Ubuntu News Archives

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.

No further point releases to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS had been planned, but in light of the recent APT vulnerability, Canonical has decided to issue an Ubuntu 16.04.6 update that will be hitting the mirrors soon.

Ubuntu 17.10 dropped its i386 / 32-bit x86 installer image while the i386 port has remained part of the package archive. Other Ubuntu derivatives over the past year have also moved to drop their 32-bit installer images and with Lubuntu/Xubuntu now ending their ISOs for that port, it's hitting the end of the road. Now for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, there might not even be the i386 port.

Following a small delay, Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS is now available as the latest point release to the Bionic Beaver for a Valentine's Day debut.

Earlier this month I reported on how Ubuntu developers indicated they were looking at ZFS support on the desktop as part of their work developing the new Ubuntu desktop installer GUI. It's quite clear now that they are indeed pursuing the work to allow Ubuntu desktop installs via their work-in-progress installer to support ZFS root installations.

After failing to make it out last week due to a boot failure bug blocking the release, Ubuntu developers are working on getting out the 18.04.2 LTS point release this week that will ship a new Hardware Enablement "HWE" stack.

A few things in Ubuntu's latest weekly development summary caught our attention... As has been going on for months, a new Ubuntu installer "Ubiquity-NG" continues to be worked on, but seemingly tying into that they are looking at ZFS support on the desktop.

Canonical this morning announced Ubuntu Core 18, its operating system based on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and destined for IoT and embedded appliances and other low-power devices.

For Ubuntu users running the Chromium web browser and wanting to enjoy better video acceleration with Gallium3D or Intel hardware, there is now a Chromium Snap for testing that features VA-API video acceleration support for GPU-based decoding.

Canonical's Mir display server is off to a good start for 2019 with a lot of work and pet projects being worked on over the holidays by the developers involved.

Given yesterday's release of Ubuntu Touch OTA-7, you might be curious how this UBports project is moving along with their adoption of the modern Mir 1.x that provides Wayland support... Unfortunately, it will still be a while before that is being shipped in production on Ubuntu Touch.

After being in testing over the holidays, Ubuntu Touch OTA-7 via the UBports community is now officially out today.

For Canonical's fiscal year ending 31 March 2018, the company behind Ubuntu just filed their latest financial documents in the UK on Thursday. These documents with UK's Companies House offer a first look at the financial performance of Canonical since their 2017 shift to focus on profitability and doing away with Unity 8 and mobile/convergence work while laying off a sizable portion of their staff in the process.

The UBports folks that continue to maintain and advance Ubuntu Touch are preparing their OTA-7 update for release with a few new features.

There were a lot of accomplishments for Ubuntu users and developers in 2018 ranging from the successful 18.04 LTS release to Ubuntu shipping on more Dell systems to continuing to polish their GNOME Shell based desktop experience. But, also, there were a number of letdowns.

A new open-source tool for helping to debug Wayland protocol messages is now available thanks to Canonical's Mir team.

The Lubuntu developers have announced today that their LXDE/LXQt downstream of Ubuntu Linux will no longer be offering 32-bit x86 releases moving forward while Lubuntu 18.04 LTS will continue to be supported.

The Canonical developers maintaining the Mir display server with its modern focus on being a Wayland compositor have just issued Mir 1.1.

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS currently relies upon the OpenSSL 1.1.0 library, but a stable release update will soon be taking it to OpenSSL 1.1.1 complete with TLS 1.3 support.

While it's great that Dell offers the ability to have Ubuntu Linux pre-loaded on select systems, one of their shortcomings is that they are often quite slow in supporting new Ubuntu LTS releases. At least now for select Dell Precision mobile workstation laptops, they have finally switched over to Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

The GNOME-based Ubuntu desktop continues being tuned for better performance.

The UBports community that continues to maintain Ubuntu Touch for Ubuntu Linux on mobile devices has today officially rolled out their OTA-6 update.

Being more than a month past the Ubuntu 18.10 release, development on Ubuntu 19.04 "Disco Dingo" is progressing at full-speed.

Ubuntu 17.10 stopped producing 32-bit x86 ISOs and many other *buntu derivatives followed suit earlier this year. One of them still producing i386 images was Xubuntu, but now they have decided to abandon them as well.

Ubuntu's Mir team will soon be releasing their Mir 1.1 display server release in the days ahead with this first post-1.0 stable update of this re-shifted project that has morphed into offering Wayland client support.

The UBports community is in the process of rolling out the release candidate for their next Ubuntu Touch Over The Air update.

Ubuntu's little known EGMDE example Mir desktop that is mostly a proving grounds for Mir development is now receiving support for XWayland for being able to run X11 applications within this example environment.

Ubuntu 19.04 "Disco Dingo" development is now officially underway.

In October of 2017 Samsung announced convergence and traditional Linux distributions for Samsung Galaxy smartphones as the "Samsung DeX." Since then we hadn't heard anything more about this initiative while this week they appear to be ready with a beta.

Mark Shuttleworth has yet to come out with his usual blog post at the start of new Ubuntu Linux development cycles to officially unveil the next release's codename and discuss the overarching theme of the next six months, but the Ubuntu 19.04 codename has come out via Launchpad.

While the UBports community just released Ubuntu Touch OTA-5 earlier this month, the next over-the-air update is taking shape for release in November.

Canonical managed to announce on the same-day as the Ubuntu 18.10 "Cosmic Cuttlefish" debut their goal for this cycle of opening up their software/hardware survey results that began with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS desktop installations. Those initial results are now available but the available data and analytic capabilities are rather underwhelming.

It should come as no surprise, but the official release of Ubuntu 18.10 "Cosmic Cuttlefish" is now available with the announcement just hitting the wire.

It's Cosmic Cuttlefish day! Assuming no last minute delays, Ubuntu 18.10 and its downstream flavors will be out today with their newest six-month non-LTS releases to be supported through July of 2019.

The Ubuntu Server developers are looking to make it easier to deploy free SSL/TLS certificates from Let's Encrypt.

While Ubuntu 18.10 is set to roll out this week with its new theme and an assortment of package updates and other enhancements, there is one feature Canonical previously talked about for the Ubuntu 18.10 "Cosmic Cuttlefish" cycle that we have yet to see made public.

If all goes well, the Ubuntu 18.10 "Cosmic Cuttlefish" release will happen on 18 October but for that to happen they could use your help this weekend testing their release candidate spins.

The UBports community that continues to maintain Ubuntu Touch for a range of mobile devices will soon be rolling out Ubuntu Touch OTA-5.

The Ubuntu developers continuing to work on the Mir display server stack have made headway in their NVIDIA driver enablement effort.

William Wold of Canonical's Mir team shared their latest weekly progress report on this display server supporting the Wayland protocol. While a short report, the two bits shared are quite interesting.

Last week Canonical developers released Mir 1.0 for the "next-generation of graphical solutions" particularly for IoT device makers. Mir lead developer Alan Griffiths published a bit of a redux today now with the 1.0 release out the door.

The Ubuntu 18.10 Beta was released today for the official desktop, server, and cloud products. As well, 18.10 betas are out today for Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu Kylin, Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Studio, and Xubuntu.

It was a bit nerve-racking seeing Mesa 18.1 still in use by the Ubuntu 18.10 "Cosmic Cuttlefish" in recent days, but fortunately it looks like the feature freeze exception is secured and Mesa 18.2 is on its way to landing.

This evening the "Cosmic Cuttlefish" embarked on its beta freeze ahead of the official Ubuntu 18.10 Beta due out later this week.