Ubuntu 19.10 releases with MicroK8s add-ons, GNOME 3.34, ZFS on root, NVIDIA-specific improvements, and much more!

Yesterday, Canonical announced the release of Ubuntu 19.10 which is the fastest Ubuntu release with significant performance improvements to accelerate developer productivity in AI/ML.

This release brings enhanced edge computing capabilities with the addition of strict confinement to MicroK8s, which will safeguard the complete isolation and presents a secured production-grade Kubernetes environment. This allows MicroK8s add-ons like Istio, Knative, CoreDNS, Prometheus, and Jaeger to be deployed securely at the edge with a single command. Ubuntu 19.10 also delivers other features like NVIDIA drivers which are embedded in the ISO image to improve the performance of gamers and AI/ML users.

The CEO of Canonical, Mark Shuttleworth says, “With the 19.10 release, Ubuntu continues to deliver strong support, security and superior economics to enterprises, developers and the wider community.”

The Ubuntu team has notified users that Ubuntu 19.10 will be only supported for 9 months, until July 2020. Users are also advised to use Ubuntu 18.04 for Long Term Support.

What’s new in Ubuntu 19.10?

Updated Packages

Linux kernel: The new release is based on the Linux 5.3 series and will support AMD Navi GPUs, ARM SoCs, ARM Komeda display, and Intel speed select on Xeon servers. In order to improve the boot speed, the default kernel compression algorithm is moved to lz4 on most architectures. The default initramfs compression algorithm has also changed to lz4 on all architectures.

Toolchain Upgrades: It also brings new upstream releases of glibc 2.30, OpenJDK 11, Rust 1.37, GCC 9.2, updated Python 3.7.5, Python 3.8.0 (interpreter only), ruby 2.5.5, php 7.3.8, perl 5.28.1, golang 1.12.10.

Security Improvements

Ubuntu 19.10 explores additional default hardening options that are enabled in GGC like support for both stack clash protection and control-flow integrity protection.

Ubuntu Desktop

GNOME 3.34 desktop: Ubuntu 19.10 includes GNOME 3.34 which includes a lot of bug fixes, some new features and a significant improvement in responsiveness and speed. It allows to group icons in the Activities overview, has improved wallpaper and wi-fi settings.

ZFS on root: This feature is included as an experimental feature in this release. Users can create the ZFS file system and also partition the layout from the installer directly.

NVIDIA-specific improvements: The driver is now included in the ISO and has improved startup reliability when the NVIDIA driver is in use. Ubuntu 19.10 also brings improved smoothness and frame rates for NVIDIA.

Other new features in Ubuntu 19.10

A USB drive can be plugged in and accessed directly from the dock.

New themes like Yaru light and dark variants are now available.

Support for DLNA sharing is now available by default.

Ubuntu Server

Images: Ubuntu 19.10 prefers the production-ready ppc64el and arm64 live-server ISO images to install Ubuntu Server on bare metal on the two architectures.

Raspberry Pi: The Raspberry Pi 32-bit and 64-bit preinstalled images (raspi3) are supported in this release. Also, Ubuntu images will now support almost all the devices of the Raspberry family Pi 2, Pi 3B, Pi 3B+, CM3, CM3+, Pi 4.

Users have appreciated the new features in Ubuntu 19.10.

https://twitter.com/dont39350/status/1184902506238926850

https://twitter.com/ImpWarfare/status/1184844081576456193

https://twitter.com/robinjuste/status/1183891524242857986

These are some of the selected updates in Ubuntu 19.10, read the release notes for more information. You can also check out the Ubuntu blog for more details on the release.

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