Ubuntu 23.04 Development Gets Started As The "Lunar Lobster"

With Ubuntu 22.10 "Kinetic Kudu" having shipped last week, Canonical engineers are moving ahead and beginning to get things going for the Ubuntu 23.04 development cycle now under the "Lunar Lobster" codename.

This next non-LTS release is set for 27 April 2023 and in turn will be supported for nine months through January 2024.

With Ubuntu 23.04 given the timing it will likely ship with the Linux 6.2 kernel although it also wouldn't be surprising if Canonical went the conservative route and stuck to Linux 6.1 LTS. We'll see how that plays out on the kernel side but in any event with Linux 6.0 and 6.1 there is already a lot of hardware support improvements and other exciting kernel innovations. Hopefully Linux 6.2 is chosen.

There should also be Mesa 23.0 with the latest and greatest graphics driver support, the GNOME 44 desktop, PHP 8.2, hopefully they'll pick up the speedy Python 3.11, and many other package improvements coming in over the next few months.

It will also be interesting to see for the Ubuntu 23.04 cycle if their new Flutter-based desktop installer is finally mature enough to use by default for the Ubuntu 23.04 desktop or sticking to the existing Ubiquity installer another release.

In any event it will be interesting to see what else Canonical has in store for the Ubuntu 23.04 "Lunar Lobster" release, so stay tuned for this next six month ride.