The Canonical team led by Alan Griffiths for maintaining the Mir display server with Wayland support today rolled out Mir version 1.4.
Ubuntu News Archives
1,651 Ubuntu open-source and Linux related news articles on Phoronix since 2006.
For those with extra time on their hands over the weekend and having a spare Ubuntu Touch supported mobile device, Ubuntu Touch OTA-10 is now available in testing form.
Canonical's designers have been working to update their Yaru desktop theme ahead of the upcoming Ubuntu 19.10 "Eoan Ermine" release.
Canonical has announced the immediate availability of Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS as the newest update to this long-term support series.
We've known for months about Canonical working to ramp up their ZFS On Linux support for Ubuntu 19.10 after initially packaging ZoL for Ubuntu years ago and supporting it in the server space. One of the big changes for Ubuntu 19.10 expected is an experimental ZFS root file-system install option for their desktop GUI installer. That's been confirmed today by Canonical along with some of their related ZoL activities.
The UBports community developers continuing to advance Ubuntu Touch have shared their latest work items and plans. OTA-10 is being developed while they are also working on ports for the PinePhone and Librem 5 smart-phones, among other items on their radar.
Two months from today marks the beta and kernel freezes for the Ubuntu 19.10 release while in less than one month is already the feature freeze. Canonical developers and others within the Ubuntu community remain quite busy this summer working on this "Eoan Ermine" release and is of particular importance with next cycle being the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS swing.
The BFQ I/O scheduler is working out fairly well these days as shown in our benchmarks. The Budget Fair Queueing scheduler supports both throughput and low-latency modes while working particularly well for consumer-grade hardware. Should the Ubuntu desktop be using BFQ by default?
Canonical's server team is working on a new means of carrying out automated installations of Ubuntu Server in time for their 20.04 LTS release.
Looking ahead to Ubuntu 19.10 as the cycle before Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, one of the areas exciting us with the work being done by Canonical is (besides the great upstream GNOME performance work) easily comes down to the work they are pursuing on better ZFS On Linux integration with even aiming to offer ZFS as a file-system option from their desktop installer. A big role in their ZoL play is also the new "Zsys" component they have been developing.
Thanks to the upstream work achieved by Red Hat engineers working on Fedora the past few cycles, Ubuntu 19.10 should have a flicker-free boot experience.
Canonical's Balint Reczey has announced the addition of a new ubuntu-wsl package that will be installed by default when running Ubuntu on Microsoft's Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) in order to provide better integration.
As a change we had been expecting this cycle, Ubuntu 19.10 has upgraded to GCC 9 as the default system compiler over GCC 8.
It looks like in July we could finally see an "experimental ZFS" option within Ubuntu 19.10 and its daily images for those wanting an easy-to-use ZFS On Linux based installation of Ubuntu.
Mir 1.3 was released today as the newest version of Canonical's project making it easier to write desktop shells with Wayland support.
Ubuntu's software stores / software centers have gone through several revisions over the years and now a new Snap Store is in development.
It looks like my info from this weekend was accurate, "I'm hearing that Canonical may revert course and provide limited 32-bit support." Canonical issued a statement today that they indeed will provide "selected" 32-bit packages for the upcoming Ubuntu 19.10 as well as Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.
Following Valve saying they won't be officially supporting Ubuntu 19.10 and Wine developers questioning their Ubuntu 32-bit builds following the announcement this week of not providing new 32-bit packages for new Ubuntu releases, longtime Ubuntu developer and Canonical employee Steve Langasek is trying to provide some clarity into the situation.
In response to the decision to drop 32-bit x86 support beginning in Ubuntu 19.10, Alan Pope of Canonical and longtime Ubuntu member decided to try running some GOG games under an Ubuntu 19.10 daily build that he configured to remove the 32-bit packages ahead of the actual removal. Unfortunately, his experience didn't go so smoothly.
In addition to discontinuing i386 support, Canonical announced another change being worked on for Ubuntu 19.10 is compiler hardening.
Ubuntu and their downstream flavors all stopped shipping x86 32-bit images and now for the 19.10 cycle they have decided to stop their i386 support entirely. Beginning with Ubuntu 19.10, the archive/packages will not be built for x86 32-bit.
Debian's Apt packaging system was tagged today as 1.9.0 experimental and is already in the process of being added to Ubuntu 19.10. Apt 1.9 is working towards the eventual Apt 2.0 release.
As a win for the Ubuntu Server team, the founder of Inkscape and longtime X.Org/graphics developer Bryce Harrington has returned to Canonical.
For those running Ubuntu 18.04 LTS with the default GNOME Shell desktop experience, the latest stable release update of Mutter now fixes the support for running on high refresh rate (above 60Hz) displays.
Those at UBports continuing to independently advance Ubuntu Touch have put out a fresh status update on their work, including the long-awaited Unity 8 and Mir upgrade.
Ubuntu will begin compressing its kernel image / initramfs using the LZ4 compression scheme to improve the experience around their installer and for cloud/core/classic devices. There is some concern over the performance to which they may do additional tweaking.
We've been quite eager to see what happens around Ubuntu 19.10's ZFS support with their plumbing this out-of-tree file-system into their new desktop installer and a lot of other Ubuntu happenings around ZFS. There is now at least a public TODO list/board outlining some of their ZFS work for the Ubuntu 19.10 Eoan Ermine cycle.
One of the projects in development the past two years that's been less trumpeted by Ubuntu maker Canonical has been Multipass, but this utility has reached a new milestone today with new capabilities.
Canonical's Alan Griffiths today announced the release of Mir 1.2 as the latest version of their display stack that -- since the abandoning of their mobile/convergence plans -- has morphed into providing Wayland support. With Mir 1.2, there is more X11/XWayland work in tow along with enabling new functionality for Mir-based shells.
For Ubuntu 19.10 the developers are adding the NVIDIA driver packages onto the ISO. The NVIDIA binary drivers won't be activated by default, but will be present on the install media to make it easier to enable post-install.
As a sign of the times with the Linux kernel being affected by an increasing number of CVEs (and particularly high profile ones at that), there are now more Ubuntu developers with upload rights for sending down new kernel upgrades.
The UBports community has released Ubuntu Touch OTA-9 as the newest release of Ubuntu for tablets/smartphones.
While Ubuntu Touch that continues to be worked on by the UBports community remains one of the most viable and furthest along Linux open-source smartphone operating systems, it doesn't look like there will be any solid support in time for launch-day of the upcoming Purism Librem 5 smartphone.
What comes after Eoan in the Ubuntu codename fun? It's not Elephant, Eagle, Eel, or even Earwig... Ubuntu 19.10 is the Eoan Ermine.
While Ubuntu is not currently using Wayland by default with its GNOME Shell desktop and it doesn't look like they will try again until Ubuntu 20.10, the option is still available and they continue working in the direction of a Wayland Linux desktop future. One of their interesting "upstream" contributions in this area is with the Wayland Conformance Suite.
With Ubuntu 19.04 having sailed and looking in good shape by the bug counts, Ubuntu 19.10, the Eoan [EANIMAL] release, is proceeding and open for development.
Canonical has shifted the default Java of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS from OpenJDK 10 to OpenJDK 11. Plus here are some fresh OpenJDK 8/11/12 benchmarks on this Ubuntu Long Term Support release.
With Ubuntu 19.04 out the door, it's time to kick off Ubuntu 19.10 as the next six-month installment of Ubuntu Linux and the last before Ubuntu 20.04 as the next LTS release.
The Ubuntu 19.04 "Disco Dingo" has been officially released as the latest non-LTS, six-month installment to Ubuntu Linux.
While it may not seem like a big release with Xfce 4.14 having yet to materialize, the Xubuntu developers have been doing a fine job providing a nice upgrade with Xubuntu 19.04 for those appreciating a lightweight, GTK-based desktop environment built around Ubuntu.
While Ubuntu 19.04 isn't even coming out until tomorrow, the indications around Ubuntu desktop ZFS support and functionality likely debuting the next cycle has us already quite eager for the Ubuntu 19.10 release coming out in October.
For the past number of months we've seen Canonical developers working on ZFS support in the Ubuntu desktop and ZFS root partition support so that the Ubuntu desktop could (optionally) be installed to a ZFS On Linux partition. That work has been continuing and it's looking like we could see the fruits of that work for the Ubuntu 19.10 cycle.
Ubuntu 19.04 "Disco Dingo" beta images have begun surfacing this evening as the first official test release (sans the generally great daily ISOs) for those wanting to begin testing this next six-month installment of Ubuntu Linux ahead of its official mid-April debut.
Earlier this month we wrote about the quandary Ubuntu Studio was in, the flavor of Ubuntu shipping with multimedia production and content creation software: none of their active developers had upload rights for updating packages. Fortunately, that situation has now been resolved.
Ubuntu Touch OTA-8 was released earlier this month while the UBports community developers continue working to further along this Ubuntu-based mobile Linux OS.
Since the short-lived Ubuntu 17.10 GNOME + Wayland experience, the Ubuntu desktop has still been using the trusted X.Org Server session by default. While Ubuntu 19.04 will soon be shipping and the Ubuntu 19.10 development cycle then getting underway, don't look for any Wayland-by-default change to be around the corner.
Following the recent emergency release of Ubuntu 16.04.6 LTS to get out updated install media that addresses the recent APT security vulnerability and in the process other bug fixes too, Ubuntu 14.04.6 has now been released as a similar update.
The UBports community that continues maintaining Ubuntu Touch has today released their OTA-8 update.
Ubuntu 16.04.5 was scheduled to be the last point release of the Xenial Xerus, but the recent Debian APT security vulnerability led to Canonical coming up with Ubuntu 16.04.6 in order to ship this package management vulnerability with the Ubuntu 16.04 Long Term Support install media. That point release is now available.
The Ubuntu Touch community team has put out their latest questions/answers about this effort continuing to let the Ubuntu effort live on for mobile devices like the Nexus and other hardware as well as looking ahead to get this mobile operating system running on the likes of Librem 5 and Pine64 phones.
1651 Ubuntu news articles published on Phoronix.