New and Noteworthy
A look at some of the best features of the new release
An Ubuntu LTS release is always a special affair. The primary goal of the Ubuntu developers is to provide a stable platform that can run reliably for the duration of the extended support cycle. On top of that, they must also take into account future developments in the larger open-source software ecosystem that might have a direct bearing on their support infrastructure. For instance, Ubuntu 16.04 doesn’t support AMD’s proprietary fglrx drivers any more, because AMD has announced plans to wean users away from those drivers and toward the open-source amdgpu drivers.
Last the term
Ubuntu 16.04 is a Long Term Support (LTS) release that will be supported until 2021. Unlike traditional Ubuntu releases, LTS releases come out every two years and continue to receive updates for the next five years. The LTS releases are prepared with more care than regular releases, and only include components that have been well tested by the Ubuntu developers or the larger community of Linux users. The regular Ubuntu releases have already switched to the Systemd service manager, and 16.04 will be the first LTS release to do so as well.
The distro is powered by Linux kernel 4.4, which is also an LTS release that will be supported for two years. This kernel makes significant strides toward supporting Intel’s new Skylake family of processors, as well as ARM’s 64-bit processors. Thanks to the addition of 3D support in the kernel’s virtual GPU driver, which enables virtualization guests to use the host graphics card efficiently, you’ll be able to run graphicsintensive applications inside a virtualized Ubuntu 16.04 installation, too.
Talking of graphics drivers, as mentioned earlier, the fglrx driver is now depreciated in the 16.04 release. The developers have backported code from Linux kernel 4.5 to provide a better experience using the much-improved open-source alternatives, namely radeon and amdgpu. If you use AMD graphics cards, note that not only will the upgrade process remove the proprietary drivers, but you also won’t be able to manually install them after moving to Ubuntu 16.04. This is because the distro ships with Xorg 1.18, which doesn’t support the AMD proprietary drivers.
Another feature in the 4.4 kernel that may have a significant effect during 16.04’s support cycle is the kernel’s ability to deliver updates through a standardized procedure. Coupled with Gnome’s fwupd tool, currently under development, you could update your BIOS/UEFI firmware easily using Ubuntu’s package management tools.
Solid foundations
One of the major additions is support for the ZFS filesystem. It was available as a technology preview in the last Ubuntu 15.10 release; however, starting with 16.04, the filesystem is supported officially by an OpenZFS-based implementation (which will be controversial in some quarters, due to licensing issues). The ZFS filesystem is a popular and much sought-after filesystem by system admins, for implementation in situations where data integrity and resilience are paramount. The filesystem is the default on distros used for building data silos, such as FreeNAS. While ext4 remains the default filesystem of the distro, Canonical is hailing ZFS and the filesystem for hosting containers in Ubuntu 16.04, thanks to its data-crunching features.
On the desktop side of things, Ubuntu 16.04 ships with the Unity 7.4 desktop environment, as the new Unity 8 isn’t quite ready. While the overall look for the Unity interface hasn’t changed much, the desktop has had numerous minute improvements that help make it rock solid and very usable.
The Unity desktop now adds session shortcuts for logout, restart, and shutdown options in the Unity Dash, which also features new scroll bars. There are several other small usability improvements as well, such as the icons for external storage and “Trash” windows indicating the number
of open windows, just like any other icon on the Launcher. Furthermore, Unity will no longer wait for a resource-intensive application to load completely before it places an icon in the Launcher. If you use multiple workspaces and enable the Workspace Switcher, you can now rightclick it to access a new Quicklist menu. The Quicklist options for removable drives now sport the option to format the device. Also, if you have a microphone connected, you can use the Sound menu to adjust its input volume with a slider.
After repeated requests from users, the previous version of Unity enabled you to show the menus for a window in the window’s title bar, instead of the menu bar. In Unity 7.4, users can choose to display this menu automatically, instead of the earlier option, which displayed the menu only when you hovered the mouse over the area.
There’s further evidence of the Ubuntu developers paying heed to their users’ feedback (read: criticism). The project has received much flak for including the Amazon scope, which passed all user queries from the Dash to the ecommerce website, to bring up relevant results beside the applications and documents you were looking for. Ubuntu had earlier implemented a kill switch to disable this much-panned privacy-invading feature, and has now finally decided to disable it by default in the latest release.
Another change that took over six years to implement, which is a major departure from Ubuntu’s adamant position of governing the usability of the Unity desktop, is the option to move the Unity Launcher to the bottom of the screen. This placement will be default on Ubuntu Kylin (the official Chinese rendition of the distro, who did all the heavy lifting to implement this feature). To move the Launcher on the main Ubuntu release, install the dconf-editor and navigate to “Com > Canonical > Unity > Launcher > Launcher-position.”
Talking of fixing long-standing issues, the onscreen keyboard in Ubuntu brings up a virtual keyboard that floats around the desktop. That’s changed in Ubuntu 16.04, with the developers making the application pin a keyboard across the full width, at the bottom. This implementation looks more polished and refined.
Application swap
One thing that has been quite consistent between Ubuntu releases is its default set of apps. The distro has been quite usable straight out of the box, and the developers haven’t heard enough noise from the community to alter its winning combination
While Ubuntu ships with some of the best and widely used open-source applications that are maintained and updated regularly,