Canonical announces Ubuntu 20.04 Final Focal Fossa Version Released with Linux 5.4 Kernel and VPN.
Canonical CEO and founder Mark Shuttleworth explained that Canonical is now thinking about security as part of operations, rather than security, separate from operations.”
Shuttleworth explained: “We’re offering full 10 years of coverage for all packages including the 30,000 packages that we never previously covered with security updates. This represents a huge improvement in enterprise security.”
Microsoft Engineer said,
We’re excited to partner with Canonical to bring the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS innovations across our toolchain — from developers on WSL to scaling enterprise production deployments in Azure,” said John Gossman, a Microsoft distinguished engineer. “In this release, we’ve made it easier than ever to manage workstation environments and to enjoy the long-term stability and security of Ubuntu Pro for Azure across a wide range of compute options.”
New Features in 20.04 LTS
Updated Packages
As with every Ubuntu release, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS comes with a selection of the latest and greatest software developed by the free software community.
Linux Kernel Update
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is based on the long-term supported Linux release series 5.4. Notable features and enhancements in 5.4 since 5.3 include:
- Support for new hardware including Intel Comet Lake CPUs and initial Tiger Lake platforms, Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 & 855 SoCs, AMD Navi 12 and 14 GPUs, Arcturus and Renoir APUs along with Navi 12 + Arcturus power features.
- Support has been added for the exFAT filesystem, virtio-fs for sharing filesystems with virtualized guests and fs-verity for detecting file modifications.
- Built in support for the WireGuard VPN.
- Enablement of lockdown in integrity mode.
Wireguard VPN
WireGuard is an extremely simple yet fast and modern VPN that utilizes state-of-the-art cryptography. It aims to be faster, simpler, leaner, and more useful than IPsec, while avoiding the massive headache. It intends to be considerably more performant than OpenVPN.
WireGuard aims to be as easy to configure and deploy as SSH. A VPN connection is made simply by exchanging very simple public keys – exactly like exchanging SSH keys – and all the rest is transparently handled by WireGuard. It is even capable of roaming between IP addresses, just like Mosh. There is no need to manage connections, be concerned about state, manage daemons, or worry about what’s under the hood. WireGuard presents an extremely basic yet powerful interface.
Other notable kernel updates to 5.4 since version 4.15 released in 18.04 LTS include:
- Support for AMD Rome CPUs, Radeon RX Vega M and Navi GPUs, Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 and other ARM SoCs and Intel Cannon Lake platforms.
- Support for raspberry pi (Pi 2B, Pi 3B, Pi 3A+, Pi 3B+, CM3, CM3+, Pi 4B)
- Significant power-saving improvements.
- Numerous USB 3.2 and Type-C improvements.
- A new mount API, the io_uring interface, KVM support for AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization and pidfd support.
Boot speed improvements through changing the default kernel compression algorithm to lz4 (in Ubuntu 19.10) on most architectures, and changing the default initramfs compression algorithm to lz4 on all architectures.
cloud-init
Cloud-init was updated to version 20.1-10. Notable features include:
CLOUD PLATFORM FEATURES
- New datasource detection/support: e24cloud, Exoscale, Zstack
- Azure dhcp6 support, fix runtime error on cc_disk_setup, add support for byte-swapped instance-id
- EC2: render IPv4 and IPv6 network on all NICs, IMDSv2 session-based API tokens and add secondary IPs as static
- Scaleway: Fix DatasourceScaleway network rendering when unset
- LRU cache frequently used utils for improved performance
- Drop python2 support
NETWORKING FEATURES
Prioritize netplan rendering above /etc/network/interfaces even when both are present
Read network config from initramfs
net: support network-config:disabled on the kernel commandline
Add physical network type: cascading to openstack helpers
net/cmdline: correctly handle static ip= config
Ubuntu Desktop
- New graphical boot splash (integrates with the system BIOS logo).
- Refreshed Yaru theme
- Light/Dark theme switching
- GNOME 3.36
- New lock screen design.
- New system menu design.
- New app folder design.
- Smoother performance, lower CPU usage for window and overview animations, JavaScript execution, mouse movement and window movement (which also has lower latency now).
- 10-bit deep colour support.
- X11 fractional scaling.
- Mesa 20.0 OpenGL stack
- BlueZ 5.53
- PulseAudio 14.0 (prerelease)
- Firefox 75.0
- Thunderbird 68.7.0
- LibreOffice 6.4
Ubuntu 20.04 maintenance updates will be provided for 5 years until April 2025 for Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Cloud, and Ubuntu Core. All the remaining flavours will be supported for 3 years. Additional security support is available with ESM (Extended Security Maintenance).
Download UBUNTU 20.04 Focal Fossa
