jealous of Debian stable?

They make some really odd decisions of sticking to old software, even in latest releases. For example, I just checked, Wine is still version 5.0.3 in 21.10. Why is it still 5.0.3 instead of 6.0 which was released almost a year ago?? Sure, I can install the Winehq ppa which provides the latest stable wine, but generally I prefer to stick to the distribution repository.

[DanL]

Debian decided to stick with GNOME 3.38

This was a good decision for a "stable" distro.

[stargazer]

If you want bleeding edge, you should switch to Fedora.

While I understand, and agree, why "bleeding edge" should not be the default for most distros, this attitude is one of the more frustrating aspects of the Linux community. If Fedora met my user requirements, I might well be using it. I'm not. On the other hand, I do have a need to have later kernels and other software. I have an RX5700XT (NOT a bleeding edge card any more) that has regular green screen crashes. Some kernel, and mesa, updates have improved the situation, others have regressed it. I'm hoping one of these kernel, mesa, etc. updates will resolve the issues. So I'm stuck waiting and dealing with crashes when it is possible a fix may be available already. And please don't try to tell me to compile and deploy later kernels myself. 1. I can't afford to have my main system down for a few days trying to fix things if something goes badly wrong and 2. my experience compiling and deploying software is about 25 years out of date, and was not that extensive to begin with. It's not something an average user should ever hear as a recommendation.

What I would like to see would be a channel built into Ubuntu and derivatives where a user can choose to move more aggressively on updates to resolve issues. It shouldn't be the default, but it should be an option without having to be a software developer and getting out of spec.

[peterdk]

I can't install the latest Nvidia driver 495 on Ubuntu 21.10. So I don't see how wayland will work with it? Or does that run also on the 470 driver series?