Ubuntu News Archives

As we were expecting over the last few days, the long-awaited release of Mir 1.0 is now available. It's certainly a different beast now than when "Mir 1.0" was talked about in the past now that it's focused on providing Wayland support.

Released almost exactly one year ago to the day was SDL 2.0.6 that brought with it some Vulkan helpers. Finally with the upcoming Ubuntu 18.10 "Cosmic Cuttlefish" release, those Vulkan bits will be enabled.

Mir 1.0 was talked about for release last year but at the last minute they reverted it to Mir 0.28. There is now a patch pending that is once again attempting the Mir 1.0 milestone.

While Canonical divested from their Linux smartphone plans, they continue maintaining the Mir display server as any regular Phoronix reader should know. Mir continues to be developed with Wayland functionality for IoT and desktop use-cases but the UBports crew continuing to work on Ubuntu Touch where left off by Canonical are working on restoring Mir-enabled phone support.

Announced back in May by Dell was an Ubuntu option for their new (2018) xx30 series Precision laptops. They previously began shipping the Ubuntu-loaded Dell Precision 3530/7530/7730 mobile workstations while beginning to ship as of today is the Precision 5530 Developer Edition.

Ubuntu's Mir display server that has been chasing Wayland support and earlier this year introduced EGMDE as the example Mir desktop environment has picked up some extra functionality on its "edge" channel.

For those still having the desire to run Ubuntu on mobile devices, the UBports community today shipped their Ubuntu Touch OTA-4 release that migrates their base system from Ubuntu 15.04 to 16.04.

Ubuntu 18.10 "Cosmic Cuttlefish" is now under a feature freeze to focus on bug-fixing ahead of the October debut of this next Ubuntu Linux installment.

Back in March was the discussion about Ubuntu 18.10 considering an LZ4-compressed kernel image (initamfs) by default while now action has been taken on this support and coming up with a new default.

Canonical's team responsible for continuing to advance the Mir display server has been making good progress this summer on fleshing out some missing functionality.

Ubuntu derivative Lubuntu that is now using the LXQt desktop environment has laid out more of their plans to switch over to Wayland rather than the existing X.Org based session.

Canonical developers continue working on advancing the Mir display server's support for Wayland.

While Mir has long been focused on its Snap support, now available via the Snap Store is offering EGMDE.

For those still on the Ubuntu 16.04 "Xenial Xerus" Long Term Support series and not yet ready to make the transition to Ubuntu 18.04 LTS "Bionic Beaver", Ubuntu 16.04.5 is now available as the last planned Xenial point release.

Given that it was only earlier this summer when UBports' Ubuntu Touch OTA-4 upgraded to an Ubuntu 16.04 LTS base, you might be wondering when they intend to transition to Ubuntu 18.04 LTS... But don't hold your breath.

With Dell's seventh-generation XPS 13 Developer Edition laptop it has shipped with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS up until now, but beginning today in the US there is now the option for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

For those that tend to wait for the first point release of a new Ubuntu LTS release before upgrading, Ubuntu 18.04 "Bionic Beaver" is now available.

Since the transition from Unity 7 to GNOME Shell as the default desktop environment on Ubuntu, designers have been working on a proper new theme called "Communitheme" while now it has a new name.

With the April release of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS on the server front was a brand new, in-house developed server installer created by Canonical to differentiate it from Debian's long-used text installer for the Ubuntu Server images. While it offered a fresh look and some new features, it shipped without many features common to Linux server installers. Fortunately, that is changing with the upcoming Ubuntu Server 18.04.1 release.

While Ubuntu and most of its derivatives have stopped producing 32-bit x86 images with the number of devices out there dwindling that can't run x86_64, Lubuntu is among the few still offering i686 images to help those who may be running on outdated hardware but still interested in running the latest Linux software.

Canonical developers working on Mir have prepared the release of Mir 0.32.1 with a few fixes and improvements off the recent release of Mir 0.32.

Canonical today released new Ubuntu Minimal images for cloud computing. The new images are half the size of the traditional Ubuntu Server and are said to boot up to 40% faster, so I decided to run a quick Amazon EC2 Linux distribution boot time comparison today...

Canonical today announced the new Minimal Ubuntu, which is a "tiny" package set focused for speed, performance, and stability of Ubuntu in cloud deployments.

Announced back in May were several new Dell Precision laptops pre-loaded with Ubuntu Linux. The Dell Precision 7530 and 7730 from that batch are now shipping with Ubuntu as a factory option.

Fresh from the Mir 0.32 release, Canonical developers working on the Mir display server are settling on their approach to supporting more Wayland extensions.

Canonical's Alan Griffiths has just announced the release of the huge Mir 0.32 update.

Delivering graphical applications that can be deployed on Ubuntu Core for IoT use-cases can be achieved in a secure and reliable manner using the Mir-Kiosk component to act as a Wayland server. Canonical's lead Mir developer, Alan Griffiths, has published a guide about creating these graphical snaps.

With the Ubuntu Hardware/Software Survey that was introduced in Ubuntu 18.04 and presented to users upon new installations, it's been collecting data since the Bionic Beaver launch in April but the data hasn't been made public up to this point. Viewing the survey data is currently being worked on for the Ubuntu 18.10 cycle and today a first look at these numbers have been shared.

The UBports community has announced the first release candidate of their long-awaited Ubuntu Touch OTA-4 update.

You have likely heard by now about Ubuntu maker Canonical planning to do an initial public offering (IPO) at some point in the not too distant future to become a publicly-traded company. The latest sign of that is Canonical has now shifted its corporate calendar.

Canonical's developers working on the Mir display server are putting the finishing touches on the Mir 0.32 release.

When Ubuntu 18.04 LTS shipped in April, it shipped with a near-final release candidate of Mesa 18.0. Coming down the pipe now to "Bionic Beaver" desktop users is Mesa 18.0.5.

With Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS there is a new server installer that is completely redone compared to the Debian Installer it's been relying upon to this point. But it is missing some basic features for traditional server administrators like RAID, encryption, and LVM partitioning.

Prominent Mir developer Alan Griffiths of Canonical has published his latest weekly update on the status of this Linux display server that continues working on supporting Wayland clients.

The UBports team have put out their latest batch of answers to common questions around this project that's still working to maintain the Ubuntu Touch software stack.

After working on Lubuntu-Next for a while in transitioning from the GTK-based LXDE desktop environment to the modern and maintained LXQt desktop environment that is powered by Qt5, the Lubuntu 18.10 will be the release that officially moves over to the LXQt desktop and pushes out LXDE.

Will Cooke, the Director of the Ubuntu Desktop at Canonical, has outlined the major desktop plans for the Ubuntu 18.10 "Cosmic Cuttlefish" cycle.

The multimedia-focused Ubuntu Studio Linux distribution has used GNOME since its inception and while that is continuing for now, a sign of a possible shift is coming with Ubuntu Studio 18.10 to offer a KDE Plasma desktop option.

Canonical has expressed interest in shipping Ubuntu 18.10 with GS Connect, the GNOME Shell implementation of KDE Connect that allows interfacing with your phone from the desktop. GS/KDE Connect allows receiving phone notifications on your desktop, viewing and responding to messages from your desktop, and to use your phone as a remote control to the desktop, among other features.

Not only are developers talking about dropping Ubuntu 32-bit x86 support but the ARMHF support might also be cut as well for 32-bit ARM boards.

Mir developers have been working on support for systemd's Logind and there is a "mess of a branch" that is nearly functionally complete and could soon be merged.

While the Ubuntu desktop official images are no longer 32-bit/i386 and more Ubuntu derivatives are dropping their 32-bit x86 installers, not all 32-bit images/installers have been discontinued and the i386 package archive / port remains. That matter though is back to being debated.

With Mark Shuttleworth yesterday having announced the Cosmic Cuttlefish, the development cycle for Ubuntu 18.10 is formally open.

Mark Shuttleworth has announced Ubuntu 18.10 is the Cosmic Cuttlefish.

Mark Shuttleworth has publicly expressed some ideas for a next-generation Ubuntu desktop installer.

Following the recent Ubuntu 18.04 Long Term Support release, more Ubuntu derivatives are taking this opportunity to end the production of their 32-bit software images.

At the end of March there was the roll-out of EGMDE as the example Mir desktop environment and since then it's continued picking up features as part of a learning exercise for getting new contributors/developers interested in Mir and how to deal with the Mir Abstraction Layer (MirAL).

As of writing, Mark Shuttleworth has yet to formally introduce the Ubuntu 18.10 cycle, but it's fairly sure the "Cosmic Canimal."

UBports developer Marius Gripsgard is working on adding X11 support to Mir by means of XWayland.

Landing just prior to the official Ubuntu 18.04 "Bionic Beaver" release was the controversial Ubuntu software/hardware survey functionality. When announcing their plans to incorporate an optional survey process into the installation process, Canonical said they would be making this survey data public. They are doing so, but it will be a while before it's accessible.