Looking sharp!
You can’t miss the refreshed Yaru theme, from boot splash to the desktop. For most operating system vendors, having a distinctive look for the operating system is important in establishing their brand. With that in mind, Canonical hosted a design sprint in January with members of the Yaru community team, Ubuntu desktop and design teams. Yaru was first introduced in Ubuntu 18.10, so if you’re upgrading from Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, this will be the first time you are going to see this bold, new, and unmistakably Ubuntu, look.
The return of Hardy Heron!
Earlier in the year, we used the Ubuntu Twitter account to organise a ‘World Cup of Wallpapers’ to celebrate 15 years of Ubuntu releases, and with them, their desktop backdrops. A crack team of experts picked some of the most iconic, popular and controversial default desktop wallpapers.
We then pitted them against each other, with our Twitter followers deciding the results of each round. In a surprise to almost nobody, the much loved Hardy Heron wallpaper came out on top. So in celebration, we sneaked a 4K version of that wallpaper into the install too, for old times’ sake.
GNOME 3.36
Since 17.10, Ubuntu has shipped GNOME Shell as the default desktop environment. The Ubuntu Desktop team have worked closely with the upstream GNOME developers and the wider community to deliver a solid GNOME desktop experience for our users. Thereby, joining our friends in the Debian project to update packages to the latest GNOME software packages.
GNOME 3.36 features both user-visible changes, which add features & improve user workflow and under the hood changes which improve performance and stability across the board.
The new ‘do not disturb’ toggle will be a welcome addition for those looking to focus on their work. The new login and lock screens are simple and beautiful, incorporating a clean UI on top of a blurred version of the users’ desktop background.
A suspend option is now a quick click away in the status menu. Users who like an organised app grid can take advantage of better app folder management in this new release.
While you’re upgrading or installing Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, take a look at the upstream GNOME 3.36 release highlights video.
Big apps
Ubuntu Desktop integrates with Google G Suite or Microsoft Exchange, and also supports open standards that allow users to avoid vendor lock-in. To that end, we’re shipping Firefox 75 as the default web browser, which continues to deliver new privacy-focused features.
Thunderbird is a popular email application, providing fast desktop access to your email. No matter which email services you use; Microsoft Exchange, Gmail, Hotmail, POP or IMAP, email just works. You’ll find Thunderbird 68.7.0 in this release of Ubuntu.
Closing out the productivity applications is LibreOffice 6.4, a free and powerful office suite that enables you to do more – easier, quicker, smarter. Its clean interface and feature-rich tools help unleash your creativity and enhance your productivity.
Tier-1 OEM support
Ubuntu is used extensively throughout the enterprise, government, public sectors and education. To meet the demand for pre-loaded hardware from these areas, Canonical is committed to working closely with Dell, HP and Lenovo. Here are some examples of the work we do for our OEM partners that adds value to all users of Linux on the desktop.
Accelerated compute & gaming
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are a new class of data engineering, and adoption in the enterprise is exploding. Ubuntu is powering the AI ambitions for enterprises – from developer workstations to racks, to clouds and to the edge.
Ubuntu Desktop accelerates data science, on laptops and workstations, by providing the latest tools, drivers and libraries. Data scientists can develop their AI models on high-end Ubuntu workstations using Kubeflow before training on racks of bare-metal Kubernetes or public clouds with hardware acceleration. Ubuntu is the standard for enterprise machine learning, from Silicon Valley to Wall Street, for the Fortune 50 and for start-ups.
If you use your GPU for entertainment and recreation, then here are a few features that you’ll appreciate. Although i386 (32-bit Intel) is no longer a release architecture, Ubuntu preserves a collection of 32-bit Intel libraries to satisfy Steam, Wine, Lutris requirements, as well as a large back catalogue of classic games and applications. The Steam package in Ubuntu has also been updated for 20.04 LTS and now supports a broad range of controllers and VR devices
ZFS and zsys
In Ubuntu 19.10, we added experimental support for installing the desktop onto a ZFS formatted filesystem. Ubuntu 20.04 LTS ships with a newer ZFS which features native, hardware-enabled encryption, device removal, pool trim and improved performance. While still experimental, we’ve built upon this feature with the addition of zsys.
zsys is our own integration tool between ZFS and Ubuntu. When users install software or update their system, zsys will take an automatic snapshot, enabling users to roll back, should an update go bad. These snapshots are presented in the GRUB boot menu. This also lays the foundation for additional backup features in the future.
Coming from Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
We know many of our users are quite ‘sticky’ on the Long Term Support releases. Those who upgrade from Ubuntu 18.04 LTS to 20.04 LTS will see a bigger change, as the new LTS contains a roll-up of all the features that landed through the Ubuntu 18.10, 19.04 and 19.10 interim releases as well. Here are some highlights to look out for:
GNOME Disks supports the open-source disk encryption VeraCrypt when formatting disks. Desktop zoom and window previews are more performant. The bug reporting tool can now send crash reports automatically when applications misbehave to reduce user interruption
GNOME Settings sound panel was improved to make it easier to manage microphones and speaker devices. Tracker was added to improve desktop file search. Usability improvements were made to both Alt+Tab and dock window previews to make application switching more intuitive. ‘Safe Graphics Mode’ was added to enable debugging when unexpected errors occur.
Desktop performance has been improved with lower CPU usage, lower input latency in scrolling and output latency on most graphics cards. Users should consistently have higher and smoother frame rates now. DLNA sharing enables users to share videos to a smart TV or other supported device. The NVIDIA graphics drivers are now on the install media, so users can install them directly from the installer. The start-up time for users of the NVIDIA driver has also been improved.
The very best of open source
Ubuntu is built upon the very best of open-source, and Ubuntu Desktop puts it all at the fingertips of developers and users; everywhere. To learn what other new software, frameworks, language ecosystems and improvements are in this new release then please see the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Release Notes.
On behalf of the Ubuntu Desktop Team, I would like to thank the GNOME developer community for making a high quality, open-source, desktop shell and a friendly environment to collaborate. I’d also like to extend my thanks to the wider Ubuntu community of developers, advocates, documentation writers, designers, translators, testers and supporters; without whom Ubuntu would not be the success it is today.
And finally, to our users, here is Ubuntu Desktop 20.04 LTS. I hope you enjoy using it as much as we all did making it
Source: https://ubuntu.com/blog/whats-new-in-ubuntu-desktop-20-04-lts