Ubuntu version history

[34] Ubuntu 6.10 added several new features including a heavily modified Human theme, Upstart init daemon, automated crash reports (Apport), Tomboy note taking application, and F-Spot photo manager.

A "paper cut" was defined as, "a trivially fixable usability bug that the average user would encounter on his/her first day of using a brand new installation of the latest version of Ubuntu Desktop Edition.

Our focus as a project was bringing Linux from the data center into the lives of our friends and global family.The new theme met with mixed critical responses.

"[94] The naming of Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) was announced by Shuttleworth on 2 April 2010, along with the release's goals of improving the netbook experience and a server focus on hybrid cloud computing.

[95][96][97] This is a departure from the traditional schedule of releasing at the end of October to get "the perfect 10",[98] and a playful reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, since, in binary, 101010 is equal to the number 42, the "Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything" within the series.

[124] Changes in this release include cutting the startup time for the Ubuntu Software Center by around 10 seconds, refinements to Unity that included the removal of the "window dodge" feature that made desktop panels hide from windows,[125] and a new head-up display (HUD) feature that allows hot key searching for application menu items from the keyboard, without needing the mouse.

[126] This release also switched the default media player from Banshee back to Rhythmbox and dropped the Tomboy note-taking application along with the supporting Mono framework.

[129] Jesse Smith of DistroWatch reviewed that while many people had questioned Ubuntu's direction, he felt that the "puzzle pieces, which may have been underwhelming individually, have come together to form a whole, clear picture."

[130] On 23 April 2012, Shuttleworth announced Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal) as the first of 4 releases that will culminate in LTS 14.04 and refresh the look, with work to be done on typography and iconography.

[145] The degree of community push-back on the issue resulted in plans by the developers to make the dash and where it searches user-configurable via a GUI-setting dialogue.

[146] In reviewing Ubuntu 12.10 at the end of October 2012 for DistroWatch, Jesse Smith raised concerns that "Canonical reserves the right to share our keystrokes, search terms and IP address with a number of third parties", and criticized the low performance and instability of the release.

[149] On 17 October 2012, Shuttleworth announced that Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail) would focus on "mobile metrics, things like battery life, number of running processes, memory footprint, and polish the rough edges that we find when we do that.

[155] Similarly, the aging X Window System (X11) was intended to be replaced with the Mir display server, with X11 programs to have operated through the XMir compatibility layer.

However, after the development of XMir ran into "outstanding technical difficulties" for multiple monitors, Canonical decided to postpone the default use of Mir in Ubuntu.

[160] On 18 October 2013, Shuttleworth announced that Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty Tahr) would focus on "performance, refinement, maintainability, [sic] technical debt" and encouraged the developers to make "conservative choices".

[173] In reviewing Ubuntu 14.04 LTS in April 2014, Jim Lynch concluded: "While there are not a lot of amazing new features in this release, there are quite a few very useful and needed tweaks that add up to a much better desktop experience.

[191] A Hectic Geek review noted problems with X.Org Server crashes and concluded "If you use Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and if it's working out for you, then there really is no need to switch to a non-LTS release, especially to the 15.10.

"[192] A review on Dedoimedo identified problems with Samba, Bluetooth, desktop searching, battery life and the smartphone interface and found the release inconsistent.

[198][199] This release has online Dash search results disabled by default in Unity 7,[200][201] does not support the AMD Catalyst (fglrx) driver for AMD/ATI graphics cards, and instead recommends the Radeon and AMDGPU alternatives.

[228] This release employed Linux kernel 4.15, which incorporated a CPU controller for the cgroup v2 interface, AMD secure memory encryption support and improved SATA Link Power Management.

[238] It incorporates Linux kernel 5.0, which adds support for AMD FreeSync technology for liquid-crystal displays, Raspberry Pi touchscreens, Adiantum encryption, Btrfs swap files as well as many USB 3.2 and Type-C improvements and several other new hardware.

[239][240] It uses GNOME 3.32, which includes a new icon set, night light intensity control, advanced application permissions, favoriting files, and a new header bar as well as 'find' and 'read only' modes in the default terminal emulator.

It uses Linux kernel 5.3 which, among others, introduces compatibility for third-generation Ryzen CPU motherboards and associated Intel Wireless devices as well as AMD's 7 nm Navi GPUs.

Ubuntu 19.10 uses GNOME 3.34 which, among others, adds the ability to group application icons into folders, introduces a background settings panel and a separate Night Light tab as well as improves upon performance and smoothness.

An updated toolchain set includes glibc 2.32, OpenJDK 11, rustc 1.41, GCC 10, LLVM 11, Python 3.8.6, ruby 2.7.0, php 7.4.9, perl 5.30 and golang 1.13.

Ubuntu 21.04 features a striking new dark theme and makes a raft of smaller UI tweaks that add up to an impressive, polished whole.

The Ubuntu Dock remains vertically placed on the left of the screen and now features separators between pinned and running applications, a persistent trash can icon and USB drive shortcuts.

[288][289] This release incorporates a new App Center built in Flutter that replaces Ubuntu Software, TPM disk encryption, a separated firmware updater, Netplan as the default network configuration tool, and support for Raspberry Pi 5.

[291] Approximately 6 hours after release, the download link to Ubuntu 23.10 was removed due to hate speech in an externally-sourced Ukrainian translation of the installer.

Nautilus, the file manager, has received several quality-of-life features, and Wi-Fi settings now include an option to generate a QR code for network credentials.