A few days after releasing a new version, Ubuntu begins to publish images of the next one. At the beginning they differ little from the current one, but some anxious ones do not care and we install it anyway because we like to see the way it evolves. I've been using Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa since the end of last year as the main distribution (which is not recommended unless you have another backup operating system) and the result has been very good.
Please note that this is a description of my personal experience and not an enumeration of characteristics.
If my compatriot Jorge Luis Borges lived and knew Linux, he would surely describe this new version of Ubuntu by adapting the phrase from one of his poems; "Ubuntu found its gnomican destiny." I'm not exactly a fan of this desktop, but admittedly the phased integration faced by Canonical when it decided to leave Unity, it was an excellent decision.
Four months with Focal Fossa. My impressions
The first change is noticed during installation media startup. The screen shows an integrity check of the files that you will warn if it was not recorded correctly. Anyway, charging is really fast.
The installation procedure does not vary much. We can opt for a minimal or complete installation. And if we select it, the proprietary drivers available will be installed.
There is a detail with the installer. Except for Lubuntu that uses Calamares (the same as Manjaro or KDE Neon) the rest of the Ubuntu versions come with the traditional Ubiquity. At least in my case, it takes Ubiquity its good 3 minutes to go from the installation type selection screen to the partition type. All these years I thought that the installation would stop and that you had to mount and dismount the drives several times to make it work. I even reported the bug. However, in Calamares this delay does not occur.
But, in favor of Ubiquity, it must be recognized that its partition editor is much better.
When you first start the operating system, you are faced with the redesigned lock screen. When the desk opens, you will see the pit looking at you askance. The classic welcome app is shown below. Remember that as it is an extended support version you can activate LivePatch, the security update installation service that does not require a reboot.
Years ago I gave up understanding what is the criteria with which the characteristics of each version of Ubuntu are decided. One of my hypotheses includes Mark Shuttleworth and the cheapest of Dia %'s whiskey bottles. I must acknowledge however that the decision that Ubuntu Software Center was installed in Snap format while calculator was reinstalled as a normal package, it turned out better than expected.
The calculator took a long time to start, while the GNOME Software Center was downright unusable. Its search engine almost never worked, it showed duplicate applications or it could not find what it was looking for. Everything changed completely.
Contrary to what many of us feared, The application store starts immediately, after a few seconds the application catalog is loaded (in which the snap versions of the packages that have it are shown by default) and the search engine finds.
They may correct it, but this modification makes it impossible to use the Software Center to view and install packages in Flatpak format.
If it is to modify the appearance of the desktop, it is still incomprehensible that the GNOME tweak tool is not included among the pre-installed ones. Anyway, in the configuration tool we now have the possibility to choose the traditional mode, a lighter or a darker mode from the control panel. If you are looking for an authentic GNOME experience you can use the application Extensions to make the side launcher disappear.
There are some details to correct in the internationalization issue. As I said before, By default, the versions of the programs are shown in snap format. But, its description is not usually in Spanish. On the other hand, automated bug reports are now done in the installation language. This makes it difficult for developers to review.
One issue you have to keep in mind is that it is no longer provided Python 2 support. Some apps that you install manually may no longer work. Or you may have to replace in the launch command python by python3.
Personally, I don't like GNOME and from the 23rd I'll switch to Ubuntu Budgie, but I have to admit that Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa is the best Ubuntu release in several years. If you left it a long time ago, it is a good time to return.
Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa will be available from April 23 at this page.
Ah, I already understood why you have been with a version for 4 months that just came out to the public today. You are a "tester" (common tester user). With your description, I confirm every day the reason for my abandonment and my preferences for Menta and Suse.
How about resource consumption?
Much better than in previous versions
Well, I installed manjaro and I'm not going back to any Ubuntu or anything else. This is how all Distros should be. You install once and run, you forget, it goes super fluid, super good and super for newbies and its update system of not following the same arch cycle seems great to me, it is not necessary to be so up to date, so that everything breaks at any time, they check it and release it without errors. With any Ubuntu, I always had problems updating from one version to another and had to reinstall from scratch, all over again, a pain that I hate more and more. Today they would have to be all rolling and there should be 2 types of rolling, arch type on the razor's edge, super up to date and delicacy type, up to date, but not so much and ensuring. To this day the Ubuntu, there are even left over, I do not see them at all necessary, unless they were made rolling, a novice with a manjaro is very much and does not have to worry about this or that version, install only once and that's it , that's great for a newbie.
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Hello. Since you take the trouble to comment, you could go a step further and write something understandable to help us improve. Thanks.
It all depends on the point of view and needs of each one, I would not even jokingly install a rolling machine on a production team, even less on a server, on the other hand I don't need the latest version of each package, I just want to make it work and if If that is the case, are the snaps or download the corresponding package.
Now when it comes to reinstalling the system, considering that lts support is five years old, it doesn't seem so problematic, especially considering that you can separate / home to just have to install the system without losing files.
I had been waiting for it for a long time, although the fact of enhancing the Snap package bothers me. In fact the new Ubuntu store is the Snap store, I understand.
The Snap take longer to start up, as a general rule (not all) on my pc. It will be that I do not have an i7.
I also expected it for the latest version of Gnome, 3.36. That improves performance quite a bit.
As I say, I was waiting for her for all that, and suddenly, Manjaro. I don't think I'll come back anymore. The application store is the best I have seen of all, I find everything thanks to the AUR repositories without having too much knowledge of the Linux world (which I do not have) and all that I expected in the latter from Ubuntu. I have been a month, I have not installed a damn Snap and everything goes smoothly.
I make a correction to you. The app store is still the GNOME Software Center. The difference is that it is installed as a Snap package
Thank you for the correction. I will have read that same in another review and I understood that it was the Snap Store. Although now I remember that they even had a screenshot of the Snap Store on the page. Is rare.
I also tried it but as soon as I activated the dark mode I noticed that the gedit marks the current line of the cursor in an impossible to read contrast. I notified ubuntu-dev but no response. I hope you can solve it. I prefer the dark method but gnome has always been fatal for me. Plasma for its dark side to perfection! ;-)
I have the feeling that the desktop has long since ceased to be important to the company, focusing on the server version (which seems to be what makes money).
Yesterday I tried to use Ubuntu 18.04.4 and I found the news that the "show desktop" button no longer exists. This forced me to install extensions for gnome in order to have this tool, which I find quite useful. In the same way, I had to install wine through the terminal because the version found in the store is quite outdated.
What do I mean by all this? It is a long time since Ubuntu stopped being the ideal distribution for newcomers to Windows. Most users want an operating system "out of the box" that works out of the box, the closest thing to windows. It is in this area that Zorin os and Linux Mint excel.
I insist most people are not geeks, they just want an easy-to-operate operating system.
I love focal fossa, the sound is not going well, but this is an endemic evil in ubuntu, despite having 12megas of Ram sometimes it goes slow, but I tried to fix it by installing Plasma, ho, a disaster,
Can someone tell me how to uninstall it?
Thank you
Did you try sudo alsamixer?
I agree that it is the best version of Ubuntu, and for me that I have already tried several, I think it is the best linux distro there is, but ... There is always a but. It does not have emule in its repositories !!
Emule had a fleeting step in the Snap store but disappeared overnight.
Amule has not been updated since 2016
I know, that's why I installed ubuntu 18.04 which does have emule and then upgraded to ubuntu 20.04. Although I would have liked a clean installation, it is what it is.
I switched to Focal Fossa from Gentoo as I bought a new laptop and it was giving me problems with things like sound. Ubuntu was the only distro that recognized everything without problems and I think I'm going to stay here, at least for a while. In any case, I named it Kubuntu for the love of Plasma.
A greeting.
Thanks for your comment
I used Ubuntu between 2013 and 2014, then went back to Win 7 back then. A few months ago I came back to the linux world with Ubuntu again (20.04 LTS). I found it wonderful. It reminded me for its fluency of the extinct Linux Mint KDE which I liked the most. I am testing with a virtual machine some distro similar to Linux Mint KDE (KDE Neon and Kubuntu, I like the DDE desktop) and I keep sticking with Ubuntu. It is very solid, much better than years ago. I'm surprised. It will probably be my central OS to permanently migrate from Win 10.
At the moment I am pleasantly happy and very comfortable in this version, I had not used Ubuntu for a few years. Even though I do not have a powerful or current pc (it is a quadcore device with 4gb ddr2), it works smoothly, stable and fast. I have specifically installed 20.04.2 with gnome and I can say that it is the best (comparing previous ubuntu) that I have used since 10.04 that I liked so much. Greetings.