Ubuntu News Archives

While the Ubuntu desktop has been offered the newer GNOME Console as an alternative to GNOME Terminal, there's been a recent fondness around Ptyxis and apparently is becoming the recommended replacement to GNOME Terminal for the Ubuntu camp.

The flash-kernel package is used for putting the Linux kernel image and initramfs in the boot location for embedded devices that aren't able to boot directly from /boot. The flash-kernel package is particularly important for older ARM hardware while now Ubuntu maintainers are looking at dropping patches they currently carry for a number of aging ARM platforms.

Canonical's Matthieu Clemenceau as the Engineering Director for the Ubuntu Foundations Team has provided a public roadmap around some of the plans for Ubuntu 25.04. This next Ubuntu Linux (non-LTS) release that is due out in April is set to enjoy more performance optimizations and other exciting bits.

Mir 2.19 is out today as the newest version of this Ubuntu/Canonical project making it easier for other desktops/environments to embrace Wayland support. This set of libraries for building Wayland-based shells has added a few new features with today's update.

The UBports community today released Ubuntu Touch OTA-7 as the latest version of the smartphone/tablet Linux platform currently running off an Ubuntu 20.04 base.

In mid-October was the release of a developer preview for Ubuntu 24.10 on Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 powered laptops. Yesterday an updated Ubuntu 24.10 release was made available catering to these popular, current-generation ARM-powered laptops that typically ship with Windows 11 for ARM.

With GIMP 3.0-RC1 out for testing since earlier this month, the hope is that GIMP 3.0 stable will in fact ship in time for the release of Ubuntu 25.04 next April. The current GIMP 3.0 release candidate is working its way to Debian Unstable and in turn soon should be available via the Ubuntu 25.04 archive.

Over the past year we have seen Canonical engineers focus more on optimizing the performance potential of Ubuntu Linux. With Ubuntu 25.04 they are now using the -O3 compiler optimization level by default and there has been other efforts like better performance tooling on Ubuntu and frame pointers by default. Another area they have been exploring is making use of Profile Guided Optimizations (PGO) for faster performance in certain scenarios.

Canonical's Interim Engineering Director for Ubuntu Desktop, Oliver Smith, has shared some early roadmap plans for the Ubuntu 25.04 development cycle.

One of the very convenient features for Ubuntu Linux users who want to run the very newest upstream kernel releases or simply test a new kernel build for verifying bug fixes or functionality has been the Ubuntu Mainline Kernel PPA. It's been around for years, backed by Canonical, and very convenient for fetching pre-built AArch64 / ARM / POWER / RISC-V / x86_64 kernel binaries as Debian packages... With options of stable/test kernel versions as well as daily packages. Sadly, it's been broken once again and has been in that manner since mid-September.

Ubuntu developer Simon Quigley laid out the plans for hoping Ubuntu packages will move from Qt 5 to Qt 6 so that by the time of the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS cycle in early 2026 that the older version of this graphical toolkit can be removed.

Canonical has announced the formal state of the Ubuntu 25.04 "Plucky Puffin" development. Among other early changes are now defaulting to -O3 compiler optimizations rather than the default -O2 optimization level when building Debian packages.

As a possible change for Ubuntu 25.04, Canonical is evaluating the use of Dracut to replace initramfs-tools for initrd generation on Ubuntu Linux.

Ubuntu Linux maker Canonical has announced the availability of an Intel NPU driver Snap package within their Snap Store to make it easier to leverage the Intel neural processing unit (NPU) on Core Ultra processors within Ubuntu Linux.

Following last week's release of Ubuntu 24.10, today Canonical announced a developer preview of an Ubuntu 24.10 Linux build targeting Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 Elite laptops.

The Ubuntu 24.10 "Oracular Oriole" ISOs are now officially available as the newest six-month update to Ubuntu Linux.

While not a long-term support release, Ubuntu Server 24.10 is delivering an interesting proof-of-concept for supporting NVMe/TCP based installations.

For those on Debian experimental or planning on upgrading to Ubuntu 24.10 that is releasing this week, the Ptyxis terminal emulator is now available in the package archive if wanting to try out this speedy terminal option.

For those making use of "reverse PRIME" setups where you have a primary NVIDIA discrete GPU while monitors are connected to Intel integrated graphics as the secondary GPU, such configurations should be working nicely with the upcoming Ubuntu 24.10 release under Wayland. This support is also likely to be back-ported for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

The beta release of Ubuntu 24.10 "Oracular Oriole" was released in time for some weekend testing.

Most Linux distributions have been defaulting to MariaDB as the default MySQL server for years. Ubuntu though has been a notable outlier still relying on Oracle MySQL for the default MySQL service. A proposal raised by an Ubuntu developer hopes to change that for Ubuntu 25.04 in the new year.

Oliver Smith as the Interim Engineering Director for Ubuntu Desktop at Canonical is out with a new status update on Ubuntu 24.10 development and related ambitions. This also includes more details about bringing the KDE Plasma desktop to Ubuntu Core Desktop in Snap form.

With the mainline Linux kernel beginning to see DeviceTree support for a few Snapdragon X1 powered laptops like the ASUS Vivobook S15 and Lenovo Yoga Slim7x, Ubuntu developers at Canonical appear to be beginning their exploration around supporting some of the Snapdragon X1 hardware with Ubuntu Linux.

With the upcoming Ubuntu 24.10 release, Canonical is introducing permission prompting for more control over Snap access to systems to enhance security.

While OpenJDK Java is available via the Ubuntu package archive and the go-to JVM on Ubuntu Linux, Canonical is working to package up Oracle's GraalVM as another option for enhancing the Java stack on Ubuntu.

Following Canonical's decision to enable frame pointers by default in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and then they ended up adding a number of performance tools to ship by default with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, for Ubuntu 24.10 a late change is adding another tool to be installed by default on the Ubuntu desktop: Sysprof.

Last year Canonical delivered an Intel TDX "tech preview" for Ubuntu 23.10 to experiment with using Intel Trust Domain Extensions (TDX) found on the latest Xeon server processors. With Ubuntu 24.04 LTS they began shipping a formal TDX software stack and now have rolled out an update to that software stack as a stable release update.

Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS has been released as the first point release of the current Long Term Support series that began in April with the "Noble Numbat" debut.

Thanks to the Canonical decision to commit to shipping the very latest upstream Linux kernels in Ubuntu releases moving forward, Ubuntu 24.10 shipping in October will have the Linux 6.11 kernel that is debuting as stable in mid-September. Canonical's kernel engineers are currently preparing for rolling out that new kernel version in the Oracular Oriole archive.

Ubuntu maker Canonical partnered with AMD for supporting Ubuntu Linux on the AMD-Xilinx Kria development boards for their UltraScale+ / Versal Adaptive SoC evaluation kit. Currently the official builds are based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS but it appears an Ubuntu 24.04 LTS build is being worked on and will come complete with Wayland support.

With the exception of critical security issues/bugs, Canonical will be skipping over shipping stable release updates for the Linux kernel in Ubuntu until early October.

There are a few interesting bits of information as part of this week's updates from the Ubuntu Desktop Team Integration Squad.

Oliver Smith as the Interim Engineering Director for the Ubuntu desktop provided an update around recent efforts on Ubuntu 24.10.

Ahead of the now in-place Ubuntu 24.10 feature freeze, the Ubuntu GNOME X.Org session support was split off into its own separate binary Debian package from the main (default) Wayland session handling.

Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS was scheduled to ship this week but has now been delayed to the end of August in order to address some high profile upgrade bugs.

Following decisions like exploring -O3 package builds for Ubuntu Linux, another newly-announced change by Canonical I must applaud is their decision to commit to shipping the very latest upstream kernel code at release time.

With Ubuntu 24.04 LTS the engineers at Canonical began focusing more on the performance of Ubuntu and establishing a performance team at the company. This work is ongoing and for Ubuntu 24.10 they are exploring another exciting area: leveraging "-O3" compiler optimizations for Ubuntu packages. Available today is an experimental build of the Ubuntu desktop and server ISOs that are compiled for the -O3 optimization level.

Ubuntu maker Canonical (Canonical Group Limited) recently filed their financial statements with UK's Companies House that offers a fresh look at their financial performance.

Oliver Smith with Canonical has been communicating a lot in recent months around the great improvements planned for Ubuntu 24.10. Canonical engineers and the Ubuntu community have been working on many significant improvements for the desktop in Ubuntu 24.10. Today is a new blog post by Oliver to highlight some of the recent changes.

With Ubuntu 24.04 LTS was a fundamental change made by Canonical to enable frame pointers by default for their packages in the name of improving the debugging and profiling experience. This has been as part of a broader push by Canonical to focus more on Ubuntu Linux performance and ensuring the needs of developers are met. With Ubuntu 24.10, more of the packages will have frame pointer support enabled.

A new Ubuntu utility seeing an uptick in development recently is crypto-config as a means of system-wide cryptography configuration.

GNOME's Mutter 46.2-1ubuntu0.24.04.1 package was uploaded on Friday for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS users. This Mutter compositor update not only brings Mutter 46.2 changes to this current Ubuntu release but also pulls in all of the 46.1 upstream changes too.

Ubuntu maker Canonical announced "Everything LTS" as a new initiative where for Ubuntu Pro customers they will offer up a twelve year LTS period for any open-source Docker image.

With Ubuntu 24.10 due for release in October one of the expressed planned changes has been NVIDIA defaulting to using Wayland rather than X11 for the default desktop session. As of this past week the change is now in place for Ubuntu 24.10 daily users that will find Wayland-by-default when using the official NVIDIA Linux graphics driver.

Last month some of the Ubuntu 24.10 desktop plans were laid out such as NVIDIA Wayland by default, a new welcome wizard, and more. Canonical's Oliver Smith has posted an update today around some of the ongoing Ubuntu 24.10 desktop enhancements.

Similar to the real-time kernel for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, Canonical announced today the availability of their new real-time "RT" kernel for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. But like with the existing Ubuntu RT kernels, this real-time support is limited to Ubuntu Pro subscriptions.

One of the newest open-source projects in-development by Ubuntu maker Canonical is a new C# written program called Flamenco.

Canonical announced this morning an optimized Ubuntu 24.04 image for the Milk-V Mars, a "credit card sized" RISC-V single board computer.

Oliver Smith who is serving as the Interim Engineering Director for the Ubuntu Desktop team at Canonical has shared some roadmap plans around Ubuntu 24.10. With this being the first post-LTS release following last month's Ubuntu 24.04 Long Term Support, they are more free to innovate this cycle and they have a lot of great plans for enhancing the Linux desktop experience.

Canonical engineer Matthew Kosarek just released Mir 2.17 as the newest version of this open-source Wayland compositor that can be used for building Wayland-based shells and has shown some interesting potential with the likes of Miracle-WM and Miriway.