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 new 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 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 niggling performance and memory issues. But with this release, it’s smooth like 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, by 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 time of writing, there seem to be issues using this with the proprietary Nvidia driver, so keep an eye on this bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ ubuntu/+source/gnome-control-center/+bug/1870736.
Speaking of Nvidia, its drivers are included on the install medium. No need to resort to a PPA or (shudder) downloading 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 governers, schedulers and other frobs to boost framerates. And in case you’re concerned about the 32-bit library palaver, 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-software-with-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 Snaps (and Flatpaks) are going to gain serious traction in the coming months and years.
As you’ll see from the Software application, a number of tools are now packaged as Snaps. And this number will increase as developers side-step the old method of relying on distros to package up their offerings.
USING THE ISO IMAGE “We know that many PCS and most laptops don’t have optical drives nowadays, but that’s okay – the image can be written to a USB stick.”
Just uttering the phrase “Installing Linux” will send a shiver down the spines of most humans, but it’s not as terrifying as it used to be. Don’t get overzealous, though: it’s still possible to wipe out your existing OS by pushing the wrong button, and you should spend a couple of hours trying out Ubuntu before committing to installing it.
Running the live environment, or installing to a virtual machine will give you a handle on the look ‘n’ feel of this pinnacle of free software. There are a couple of hoops to jump through before we get there though. You can download the Ubuntu install image from whatever operating system you’re comfortable with. Fire up your browser and head to https://ubuntu.com/download/ desktop and press the Download button. If you’re feeling charitable you can also make a donation to Canonical and choose how the company invests it, but this is optional. We’d recommend making a cup of tea while the download completes. You should now have a 2.5GB disk image (ISO) file which you can write to a DVD using the software of your choice (for example, Toast on macos, Cdburnerxp on Windows, Brasero on Linux). We know that many PCS and most laptops don’t have optical drives nowadays, but that’s okay – the image can be written to a USB stick, which will probably boot much faster and certainly will be much quieter than booting from DVD. There are programs like Unetbootin that can automatically download distros and set them up in all kinds of fancy ways, but we prefer to keep things simple so here we’re recommending the cross-platform Etcher tool. Grab it from https:// etcher.io, start it up, plug in a USB drive (make sure there’s nothing precious on it because its contents will all be destroyed), and away you go.
Boot from your ISO file
You’ll need to figure out how to make your PC boot from USB or optical media before you can enjoy Ubuntu. You have two options: one is to open any provided Boot Menu – not all devices offer this – the key used varies. HP systems use F9, Dell and Lenovo use F12, older AMIBIOS-BASED systems use F8, Award-based systems use F11. You need to slowly tap the key just after switching on the system. Select any Cd-rom/optical drive option and you’re good to go.
If no boot menu is available the other option is to select the order of boot devices within the BIOS/UEFI settings. A message should appear during the system start saying which key to press. Just as with the boot menu pressing either Del (the most common), F1, F2,
Esc or a ‘special’ maintenance key should give access. In the BIOS locate the Boot Device menu and ensure the Dvd/optical drive is first in the list. Save and reboot!
You can explore the live environment risk free, but for maximum pleasure and performance install Ubuntu to your hard drive or SSD using the handy six-step guide over the page. If you have one we’d recommend installing Ubuntu to its own device, rather than resizing the Windows partition per steps one and two. It should all work fine, and in fact it’s possible to carry out those steps from the Ubuntu installer. But we’ve been around long enough to know things don’t always go as they should. So back up any important data before proceeding. If you have a spare device, just select it and use the Erase disk and install Ubuntu option in step four. Molto semplice. If you want to play it safe, another option is to install Ubuntu to a virtual machine using Oracle’s Virtualbox and the guide below.
Coming from Windows or macos, Ubuntu at first glance appears dramatically different, and perhaps even a little daunting. But don’t worry, soon it will feel just like home. Your first port of call might be the Applications menu, which you can access by clicking in the top left of the screen, or by pressing the Super (Windows) key. This shows any running applications, or if there aren’t any will show frequently used ones. So the first time you click it this view will be barren. You’ll find a grid of installed applications (pictured in the annotation below, which hopefully helps you get your bearings) by clicking in the bottom right, so have a nosey around to see what interests you.
The standard install includes everything you need to get started, and tries to avoid bundling things that you don’t. Perhaps we should have mentioned earlier the minimal install option if you don’t need an office suite, games or other computing fripperies. This saves you around half a gigabyte.
Sooner or later you’ll want to add an application or several, and the easiest way to do this is through the Ubuntu Software shortcut in the dock (the one that looks like an orange briefcase). One of our first additions is the Gnome Tweaks tool, which makes it possible for you to customise the desktop’s appearance and behaviour in lots of ways. Depending on who you believe, this either should not exist at all, or should be included by default on the Gnome desktop. We’ll let you be the
judge: just search for tweak in Ubuntu software, click the green install button, and confirm with your password.
The installer will have prompted you to add any online accounts you have, such as Facebook or Google. These will integrate with your desktop calendar and file manager as appropriate, so you can browse Google Drive or receive Facebook notifications. If you didn’t add these accounts earlier you can always add them by going to Settings>online Accounts. You’ll probably find you need to log out and log back in before calendars and other things sync properly. If you have successfully connected accounts and are tired of all these notifications you can remove them from here too. Alternatively, the Do Not Disturb switch in the calendar panel will silence these and hopefully keep you focused.
Browser wars
We’re particularly enamoured with Firefox 76 and its stylish new interface. If you’re coming from the proprietary world then Google Chrome may be your browser of choice, and if you really want that then it’s straightforward enough to install (and its open source sibling Chromium is even easier). But we think you should give Firefox a chance, if only for the privacypreserving Facebook Container add-on. And indeed the multi-account container add-on, because tracking on the web is out of control nowadays.
Often it’s the hate-ridden Windows updates that cause people to switch to Linux. Ubuntu is much more considered in its updates. There’s an unattended upgrades service that applies urgent fixes in the background, but you’ll be told (not forced) about general package updates. These can be applied at a convenient time from the Software application, or the command line. Contrary to what you might read elsewhere, it’s entirely possible to use desktop Linux without memorising a bunch of strange command line incantations or having a PHD in regular expressions. It’s hard to overestimate how powerful the terminal is, but for desktop use you’d be better off memorising a couple of keyboard shortcuts for Gnome instead:
KEEP THINGS UP TO DATE “Often it’s the hate-ridden Windows updates that cause people to switch to Linux. Ubuntu is much more considered in its updates.”
Super (Windows key) – Bring up the activities view
Super-left/right – Tile current application left or right (so it fully occupies one half of the screen)
Super-up/down – Maximise/restore current application
Super-pgup/pgdown – Switch virtual desktops
Super-shift-pgup/dn – Move current application to next/previous virtual desktop.
UBUNTU FANCIES A SLICE OF PI “Having Canonical’s certification will encourage enterprises to do great things with the Raspberry Pi (models 2, 3 and 4).
We get it. A new Ubuntu release, even an LTS, isn’t the cause célèbre it once was. Even management get that now. Daubing the cover in orange and superlatives like ‘must-have’ and ‘revolutionary new features’ (those are good ideas!–ed) isn’t going to fool anyone, especially savvy Linux users.
We’ve always said that this lack of ground-breaking change is a good thing. It shows Ubuntu has reached such a level of maturity that refinement, and not radical rewriting of the rules, is the optimal path. We also understand that there are plenty of other distros suitable for beginners (and let’s stress here that Ubuntu is popular with professionals too), and maybe some of those don’t get the attention that Ubuntu does. All that aside, Ubuntu remains one of the most popular distros among our readers, and indeed Linux users in general.
In this new outing you’ll find support for AMD’S Navi 12 and 14 GPUS as well as their new APUS, and the open source Nouveau driver has improved colour management. There’s support for Intel’s Comet Lake chips and initial support for their 11th-generation Tiger Lake architecture. The Kernel Lockdown security module also debuts in this release, which limits how userspace code (even if it’s running as root) from interfering with kernel operations. First proposed by security guru Matthew Garrett some years ago, this is aimed at admins who want to limit the damage a compromised root account can cause.
There are a couple of noteworthy filesystem changes: support for Microsoft’s newly (sort of) open sourced EXFAT, as well as the speedy VIRTIO-FS for sharing directories with virtual machines. Ubuntu also backport lots of features from newer kernels, and one notable addition is support for Wireguard VPNS. In an age of surveillance and dubious sponsored ‘best VPN’ listicles, this will surely be a boon for privacy. It’s early days yet, but we forsee Wireguard being key to demystifying the VPN sphere. It’s small, fast and much easier to get your head around than OPENVPN, being much more akin to setting up an SSH server.
Storage options
Moving into lower userspace, there’s systemd 245, which features the new home directory regime systemd-homed . Don’t worry though, Ubuntu doesn’t use this by default, and to be honest we weren’t able to activate it so it looks like this feature hasn’t been built into the package. Again, early days. There’s also an
experimental option to install using the next-generation ZFS filesystem, whose roots go back to Oracle’s Solaris. Licencing conflicts have kept this out of the Linux kernel, and it’s not a thing your average user will want. But if you have insane storage, lots of memory and deduplication requirements, ZFS is a mere checkbox in the installer away. Ubuntu’s zsys middleware will automatically snapshot filesystems before software updates, so that these can be undone if things go south.
There’s a new officially supported target to get excited about, the Raspberry Pi (models 2, 3 and 4). Not only is this great for home users, particularly those who want to take advantage of the Pi 3 and 4’s Aarch64/ ARMV8 OS hardware, but having Canonical’s certification will encourage enterprises to do great things with the Pi. Read more about this on Rhys Davies post on the official Ubuntu blog at https://ubuntu.com/ blog/ubuntu-20-04-lts-is-certified-for-the-raspberry-pi.
The certification only applies to Ubuntu Server, and that’s the only Raspberry Pi download that’s offered through Canonical’s website, but it’s straightforward to add a desktop, for example. via the xubuntu-desktop
package. If you have a Pi 4 and want to take advantage of its extra oomph, why not install KDE Plasma? At the moment the official Gnome desktop isn’t supported on the Pi, but don’t forget an Ubuntu MATE SD card image is available (from https://ubuntu-mate.org) if you want a ready-to-roll desktop. The MATE desktop is ideal for lower-powered devices, or just people who liked Gnome 2. MATE Images are also available for UMPCS such as the GPD Pocket and Micropc.
Flatpaks can’t be installed from the Ubuntu Software app, but are available from the command line. If you want to install them GUI style you can install the vanilla Gnome Software application, add the Flatpak plugin and then add the Flathub repo with:
$ sudo apt install gnome-software gnome-softwareplugin-flatpak $ flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https:// flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
Note the message about the search path: a restart is required before Flatpak apps show up in the Applications Menu. Slightly confusingly, you’ll now find two app stores, Ubuntu Software and Software, in the applications menu. The latter will enable you to install from the whole gamut of package sources: Flatpaks, Snaps or good old-fashioned DEBS. So you could even uninstall the snap-store package if you want. The screenshot (left) shows the differences between the Snap and Flatpak versions of Qutebrowser.
Our security feature in LXF262 showed you a few things you can do with hardware tokens such as the Nitrokey and Yubikey. If you have a FIDO (Fast Identity Online) or U2F (Universal second Factor) device, then not only can you use it, as we showed in that feature, to log in locally (using the pam_u2f module), you can also use it remotely. New key types introduced in OPENSSH 8.2 can work with these devices, enhancing security when logging in to your Ubuntu device via SSH. You might already be familiar with the idea of using an SSH key instead of (or as well as) a password. Basically, generate a key on the local system with ssh-keygen then copy it to the remote one with ssh-copy-id . Well now, if you attach your hardware token and run $ ssh-keygen -t ecdsa-sk then you’ll be prompted to tap the authenticator as well as provide an optional password. You can then copy this key to remote systems as before. In order to log in with the new key, for now, you’ll need to specify it with the following:
$ ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_ecdsa_sk myserver.com
That’s all folks
And with that, we must go (to the printers, like now – Ed). We haven’t covered the dark art of running Ubuntu on Windows via WSL yet, but with WSL 2 going mainstream soon, that certainly will be an interesting endeavour, though perhaps one that interests developers more than home users. If you’re running Ubuntu 18.04 on your server, it’s probably wise to hold off upgrading until the 20.04.1 point release.
There’s much more to Ubuntu and we’d love to hear your opinions on it and its other flavours. There are some great Ubuntu derivatives out – be sure to check out our Regolith and POP!_OS reviews, and there will be a slew of others in the coming weeks and months. Happy fossicking among the Focal Fossa famalam!