Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish. Change of appearance and little else.

Just over a month and a half after the release of Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish we already know that the main novelties will come from the user interface side. This confirms the trend that we have been marking for a long time towards a "gnomization" of the Canonical distro.

A long time ago Ubuntu stopped being that innovative distro whose controversial technical decisions generated rivers of bits for and against in forums, blogs and social networks. Today, any news only comes from the side of the GNOME developers, the kernel or the pre-installed applications. Unless, of course, it's something that Canonical can sell to its corporate clients.

What's new in Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish

The reason we can talk so long in advance about what to expect is that February 24th was the last day for new features. The following important dates on the calendar are:

• March 31, 2022: Beta version.
• April 14, 2022: Deadline for modifications and release of the candidate version.
• April 21: Release of the final version.

Since Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish is an extended support release, will receive updates until April 2027.

The user interface.

As if it were an atonement for the Unity experiment, Ubuntu began a slow (and, at least to me who hate it) painful path to becoming a typical GNOME distro indistinguishable from the rest. And, in this version, it goes one step further.

Yaru GTK is still the default theme, but incorporating circular controls with an increased radius border and a light gray tone for the top bar of the windows.

Another change is the orange color that replaces purple as the predominant color both in Yaru GTK and in the icons, the Gnome Shell theme and the launch window. In terms of icons, the color of those that used purple was modified, the design of some was improved and others were changed. In particular, the icon that gives access to the file manager is now a file drawer instead of a folder.

In any case, so that we realize that we are still using Ubuntu and not a Fedora with excess vitamin C, the Ubuntu designers commit their traditional attack on aesthetics. In this case it is the redesigned icon of the software and updates application (The one that is in charge of determining how and from where the programs are updated. The new one is a light blue color that does not match anything.

GNOME, in previous versions, incorporated a system of bubbles that appear when specific function keys such as volume control, brightness or screen capture are pressed on the keyboard. In this version it was reduced to a more reasonable size.

Frankly I don't remember if I was already on Ubuntu 21.04, but a big advantage of Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish is the ability to go full dark mode from the settings panel without installing apps add-ons like GNOME Tweaks.

At the time of writing this article, the wallpaper is not yet known so I will add it in the future.

The Nautilus file manager

This time, the Nautilus version matches the desktop version. This makes it possible for us to enjoy features like being able to create protected zip archives from the context menu and view the archives in the recent files tab.

Other improvements were made to the file conflict warning window and the file name change window. The search tool adds the option to do it by creation date.

Ubuntu Professional

Canonical's one hundred percent innovation in this release is that the Ubuntu Pro service is extended to the desktop and free of charge for up to 3 machines. This service provides security updates for more than thirty thousand packages and includes LivePatch mode to install kernel security updates without rebooting.