Introduction

Yesterday, Canonical released Jammy Jellyfish otherwise known as Ubuntu Linux 22.04 LTS. LTS stands for Long Term Release which means this release will receive bug and security fixes for at least the next five years. Ubuntu releases a new version every 6 months, but only releases an LTS version every two years. The LTS version uses more conservative software versions and is generally considered more stable than the other bi-yearly releases. This is the version usually used in data centers to run web servers to ensure they are as reliable as possible.

New Software

Ubuntu 21.10 incorporated version 5.13 of the Linux kernel, this version goes to Linux kernel 5.15 which is a corresponding LTS from the Linux Kernel Organization. The newest released Linux kernel is 5.17, but this isn’t a LTS version and hasn’t received as much testing as 5.15. Similarly all the other software has been updated to newer stable versions such as the Gnome desktop which is now at version 42. The main advantage of Gnome 42 is something called triple buffering which greatly improves performance over previous versions. Similarly all the bundled or easily added software development tools are at newer versions.

The Ubuntu update servers will install the supported and recommended versions for this release, however there is nothing to stop you going to an individual piece of software’s website, downloading and installing their latest release. For instance, today the version of LibreOffice is the latest version, but if LibreOffice releases a newer version and Ubuntu is slow to pick it up, you can install it directly. Although Ubuntu includes an App Store, though all the apps are free, to make installation easier, there is nothing forcing you to use this and you can install anything you wish using the usual Linux mechanisms to do so.

Limited Cross Platform

Linux is cross platform, however Ubuntu only supports Intel/AMD in 64-bits and an ARM version for the Raspberry Pi. Sadly, they discontinued providing 32-bit builds, eliminating some older hardware or running slower due to higher memory requirements. They also don’t provide builds for other hardware architectures like RISC-V, MIPS, PowerPC, etc. Since it’s open source you can always build your own version, but that is a lot of trouble and there are plenty of other distributions that provide builds for these alternative hardware architectures. Ubuntu is based on Debian Linux as are many of these other releases, so they will be familiar to any Ubuntu user. Some hardware vendors will create a special Ubuntu build for their chips or boards, the only problem being that they don’t always update them very often (yes nVidia, I mean you).

Other Stuff

One noticeable change is that the desktop appearance is much easier to customize and there are dark mode equivalents of all items.

Ubuntu has been working hard to fit Linux into corporate environments and a lot of effort has gone into improvements in integrations with Microsoft technologies like Active Directory and NTFS. This is great for corporate users, but not exciting for us hobbyists.

Summary

If you are using the last LTS version, namely 20.04 then this will be quite a good upgrade with improvements everywhere. If you are upgrading from the last non-LTS version, namely 21.10 then the improvements won’t be so noticeable. Today, the upgrade tool hasn’t been released, you need to install a clean new image, but that should be appearing in the next few weeks.

One reason I like Linux is because it stays true to being an operating system that stays out of your way and allows you to easily run applications where the application is the important part, not the operating system. Both Windows and MacOS operating systems have become too intrusive with operating system features getting in the way, rather than helping you be productive. Linux is much cleaner, it doesn’t pop up advertisements and best of all it’s free.

So far my experience with Jammy Jellyfish has all been positive and this looks to be another great release from Ubuntu.