Representatives from the Ubuntu Flavors along with various Canonical and community leads met on July 8th 2024 to discuss the upcoming release of Ubuntu Oracular Oriole. @ilvipero and @aaronprisk hosted both sessions of this Flavor sync meeting.
Elections!
We discussed two very important elections for the Ubuntu community. Those are the two highest governing bodies of the Ubuntu community, and having strong candidates for the elections will ensure a strong community for the next two years.
- Community Council (Oct 20, 2024)
- Technical Board (Dec 31, 2024)
Wallpaper contest
@aaronprisk informed us that starting with this release of Ubuntu, wallpaper contest will start a few weeks earlier than usual. This is done to allow enough time for the contest to end long before UI freeze.
@aaronprisk also encouraged the flavors to discuss potentially collaborating on wallpaper contest, instead of having many separate contests in separate platforms. Quite a few Flavors commented on this topic and we will need a dedicated discussion to define all details.
Ubuntu Desktop
@local-optimum brought us up to speed with current development goals for Ubuntu 24.10:
- Several changes and improvements are landing in the new flutter-based installer:
- Better error messaging for TPM FDE.
- Support OEM equivalent (documentation for flavors).
- Flutter-based customization graphics for installer. Target for this feature is 25.04.
- Snap tracks that can be specified in the iso seed, this brings more choice for each Ubuntu release.
- Landed local .deb support in the app center.
- Better user experience and messaging over snap updates.
- Core 24 by 24.04.1 release for seeded snaps.
- Steam snap:
- Good benchmarking since 24.04 due to low latency kernel feature.
- Steam snap is in a healthy spot.
- Steam snap permissions will be significantly expanded, but requires apparmor & snapd changes. Therefore, it will land after 24.04.1. This is expected to fix most sandboxing issues with the Steam snap.
- Gaming benchmark discussions happening in the Discourse: Ubuntu 24.04 Boosts Gaming Performance & GTA5 on Linux (Ubuntu 24.04 + Preempt Boost).
- Switching to wayland by default for nvidia (this has already landed in the installer live environment for Ubuntu Desktop and in GDM).
Ubuntu release Matrix space
In the previous release cycle, we created a Matrix space with some Matrix rooms to help track development cycle of 24.04. It is now time to rename those rooms to 24.10 and start tracking important issues, packages, or repositories for this release. @ilvipero informed all Flavor representatives that we can work together to add items from either launchpad or github to the Matrix rooms via integration bots.
Ubuntu Flavors status page
@aaronprisk reminded everyone that Flavor status page page was created to help the Ubuntu Community, content creators and members of the press to easily stay in touch with everything related to Ubuntu Flavors. He encouraged flavors to actively modify it to reflect the current development release.
Flavors & Wayland
- Kubuntu & Studio = wayland by default with KDE framework 6.
- Lubuntu looking to use Mir/Miriway - unsure if will land on 24.10 but definitely before next LTS.
Image format support
@jbicha recommends that GNOME-ish flavors ship these so that the formats can be used as desktop wallpapers & in apps like eog/eom:
* heif-gdk-pixbuf, heif-thumbnailer, libjxl-gdk-pixbuf
* libjxl-gdk-pixbuf is new for 24.10, not possible for 24.04 LTS
Ubuntu Studio & low latency kernel
- Ubuntu Studio 24.10 drops low latency kernel because generic kernel has all low-latency features included.
- @eeickmeyer created a small utility to apply further low-latency settings on the fly, based on user case. This utility is part of the studio installer software, therefore it works on all flavors of Ubuntu. One of the goals for future versions of this utility is to be able to apply changes without a need for reboot.
Get involved!
Ubuntu Flavor Sync Meetings take place every 2 months on the second Monday of January, March, May, July, September. There are two sessions, 3PM UTC and 10PM UTC, to best accommodate our global community. The last Ubuntu Flavor Sync of each year happens in-person, at the Ubuntu Summit.
All are welcome to join and participate in the discussion!