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An Overview of New Features in Ubuntu 23.10

Last updated: September 22, 2023 — Leave a comment

Ubuntu 23.10, code-name “Mantic Minotaur”, has reached Beta stage. See what’s new in the upcoming release of the popular Linux Distribution.

Ubuntu 23.10 will use Linux Kernel 6.5, and GNOME Desktop v45.

New App Center

Ubuntu Software, aka the previous GNOME Software and current Snap Store, is really painful! It does NOT work quite often in my case.

It’s always stuck at either “Downloading Software catalog“, or the spinning loading circle.

Now, in Ubuntu 23.10, the new Google Flutter based App Center is in the place for installing/updating applications.

New App Center

Personally, I really like the new ‘App Center’. It’s fast, and just works!

The only issue so far in the development build is that it support Snap packages only… It now supports both Snap and classic .deb package since Beta.

New Firmware Updater app

Ubuntu 23.10 also introduced a new “Firmware Updater” application, that is available out-of-the-box.

With it, user can update hardware firmware as easy as few mouse clicks.

TPM-backed Full Disk Encryption

Ubuntu 23.10 adds experimental support for TPM based full disk encryption. Meaning passphrases will be no longer needed on supported platforms, and that the secret used to decrypt the encrypted data will be protected by a TPM and recovered automatically only by early boot software that is authorised to access the data. See HERE for more about it.

GNOME 45

GNOME 45, developed by another group of people, is the default desktop environment in Ubuntu 23.10.

Features in GNOME 45, include new ‘workspace indicator’ in top-left to replace ‘Activities’ button, removal of current app menu in top-bar.

The top-right corner system status menu, aka Quick Settings, can now be opened/closed via Super (Windows logo key) + S shortcut key. And, it supports for toggle keyboard backlight with a flat button.

Super + S to open Quick Settings

The ‘Files’ (Nautilus File Manager) and Settings (Gnome Control Center) has been redesigned to look even more modern. To follow the steps in GNOME 44, it also redesigned the ‘About’ and ‘Privacy’ pages.

In the release of Ubuntu Desktop, it also introduced a new system extension called “Ubuntu Tiling Assistant“. It features “Tiling pop-up” and “Tiling Groups”, and allows to tile window to half or quarter screen size, either by dragging or keyboard shortcuts.

Other Gnome desktop changes include:

  • Camera usage indicator, but not work for Cheese.
  • Drag’n’drop to save web image to file.
  • New ‘keyboard’ option in top-right system menu to toggle keyboard backlight
  • New default wallpaper with dark variant.

Default to “Minimal” installation

Don’t know why (probably due to Snap), but Ubuntu’s .iso image is getting bigger and bigger in recent releases. The 64-bit Ubuntu 18.04 image is only 2.3G, while 22.04 & 23.04 now take about 4.6G.

To lose weight, Ubuntu Team proposed to drop some applications from the default install, by introducing new “Default” option.

The change does not apply to Ubuntu 23.10, instead, the Ubuntu installer choose “Minimal” installation by default that excludes many applications, such as LibreOffice, Thunderbird. Though, the old default “Full” installation is still available for choice.

Other Changes

Ubuntu PPA now uses deb822 .sources files instead of the classic .list files in ‘/etc/apt/sources.list.d’. And, it includes the key code directly in the source file instead of saving as a separated file.

The network manager now uses Netplan as it’s default settings storage backend. All the config files are located in /etc/netplan now.

The pre-installed Firefox now uses Wayland by default instead of XWayland, which has better touchpad / touch-screen user experience.

New fonts-ubuntu-classic package for those who prefer system font in Ubuntu earlier than 23.04.

For more about Ubuntu 23.10, see the official release note, though it’s not finished yet.

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Ubuntu 21.10 Impish Indri Final Beta Released

Last updated: September 24, 2021 — Leave a comment

The Ubuntu team announced the release of Ubuntu 21.10 Beta, code name ‘Impish Indri’. The release features Linux Kernel 5.13 and GNOME 40 desktop.

Ubuntu 21.10, codenamed “Impish Indri”, continues Ubuntu’s proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution. The team has been hard at work through this cycle, introducing new features and fixing bugs.

Ubuntu 21.10 final will be released on October 14, with support for 9 months until July 2022. It is powered by Linux Kernel 5.13 with most recent hardware support. The Desktop edition include GNOME 40 features a new and improved Activities Overview design.

Workspaces are now arranged horizontally, and the overview and app grid are accessed vertically. And it supports three-finger touchpad gestures to toggle overview and switch workspaces.

The “standard” app layout, dark header-bar along with light window color, has been removed. Now Ubuntu 21.10 includes only “light” and “dark” mode to choose from the ‘Appearance’ settings page.

GNOME 40 by default logs into the overview screen. Gladly, Ubuntu decides to disable this design and revert to blank desktop just as before. However, Firefox web browser in Ubuntu 21.10 defaults a Snap app runs in sandbox.

Though the classic Firefox deb is still available out-of-the-box, clicking the default browser icon on left dock will open the Snap app. For users don’t like Snap may remove the icon from dock and add the native one as favorite.

Ubuntu 21.10 has TWO Firefox packages and defaults to SNAP

Download Ubuntu 21.10

This Beta release includes disc images from Ubuntu Desktop, Server, Cloud products, as well as official Ubuntu flavors including Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu Budgie, UbuntuKylin, Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Studio, and Xubuntu.

To download Ubuntu 21.10 desktop and server iso images, go to the link button below:

Download Ubuntu 21.10

For Ubuntu flavors and other downloads go to cdimage.ubuntu.com. And the full release notes for Ubuntu 21.10 Beta can be found at HERE.

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GNOME 41 Released! New Remote Desktop App, Multitasking & Mobile Network Settings

Last updated: September 23, 2021 — Leave a comment

After half a year of development, the GNOME project announced version 41 of its popular Linux desktop environment.

GNOME 41 comes with some exciting new features. The upper right corner system tray menu now includes option to make it easy to switch Power Mode between “Balanced” and “Power Saver”. It’s said that “Performance mode” is only visible on hardware that supports this feature, though I don’t understand which hardware required, may be a dedicated graphics card.

The GNOME Settings panel introduced two new items in the left pane: Multitasking and Mobile Network.

The “Multitasking” pane offers options to toggle top-left hot-corner to open Activities overview, app window auto-resizing function when dragging against screen edges; set dynamic or fixed number of workspaces; show workspace on primary only or all displays; super + tab switching for apps on all workspaces or current workspace only.

The “Mobile Network” pane is only visible when a supported modem is present, e.g., 2G, 3G, 4G, and GSM/LTE. It allows to set the network type, whether to use mobile data and data roaming. And it supports multiple SIMs and modems, allows to easy switching network modes.

Other changes in Gnome 41 include:

  • New “Connections” remote desktop app with VNC and RDP support.
  • Overhaul Gnome Software.
  • Redesigned Gnome Music.
  • Faster response to keyboard & pointer input on Wayland.
  • New default GL renderer for GTK4.
  • Create encrypted .zip archives in Files.
  • Import events to Calendar from .ics files.
  • Code cleanup in Mutter, and more.

How to Get Gnome 41:

Usually, the newest GNOME desktop will be first made into Fedora and Arch Linux. Users are recommended to wait your Linux distribution to include the desktop environment.

For testing and development purpose, you can try the GNOME OS either in virtual machine or real computer. Or download the iso image from the link button below:

Download GNOME 41
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gThumb 3.12.0 Released! How to Install via PPA in Ubuntu 20.04

Last updated: September 20, 2021 — Leave a comment

gThumb image viewer and organizer announced version 3.12.0 as the new stable release series!

gThumb 3.12.0 is the new stable series since the last 3.10.x, while the 3.11.x is the development release.

What’s New in gThumb 3.12.0:

The new release includes many new features compare to the previous stable 3.10.x. They are all introduced in the 3.11 development releases, so you may already enjoy using them for a period of time.

With libheif library, gThumb now opens AVIF, HEIF (include Apple’s HEIC) images, and allows to save images as AVIF. And it supports JPEG XL images using the jpeg-xl library. A template editor is available to edit text values with special codes, for use in script commands, rename templates, print header and footer, etc.

Besides that, it improved file navigation for directory contains thousands of images. The file list now starts more thumbnailers in parallel, status bar has button to show the progress dialog. And the color picker tool shows colors in two more formats: rgb in % and hsl. Others include:

  • Allow to set shortcuts to activate filters.
  • Allow to mount unmounted volumes.
  • Add file actions to the viewer context menu.
  • Read color profiles from png files as well.
  • Option to show/hide the status bar.

For those already running gThumb 3.11.4, there are only bug-fixes and translation updates.

How to Install gThumb 3.12.0 in Ubuntu:

The software does not provide official binary package. Besides building from the source tarball, you may install it via the unofficial Ubuntu PPA.

1. Add the Ubuntu PPA.

The PPA so far provides packages for Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 21.04, Ubuntu 21.10, and Linux Mint 20. It contains package for Ubuntu 18.04 but lacks JPEG XL support.

Firstly open terminal either from start menu or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, paste the command below into terminal and hit run:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/apps

2. Update system package cache.

Adding PPA will automatically refresh the package cache in Ubuntu 20.04 and higher. However old versions and some Ubuntu based systems does not. To do it manually, simply run command in terminal:

sudo apt update

3. Install / Upgrade gThumb.

Finally, either run the apt install command in a terminal window to install the image viewer:

sudo apt install gthumb

Or use the Software Updater (Update Manager) utility to receive package updates. Un-check other packages from the PPA if you don’t want them.

Uninstall / Restore gThumb:

You can restore to the stock version of the image viewer and organizer by purging the PPA repository. To do so, simply run command:

sudo apt install ppa-purge && sudo ppa-purge ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/apps

You may also keep the gThumb package but remove the Ubuntu PPA, since it contains many other software packages that you don’t prefer. To do so, either run command in terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/apps

Or remove the repository line under ‘Other Software’ tab via Software & Updates utility.

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The Six Point Release Ubuntu 18.04.6 LTS is Out!

Last updated: September 17, 2021 — Leave a comment

The Ubuntu team announced the six point release for Ubuntu 18.04 today for the Desktop and Server.

Ubuntu 18.04.6 refreshed the disc images for the amd64 and arm64 architecture, re-enabling the usage on Secure Boot enabled systems due to the key revocation related to the BootHole vulnerability.

In August 2020, a set of security vulnerabilities in GRUB2 (the GRand Unified Bootloader version 2) collectively known as BootHole were disclosed. Today, another set of vulnerabilities in GRUB2 were disclosed, with similar implications.

See more in this blog post.

The release also includes many other security updates for additional high-impact bug fixes, with a focus on maintaining stability and compatibility with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

Download Ubuntu 18.04.6:

Ubuntu 18.04 has 5 year standard security support, and additional 5 year Extended Security Maintenance (esm) free for personal use.

To download Ubuntu 18.04.6, go the the link below:

Download Ubuntu

For Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, it’s able to upgrade to Ubuntu 18.04.6 using the Update Manger. See the documentation for more.

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