Ubuntu Linux

A lot has changed in the past two decades. A lot of new releases, new platforms and even a few new logos along the way. One thing stayed the same: the heart of Ubuntu. A global community of users, enthusiasts and contributors all helping to spread the mission of changing the world through open-source software. We couldn't have done it without you.

More at: 20 Years of Canonical Ubuntu

Canonical released today Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS as the fifth and last planned point release to the Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) long-term supported operating system series bringing the latest security patches and updated components.

...

Apart from the security patches and updated packages that have been released during the past six months, the Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS point release is powered by a newer kernel from the Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat) operating system series, namely Linux kernel 6.8, to better support installations on newer hardware.

On the other hand, the Mesa graphics stack remains unchanged in this new Ubuntu 22.04 LTS point release, even though Ubuntu 24.04 LTS includes a newer version, namely Mesa 24.0. I don’t know why, but Canonical chose to ship Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS with the Mesa 23.2.1 graphics stack that was also included in the Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS point release.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19686071

The upcoming Ubuntu 24.10 operating system promises a new feature called “permissions prompting” for an extra layer of privacy and security.

The new permissions prompting feature in Ubuntu will let users control, manage, and understand the behavior of apps running on their machines. It leverages Ubuntu’s AppArmor implementation and enables fine-grained access control over unmodified binaries without having to change the app’s source code.

From Ubuntu Discourse: Ubuntu Desktop’s 24.10 Dev Cycle - Part 5: Introducing Permissions Prompting

This solution consists of two new seeded components in Ubuntu 24.10, prompting-client and desktop-security-center alongside deeper changes to snapd and AppArmor available in the upcoming snapd 2.65. The first is a new prompting client (built in Flutter) that surfaces the prompt requests from the application via snapd. The second is our new Security Center:

In this release the Security Center is the home for managing your prompt rules, over time we will expand its functionality to cover additional security-related settings for your desktop such as encryption management and firewall control.

...

With prompting enabled, an application that has access to the home interface in its AppArmor profile will trigger a request to snapd to ask the user for more granular permissions at the moment of access:

As a result, users now have direct control over the specific directories and file paths an application has access to, as well its duration. The results of prompts are then stored in snapd so they can be queried and managed by the user via the Security Center.

Sysprof as the system-wide performance profiler for Linux systems is now set to be installed by default on Ubuntu 24.10 and moving forward with future Ubuntu Linux releases. Currently users need to sudo apt install sysprof to enjoy this GUI and command-line driven program but now is to be installed by default on the Ubuntu desktop.

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 856 for the week of September 1 - 7, 2024.

• Upgrades to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Suspended / Re-enabled
• Ubuntu Stats
• Hot in Support
• Ubuntu Meeting Activity Reports
• LXD: Weekly news - 361
• Starcraft Clinic - 2024-Aug-30
• UbuCon Asia
• LoCo Events
• Jammy Jellyfish (22.04.5 LTS) Point-Release Status Tracking
• Ubuntu Representation at EthAccra 2024
• A desktop touched by Midas: Oracular Oriole
• Looking for more internship project ideas for Outreachy (December-March cohort)
• ...
• And much more!

Last Wednesday, we temporarily suspended upgrades to Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS due to unforeseen issues with dependencies of installed kernel headers after release upgrades. These issues were tracked in bug 2078720 and have now been resolved, and upgrades to 24.04.1 LTS have been enabled again.

...

This issue has been fixed in the APT 2.4.13 update in 22.04 LTS, and upgrades from interim releases have been addressed by a fallback to the previous algorithm in the ubuntu-release-upgrader 1:24.04.23 stable release update. We are adding additional checks to our automated upgrade testing to prevent similar issues in the future.

If you are affected by this issue, you can run apt install --fix-broken to remove the old kernel headers and make apt operational again.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/41741300

As a lifelong Windows user I've just for the first time switched to Ubuntu and I'm learning how to navigate the system but I haven't found an easy way to update my Carbon's X1 Gen 6 BIOS from its hard disk and would appreciate any advice.

I'd be also happy to hear what I should do as a newcomer to Ubuntu to make my experience with it better and have an easier time overall.

A blog post about all the official and community wallpapers in the upcoming Ubuntu 24.10 Oracular Oriole.

Last week, the first point release of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS arrived and with it, upgrades from Ubuntu 22.04 LTS enabled.

Only, those upgrades didn’t go work out well for everyone.

So Canonical has hit pause on upgrades to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS from Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

...

In reply, Canonical says it halted upgrades “due to a critical bug in ubuntu-release-upgrader in the way it’s using the apt solver” (though other, recurring, issues have been filed on Launchpad and mentioned on social media since last week).

The default wallpaper of Ubuntu 24.10 ‘Oracular Oriole’ (and its official mascot artwork) has been revealed — along with an extra 20th anniversary surprise!

Introduced as part of the Ubuntu 24.04 LTS roadmap late last year (but couldn't make it to the final release), the Flutter-based Security Center is a dedicated application for Ubuntu meant to bring out the hard-to-access “ninja security” features of the distro.

The developers want to focus on four key areas with this app. One is that they aim to make it easy to handle full-disk encryption. The second is that they are planning to move the Ubuntu Pro settings from the “Software & Updates” app into a dedicated section in the new security app.

The third is a dedicated “Network” section for facilitating easy firewall control and enabling “Stealth Mode”. The final one is to introduce a prompting mechanism for apps; more on this one later.

Currently, the Security Center features only a single experimental option to require Snap apps to ask for system permissions. I tried enabling it after installing Security Center on an Ubuntu 24.04 installation on a virtual machine, but it just sent me into a loading loop.

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 855 for the week of August 25 - 31, 2024.

• Ubuntu 22.04.5 final point-release delayed until September 12
• Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS released
• Ubuntu Stats
• Hot in Support
• Ubuntu Meeting Activity Reports
• Rocks Public Journal; 2024-08-27
• Convocatória para apresentação de propostas (Call for proposals)
• UbuCon Asia 2025 - Call for Bids!
• LoCo Council approved and formalized LoCo Handover process
• LoCo Events
• Introducing Kernel 6.11 for the 24.10 Oracular Oriole Release
• ...
• And much more!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19331906

Ubuntu Core Desktop is an immutable distro, takes a different path than most other immutable distros.

• The entire OS is built using snaps, including the kernel and bootloader
• Uses snaps instead of flatpak
• Prefers LXD over distrobox and other projects that use podman

After a two-week delay, the Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS release was published today by Canonical for all official flavors as the first point release to the long-term supported Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat) operating system series.

...

In addition to all the updated packages, this first point update to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS also makes it easier to join Ubuntu machines into Windows estates with Active Directory integration and (finally) enables upgrades from Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) systems.

From Ubuntu Discourse: Noble Numbat Point-Release Changes

Official Announcement: Upgrade your desktop: Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS is now available

Thanks to the Canonical decision to commit to shipping the very latest upstream Linux kernels in Ubuntu releases moving forward, Ubuntu 24.10 shipping in October will have the Linux 6.11 kernel that is debuting as stable in mid-September. Canonical's kernel engineers are currently preparing for rolling out that new kernel version in the Oracular Oriole archive.

From Discourse Announcement: Introducing Kernel 6.11 for the 24.10 Oracular Oriole Release:

Given the current schedule of the upstream 6.11 development cycle, with 6.11-rc5 released on 2024-08-25, Ubuntu 24.10 will be considered a Tight Release from the kernel standpoint. This means that the Ubuntu 6.11 kernel included in the 24.10 release might have some limitations or known issues that will be addressed after the release.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19115433

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 854 for the week of August 18 - 24, 2024. In this Issue

• “Something has gone seriously wrong,” dual-boot systems warn after Microsoft update
• SRU announcement -Call for nominations: Ubuntu Community Council
• Welcome New Members and Developers
• Ubuntu Stats
• Hot in Support
• Weekly Meeting Reports
• Starcraft Clinic 2024-Aug-16
• Midwest Superfest and Software Freedom Day 2024
• UbuCon Asia 2024
• UbuCon Korea 2024 has wrapped up with 151 attendees this year!
• LoCo Events
• Ubuntu WSL channel on Matrix
• The CMA wants your comments on web apps
• Other Community News
• Canonical News
• In the Blogosphere
• Featured Audio and Video
• Meeting Reports
• Upcoming Meetings and Events
• Updates and Security for Ubuntu 20.04, 22.04, and 24.04
• And much more!

This tutorial shows how to enable zswap kernel module to increase usable RAM in your Ubuntu computer or laptop.

...

Swap space can be helpful for computers with limited RAM. But, it’s slow! Too much swap in use will slow down the overall system performance.

As workarounds, Linux includes 2 kernel modules: zram and zswap. Instead of moving inactive pages from memory to disk (swap space), they do similar things by compressing the data into dynamically allocated RAM space.

...

zram creates a block device in RAM, that acts as swap space (or a general-purpose RAM disk). When system needs to swap out inactive pages, zram compress them into the block device. No swap on disk is required.

zswap is a lightweight compressed RAM cache for swap pages. It attempts to compress the pages, that are needed to swap out, and store them into a memory pool in RAM. Poorly compressible data is directly written to disk (swap space). And, when the memory pool is full or the RAM is exhausted, the least recently used page is decompressed and written to disk (swap). A swap space on disk is required!

We’re looking for motivated people that want to join the Ubuntu Community Council!

The Community Council is the highest governance body of the Ubuntu project. They handle Code of Conduct violations, mediate conflict, and support the community.

...

The Ubuntu project turned 20 this year, but is still in constant flux. The advent of new communication platforms, new projects under our umbrella, and the ever-growing popularity of the project requires our community to evolve. We need to make sure Ubuntu is set to tackle the challenges of the next 20 years. It needs a strong and active community council to guide the project forwards.

• You show humanity, gentleness and kindness in your communication.
• You create a welcoming atmosphere.
• You want to invest time in the next two years to handle CoC violations, mediate conflict and help improve the Ubuntu community.
• You are willing to regularly meet with the other council members

...

Nominations are now open and will close on Sunday September 22th, 23:59 UTC. After that, the Community Council will review the submissions and will set up an election.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ndlug.org/post/1020043

The DC-ROMA RISC-V Pad II boasts a 10.1 inch (1920×1200) IPS 10-point touch display, and is powered by the same SpacemiT K1 SoC found in their RISC-V Ubuntu laptop (which launched with a confused set of pricing tiers and availability).

That chip comprises eight 64-bit RISC-V cores running up to 2.0 GHz, plus the RVA 22 Profile and 256-bit RVV 1.0 standard to provide “powerful AI capabilities”, and an Imagine Technologies BXE-2-2 GPU, a baseline 800 MHz effort.

Memory wise, the base model offers 4GB LPDDR4 RAM. 8GB and 16GB options are available at extra cost. All versions have 64 GB eMMC, but the 16 GB variant can also be equipped with a 128 GB eMMC – all those upgrades bump the cost, of course.

Also present is a 6000 mAh battery, front and rear cameras, a USB Type-C 3.0 port (with DisplayPort), and a 3.5mm audio jack.

The DC-ROMA RISC-V Pad II ships with Ubuntu 24.04 out the box, but DeepComputing say the 16GB model will also support (a custom build of) Android 15 AOSP in time.

Deep Computing Store: DC-ROMA Pad II for Native RISC-V Development

With the exception of critical security issues/bugs, Canonical will be skipping over shipping stable release updates for the Linux kernel in Ubuntu until early October.

From email announcement

Please be informed that we will be skipping the SRU cycle 2024.09.02 due to a critical infrastructure change. This adjustment will allow us to focus on ensuring a smooth and stable transition. Our next SRU cycle will start when the infrastructure is back online. The current estimation is at the beginning of October. Once we know more details, we will let you know the exact date.

October is fast approaching and with it the Oracular Oriole! As with any new release of Ubuntu, our team of developers from Canonical and the community work hard to ensure it’s stable and bug free. You can join our intrepid army of testers and help them squash any sneaky bugs that remain!

This Ubuntu Testing Week kicks off on August 22nd and runs until the 29th. During that stretch, we encourage everyone to grab a copy of the latest build, run some tests and share your results.