Ships with GNOME 3.34 and Linux kernel 5.3

Oct 17, 2019 17:27 GMT  ·  By

Canonical has officially released today the highly anticipated Ubuntu 19.10 (Eoan Ermine) operating system, a major release that introduces numerous new features, new GNU/Linux technologies, updated apps and components, and much more.

Six months in the making, Ubuntu 19.10 is dubbed Eoan Ermine and it's Canonical's 31st release of Ubuntu Linux, one of the most popular free and Open Source operating systems in the world. Packed with numerous goodies, this release also celebrates fifteen years since the first Ubuntu release, but it's not a long-term supported version, so it will only receive software and security updates for nine months, until July 2020.

"In the fifteen years since the first Ubuntu release, we have seen Ubuntu evolve from the desktop to become the platform of choice across public cloud, open infrastructure, IoT and AI," said Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical. "With the 19.10 release, Ubuntu continues to deliver strong support, security and superior economics to enterprises, developers and the wider community."

Here's what's new in Ubuntu 19.10

Highlights of the Ubuntu 19.10 release include embedded Nvidia proprietary drivers in the ISO image to improve the performance, smoothness, and frame rates in games, as well as for AI/ML users with Nvidia hardware, support for the latest WPA3 Wi-Fi security standard, new edge capabilities for MicroK8s, support for DLNA sharing enabled by default for sharing videos to your smart TV, and experimental ZFS file system for root, which is implemented in the installer.

Software-wise, Ubuntu 19.10 ships with the latest GNOME 3.34 desktop environment with new light and dark variants of the Yaru theme, the ability to run Xwayland apps as root/sudo, the Chromium web browser as a snap, and the ability to plug in a USB drive and access it directly from the dock. Default apps include the Mozilla Firefox 69 web browser, LibreOffice 6.3 office suite, Mozilla Thunderbird 68 email and news client, as well as PulseAudio 13.0 sound system.

Under the hood, Ubuntu 19.10 is powered by the latest and greatest Linux 5.3 kernel series, which brings support for AMD Navi GPUs, ARM Komeda displays, Intel Speed Select on Xeon servers, Zhaoxin x86 processors for workstations, as well as new ARM chips, and LZ4 as default initramfs compression algorithm on all architectures for faster booting. It also comes with new default hardening options enabled in the GCC system compiler for extra security.

The toolchain has been upgraded to GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) 9.2.1, Glibc (GNU C Library) 2.30, Python 3.7.5, OpenJDK 11, Perl 5.28.1, Rustc 1.37, Ruby 2.5.5, PHP 7.3.8, and Golang 1.12.10. The AArch64 and POWER toolchains have also been improved to enabled cross-compile support for ARM, RISCV64, and S390X architectures. On the server front, Ubuntu 19.10 brings QEMU 4.0, libvirt 5.6, dpdk 18.11.2, Open vSwitch 2.12, MySQL 8.0, OpenStack Train, as well as cloud-init and curtin 19.2.

There's also numerous improvements specific to IBM Z and LinuxONE systems, new amd64 qcow2 KVM-optimized guest image, and production-ready ppc64el and arm64 live-server ISO images. Last but not least, Ubuntu 19.10 comes with Raspberry Pi 32-bit and 64-bit preinstalled images with out-of-the-box support for the latest Raspberry Pi 4 SBC, and full support for all modern Raspberry Pi flavors. You can download Ubuntu 19.10 and Ubuntu Server 19.10 right now or upgrade from Ubuntu 19.04 using our in-depth tutorial here.

Ubuntu 19.10 desktop
Ubuntu 19.10 desktop
Ubuntu 19.10's file manager
Ubuntu 19.10's file manager
Editing code in Ubuntu 19.10
Editing code in Ubuntu 19.10
Ubuntu 19.10's light theme
Ubuntu 19.10's light theme

Ubuntu 19.10 (6 Images)

Ubuntu 19.10
Ubuntu 19.10 desktopUbuntu 19.10's file manager
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