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Ubuntu Linux

Ubuntu Linux 20.04 LTS 'Focal Fossa', Featuring Linux 5.4 Kernel and WireGuard VPN, Now Available For Download (zdnet.com) 62

Posted by msmash from the new-linux-distro dept.
Canonical has released the newest version of its Ubuntu Linux distribution, Ubuntu 20.04. This long-term-support (LTS) version is more than just the latest version of one of the most popular Linux distributions; it's a major update for desktop, server, and cloud users. From a news story: Called "Focal Fossa," it is an LTS version, meaning "Long Term Support." Just how long is that support? An impressive five years! Ubuntu 20.04 will feature many new visual cues and tweaks too thanks to a refreshed theme. "Ubuntu has become the platform of choice for Linux workstations. Canonical certifies multiple Dell, HP, and Lenovo workstations, and supports enterprise developer desktops. Machine learning and AI tools from a range of vendors are available immediately for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, along with 6,000 applications in the Snapcraft Linux App Store including Slack, Skype, Plex, Spotify, the entire JetBrains portfolio and Visual Studio Code. WireGuard is a new, simplified VPN with modern cryptography defaults. WireGuard is included in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and will be backported to Ubuntu 18.04 LTS to support widespread enterprise adoption," says Canonical.
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Ubuntu Linux 20.04 LTS 'Focal Fossa', Featuring Linux 5.4 Kernel and WireGuard VPN, Now Available For Download More

Ubuntu Linux 20.04 LTS 'Focal Fossa', Featuring Linux 5.4 Kernel and WireGuard VPN, Now Available For Download

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  • Looking forward to starting a new project this weekend.

  • Using it since January (Score:3)

    by Teun ( 17872 ) on Friday April 24, 2020 @12:46PM (#59985276)
    I've been using the Kubuntu version since January, especially the first two months there were a lot of expected updates but it just kept working fine.
    This is a solid distro.
    Because Python 2 is now depreciated and version 3 is included a couple of older Python applications no longer work.
    Now I hope the next kernel (5.6) will become available.
    • I'm quite happy with it and ready to switch from 18.04 No earth shattering differences that I can see but it all seems to work a bit nicer.

  • Sample first in a virtual machine. (Score:4, Informative)

    by couchslug ( 175151 ) on Friday April 24, 2020 @12:51PM (#59985310)

    Unless you have spare PCs/drives/etc it's a very good idea to try new versions in a VM for a few months as they're sorted out. Distros like Ubuntu are mature products meaning there's little reason to replace or upgrade (which mostly means "change") a working installation, and upgrading rather than a clean install is asking for problems.

    You can verify how well your upgrade MAY run by installing older versions in VM then upgrading to see what breaks.

    https://kifarunix.com/install-... [kifarunix.com]

    You can image your old installation to a virtual machine for a complete backup you can run anywhere. (Disk2vhd is the equivalent Windows option.) Do it right and you can have zero downtime.

    • wait for .1

    • Yeah, I'll wait a year.

      Every time I have to update an Ubuntu machine, it breaks the nVidia drivers in one way or another. Last time was about signed kernel modules, IIRC, so I had to get on signing them myself. because they weren't being distributed signed for a while.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by caseih ( 160668 )

        Yes that's a common annoyance that I've dealt with for years now. It used to be nVidia, despite frequent kernel incompatibilities, still had better Linux support than AMD/ATI for 3D games and graphics. However my next computer is going to have AMD graphics. The open source drivers are quite good these days, and from what I've heard from others, it just works.

      • That's not unique to Ubuntu. nVidia have gone from once being the go to card for Linux to avoid at all costs.

        • Eh, I don't think they are avoid at all costs - I think they were "go to" because they actually worked, PITA installation and proprietary blobs and all.

          But as said elsewhere on this discussion, ATI now Just Works and works well and is Free, so it can get maintained/updated for changes as part of the "normal" kernel dev cycle

      • Every time I have to update an Ubuntu machine, it breaks the nVidia drivers in one way or another.

        Preach is Brother. Nvidia are such a bunch of asshats. Intel graphics machines just work and keep working. As far as I can tell, AMD ones now have that property too. But Nvidia, OMFG they are brittle as fuck. Somehow last week an upgrade to the latest CUDA managed to inform apt that I wanted my motherfucking keyboard drivers uninstalled. Naturally I didn't notice until I rebooted.

        How do you fuck up that hard?

        U

    • I've been upgrading rather than reinstalling for decades. Works just fine every time as long as you haven't complicated your repositories with a bunch of backports and aren't relying on some fragile proprietary driver that was only written for one kernel version.

    • What can you do if you want to upgrade because Ubuntu 20 supports your hardware better? For example, on 7th gen ThinkPads X1C, Ubuntu 18 does not have microphone support, at all. Sound is also wonky, the trackpad sometimes stops working after resume, and the fingerprint reader doesn't work. I could live without that last one, but I need a mike for conferencing, and Ubuntu 20 is supposed to have fixed that issue.

      • Depends on how important your current install is, how little downtime is acceptable and if you can easily swap hard disks.
        I only buy machines whose hard disks are easy to upgrade and a new install is a good excuse to buy a larger drive, pull the old drive, install on the new drive and copy over any files I wish using an appropriate adapter or by plugging in the old drive AFTER performing a clean install on a new drive with no other hard disks connected.
        Another option is copy your data to an external drive o

        • > Another option if you have the backup space is image your existing install as a complete backup, then do a clean new install overwriting your old drive. That sounds most promising, if one is optimistic the new install will be worth it. In case there are no deal-breakers, you just stay with it. I do have backup space. Is there a way to image the old install such that it's mountable from the backup drive once I boot the new install? The old install encrypts the entire disk with LVM / something called "
      • sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

    • Distros like Ubuntu are mature products meaning there's little reason to replace or upgrade (which mostly means "change") a working installation

      That's if you ignore the many benefits under the hood. The thing is LTS releases are historically very stable on versions of software so you're missing a lot of current features, not just on userland apps but also in the backend.

      I for one will be upgrading the NAS here very soon (I'll give it a month for bug reports to come through) simply due to the upgraded ZFS release. ZFS 0.8 was released 1 month before the last LTS (2018) so didn't make the cut. Ubuntu LTS of course never went beyond a few bugfix relea

    • I've got it in a VM and am looking at it. So far so good as far as that goes.

      That being said, I looked at the ZDnet linked article and also read another on Tech Republic and none of the new features look exciting. It's really more version upgrades than anything ... latest Python, latest Gnome, latest Snap, etc. I suspect I could get other VPNs on my 18.04 but I don't need one. Don't plan to use ZFS, but I believe that was available on 18.04.

      I know we all have different needs, but I'm not sure what's exc

  • But the classic non-live using Debian Install is still available at http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubun... [ubuntu.com]

    • DUDE you just saved me hours and hours of work rewriting a bunch of back-end code (bc the new installer doesn't allow for MBR installations, thus forcing at least two partitions when my stuff uses one single part). I went on a long rant about Canonical and this fuckery as well as Netplan (which also was foisted upon us but is not at feature-parity with what existed before it) yesterday and was just sitting down to continue re-writing stuffs when I saw this.

      I LOVE YOU

  • Better installs for FDE & resized /boot part? (Score:3)

    by sremick ( 91371 ) on Friday April 24, 2020 @01:24PM (#59985512)

    One thing I find very frustrating with all Ubuntu-based distros I've tried is that if you simply want full-disk encryption AND a /boot partition sized up to a sane size that won't bite you in the ass later on down the road, the process is incredibly manual, arcane and tedious. Are there any distros that make this easier? Bonus points if it's systemd-free.

    • Ubuntu server does a lot of equally dumb shit. If your clock isn't set to UTC it will fail and not say why. So you say sure I'll look at the installer log file. It's 10,000 pages of the same repeating verbose garbage. Can't they just say hey your clock needs to be set to UTC or else dpkg takes a shit.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Teun ( 17872 )
      Since several years there is no need to worry about partition sizes as you can use the btrfs filesystem which also allows for quick snapshots to return to in case anything goes funny.

  • Nice integrated ZFS support, Raspberry Pi (Score:5, Informative)

    by caseih ( 160668 ) on Friday April 24, 2020 @01:34PM (#59985588)

    From what I've heard on the Linux Unplugged show, the support in 20.04 for ZFS is the best ever. Grub lets you pick snapshots to boot into, and the packing system apparently works with ZFS transparently. In order to use all the integrated ZFS goodness, you will need to let the installer have the whole disk and do all the partitioning and volume slicing itself, thought. It has a scheme that it works with for defining the file systems and mount points. It's to the point now where a novice user could install and use 20.04 and never know or care about ZFS itself, unless he has a need to roll an update back. It sounds pretty slick. Anyone have experience with it on 20.04?

    20.04 is also released for the Raspberry Pi. Ubuntu wants to make this platform fully supported and on par with the x86_64s. That bodes well both for Ubuntu and the Pi. I've gotten quite fed up with the dismal state of Linux on ARM hardware in general, and haven't yet found a distro that works very well for me. I've tried Armbian, but I think stock Ubuntu 20.04 could be the better choice.

    • ZFS is a nice FS, but check out the performances, ext4 is better in many departments.
      • Yes, EXT4 does perform better than ZFS in some regards. So does XFS, (maybe different places than EXT4).

        The appeal of ZFS is not pure, raw performance, (though with L2ARC / Read cache SSD or a Metadata SSD do help alot), it's the features that a more modern designed file system gives.

        All the features of the EXT2/3/4 are addons, except the extent based allocation added with EXT4. To get some of the features of ZFS, you have to use EXT4 with LVM on top of software RAID. Then you get a fraction of ZFS.

        Th

        • I've been paying peripheral attention to ZFS for a while now, and really like the feature list, but the performance and resource demands (especially on non-server-class hardware) has sounded like a sticking point. I believe I've heard you really want to dedicate at least 1GB of RAM to it for decent performance? An easy choice for the features on a server, somewhat more dubious on a consumer machine with maybe 8GB total.

          >though with L2ARC / Read cache SSD or a Metadata SSD do help alot
          Are those file-sys

          • The 1GB of RAM just for ZFS is not really needed. I run Gentoo Linux with ZFS root pool on a 7 year old, dual core Celeron laptop, with 2GBs of memory. That laptop did not start getting slow until Mr. Meltdown & the ever elusive Ms. Spectre introduced themselves. And yes, Gentoo Linux re-compiles were quite reasonable before, (on ZFS root pool to SATA SSD).

            A L2ARC acts as additional read cache, beyond any memory available for ARC, (Adaptive Read Cache). So adding a SSD L2ARC on a spinning disk pool ca

            • Thank you, that was very informative. I'm delighted to hear that the SSD caching support is so...sane. I've been horribly dismayed at the number of mainstream solutions that aren't. I think I'll be seriously considering ZFS next time I have a dedicated Linux system. The snapshots in particular are a feature I find very compelling.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by jabuzz ( 182671 )

          No ext4 is not a good default file system for Linux. It is a horrible nasty hack that exists purely because the lazy/stupid (take your pick) Lustre developers thought it would be a good idea. It is was not and XFS would have been a much much more sensible appoach. I am sure you will now tell me but XFS zero truncates files on a crash. Well that would now be an incredibly rare event. However the ext4 developers in there stupidity in early versions of ext4 had exactly the same bug, for exactly the same reason

      • If you're comparing ZFS and ext4 on raw I/O then you don't need or want ZFS. If you want to compare it on adaptive cache performance vs stupid FIFO caching on ext4, or data integrity, or snapshotting, or basically any other features of a modern CoW file system rather than one that has its roots in the 90s looking like Frankenstein's monster with all its bolt-ons then you need to compare ZFS to BTRFS or bcachefs, or any other CoW filesystem, and in that regard it is by far the best performing.

    • It's amazing, minus the fact that right now it's either encrypted root OR ZFS.

      Every apt event triggers a snapshot. I can see data recovery becoming MUCH easier.

      Especially since trying to get data off of my old encrypted drive was a PITA and not straight forward.

      • I've never quite understood why people find it so critical to encrypt a whole filesystem filled with open source software.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Nkwe ( 604125 )

          I've never quite understood why people find it so critical to encrypt a whole filesystem filled with open source software.

          Because the software is managing and generating sensitive information and that information isn't necessarily stored in easily known locations. It's not enough to just encrypt /home. Credentials, certificates, connection strings, logs, and cached data might also be in /etc, /var, /opt, /tmp... Sure with effort, you could analyze your workload, figure out where all of your sensitive data is, make sure that data is on separately mounted and encrypted filesystems, etc. That would be a lot of effort and just hav

        • And the user's data.

          If I found an unencrypted laptop on the street, I could change user passphrases (after saving /etc/shadow for brute-forcing), log in, open up a web-browser, and check their history to check for obvious targets like their email, online banking site, or Amazon and other shopping sites. There is good change that they've had their browser remember their passphrases. If I get into their email and anything else, I'm off to the races, not so much to make a profit, but to mess with them, like

          • User data is different. Many systems give you the two basic options: full disk vs user folder encryption. If full disk is a problem because of the filesystem, then you can just turn on user folder encryption and you're set as far as user data is concerned. If you need to go further, you can encrypt other folders on the filesystem (/etc being the big one).

            Full disk encryption is a nice-to-have feature, but even if I have the option, I never use it. It's too easy for full disk encryption to cause a problem du

          • And the user's data.

            Whose user data? He said he doesn't understand why people want to encrypt the *whole filesystem*. He never said he wasn't encrypting /home (which is perfectly possible in the current Ubuntu running from ZFS, as is encrypting most subfolders other than /boot)

            Also encrypting the whole filesystem is pointless on a system where you want to run ZFS. ZFS is a CoW file system designed for reliable storage using RAID. You're not going to find that user data in the street, you're going to need to break into someone'

      • It's amazing, minus the fact that right now it's either encrypted root OR ZFS.

        That's not a minus. It's somewhat irrelevant. The biggest benefit for encrypted root is for devices that are mobile (e.g. laptops). Those devices don't gain a lot of benefit from having ZFS in the first place.

        For devices where the ZFS benefits would be realised you wouldn't store sensitive information in the root partition in the first place, making encrypting it just an exercise in voluntary performance degradation.

  • Test Ubuntu 20.04 vigorously. I'm looking forward to a great new Linux Mint release in about two months.
    • And it has a last minute break for me. A couple weeks back Ubuntu 20.04 + NoMachine Enterprise Workstation worked great. Yesterday it gained the "The user on the 'physical' display is logged out when a user creates a virtual desktop. The user will be unable to login again. And the user on the virtual desktop will be unable to unlock the screen after locking it." Will poke at it with a clean install in a VM over the weekend.

  • Upgrading WSL 18 to 20 LTS will break. (Score:3)

    by BrookHarty ( 9119 ) on Friday April 24, 2020 @03:21PM (#59986148) Journal

    In WSL, If you are like me and upgraded your 18.04 LTS to 20.04 LTS, it broke on libc,

      vi /var/lib/dpkg/info/libc6:amd64.postinst

    line 193

                    telinit u 2>/dev/null || true ; #sleep 1

    apt --fix-broken install

    • TBH, I'm not sure I've ever seen an LTS upgrade go smoothly on Ubuntu. It's a massive jump in package versions.

    • It always used to be the case that LTS users were recommended to wait until the yy.04.01 version came out mid summer before upgrading. I can't see that recommendation for this version, but I'll probably wait a bit before I upgrade.

      • As usual, 18.04 will not offer the upgrade automatically until 20.04.1 is out (July IIRC), so I believe the recommendation still stands.

  • When I saw that thing, it just screamed "Corona Kitty" to me. That might become the official nickname for this release.

  • can i run steam?
    does it support freesync?
    will my vega56 run respectably?
    can i disable any and all animations?
    can i set a specific font family to be used everywhere and anywhere? More importantly, can i disable any and all font smudging?
    is there one program per category that works properly, or are there half a dozen sorta-kinda "working" ones (xterm, konsole, rxvt, gnome terminal, terminology., xfce-term... Or my favorite, half a dozen different "settings" programs. )? Does the system use *one* for all progr

    • can i disable any and all animations?

      Just press the any key. It's the one on the front of the computer.

      is there one program per category that works properly,

      Yes this year King Torvalds of Finland made a decree that people are only allowed work on the one true version of any particular category. This is unlike lesser operating systems where there's often a "choice".

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gTsiros ( 205624 )

        fragmentation and multiple programs that share similar functionality but their differences are in the bugs is not choice

        it's wasted effort. Effort with no result.

  • Oh yeah, baby. Best one yet. (well 14.04 was stellar also)

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