Focal Fossa Bossa Nova
It’s hard to know what to focus on with this new release, so here’s a quick summary of Focal Fossa’s highlights.
Naturally, everything under the Ubuntu hood has been refreshed. The 5.4 kernel brings support for new hardware and fixes for old. What most home users will be interested in is the desktop, and you’ll find that Gnome 3.36 looks and behaves better than ever. It seems like there’s been a two-year game of bug whack-a-mole, both within Gnome and Ubuntu’s take on it, to address annoying performance and memory issues. But with this release, it’s as smooth as the inferior type of peanut butter.
“The darkening” has come finally to Ubuntu. Like so many desktops and programs it now offers a dark mode, which some people find easier on the eyes. Light or dark, we think you’ll love the new bold icons and Yaru theme. Gnome’s application folders feature – in which you can drag icons in the Applications menu on top of one another to make a folder – is less clumsy now. And if you remove all but one item from a folder, then the singleton is automatically promoted back to the main menu and the folder removed. Tidy.
If you have a HiDPI display you’ll be pleased to hear that fractional scaling is finally here. And (unlike in 19.10) you don’t need to invoke Gsettings from the command line to use it. Previously, only integer scaling was available, which meant users often had to choose between tiny text and giant text. Now the Goldilocks Zone can be enabled through a simple switch in “Settings>Screen Display,” but do note the small print warning about increased power usage and decreased sharpness. At the time of writing, there seems to be issues using this with the proprietary Nvidia driver, so keep an eye on this bug: http:// bit.ly/MPCubuntubug.
Speaking of Nvidia, its drivers are included on the install medium. No need to resort to a PPA or (shudder) download them from Nvidia’s website. Gamers will be pleased to hear that Feral’s GameMode is part of a standard install. This can rejig CPU frequency governors, schedulers, and other frobs to boost frame rates. And in case you’re concerned about the 32-bit library hassle, don’t be: Everything needed by Steam, Wine, and Lutris is still in the repos. If you’re running old 32-bit applications you might experience difficulties, so test these before getting rid of your 18.04 install. There’s an opportunity to help the community here if you find one that doesn’t work – do your bit and package it up as a Snap. Learn more from this blog post: https://snapcraft.io/blog/ how-to-preserve-old-softwarewith-snaps.
The Ubuntu Software tool now serves Snaps as the default. Indeed, most applications we searched for were only available in this format, but some packages can be installed from the traditional Ubuntu repos. Of course, you can still install packages from the command line with apt if you’re not sold on the “app store” mentality. We predict that Snaps (and Flatpaks) are going to gain serious traction in the coming months and years.
As you will see here from the Software application, a number of tools are now packaged as Snaps. And this number will very quickly increase as developers look to side-step the old method of relying on distros to package up their offerings.