Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 818

Ubuntu Weekly News
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Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 818 for the week of December 10 - 16, 2023.

In this Issue

  • 23.04 (Lunar Lobster) reaches End of Life on January 25, 2024
  • Ubuntu Stats
  • Hot in Support
  • UbuCon Asia 2024 to be held in Jaipur, India
  • LoCo Events
  • Trying out Ubuntu 23.04 on x86-64-v3 rebuild for yourself
  • Call for testing: Rockcraft 1.1.0
  • LXD 5.20 has been released
  • Ubuntu Desktop 24.04 LTS roadmap highlights
  • Ubuntu Matrix Project
  • Performance engineering on Ubuntu leaps forward with frame pointers by default in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
  • Ubuntu Studio: Noble Numbat Updates for December
  • Ubuntu Cloud News
  • Canonical News
  • In the Blogosphere
  • In Other News
  • Featured Audio and Video
  • Meeting Reports
  • Upcoming Meetings and Events
  • Updates and Security for 20.04, 22.04, 23.04 and 23.10
  • And much more!

General Community News

23.04 (Lunar Lobster) reaches End of Life on January 25, 2024

Brian Murray on behalf of the Ubuntu Release Team reminds us Ubuntu 23.04 was released almost 9 months ago (April 20, 2023), with the end of life date for the release being January 25, 2024. We’re told what this means, and given a link so any remaining users of 23.04 can upgrade their systems to Ubuntu 23.10.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-announce/2023-December/000297.html

Ubuntu Stats

Bug Stats

  • Open: 143566 (+52)
  • Critical: 317 (+2)
  • Unconfirmed: 72375 (+53)

As always, the Bug Squad needs more help. If you want to get started, please see: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BugSquad

Translations

  • Ukrainian: 88.01% (38138/1312)
  • German: 86.47% (43048/196)
  • French: 82.33% (56229/7478)
  • Spanish: 80.22% (62919/5069)
  • Swedish: 77.55% (71409/1188)

Hot in Support

Ask Ubuntu Top 5 Questions

Ask (and answer!) questions at: https://askubuntu.com/

Ubuntu Forums Top 5 Threads

Find more support at: https://ubuntuforums.org/

LoCo News

UbuCon Asia 2024 to be held in Jaipur, India

Youngbin Han tells us that UbuCon Asia 2024 will be held in Jaipur, India. We’re given key details (dates, scale/size & venue), plus links to the bids for transparency purposes. Email links for general inquiries, or if you’re able to become a sponsor, are provided.

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubucon-asia-2024-to-be-held-in-jaipur-india/41054

LoCo Events

The following LoCo team events are currently scheduled in the next two weeks:

Looking beyond the next two weeks? Visit the respective LoCo Team calendar to browse upcoming events.

Please see:

The Hub

Trying out Ubuntu 23.04 on x86-64-v3 rebuild for yourself

Michael Hudson Doyle provides a link to a prior post on “Optimising Ubuntu performance on amd64”, with this post continuing on from that post. Michael provides a link to where you can download a Ubuntu 23.04 installer for x86-64-v3 ISA. We’re warned this image will not get security or other updates, as its intended for testing or benchmarks.

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/trying-out-ubuntu-23-04-on-x86-64-v3-rebuild-for-yourself/40963

Call for testing: Rockcraft 1.1.0

Tiago Nobrega reports that Rockcraft 1.1.0 is “ready for testing”, with links of changes, and notes whilst the “new version should result in significantly smaller rocks”. All testing is welcome. Details on testing are given, with this version expected to be prompted to the stable channel on Tiago’s return from the year-end break.

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/call-for-testing-rockcraft-1-1-0/40964

LXD 5.20 has been released

Thomas Parrott tells us the LXD team has released LXD 5.20, giving thanks to all contributors. Firstly we’re told of a license change (to AGPLv3) for all Canonical contributions, with all future contributions now also being AGPLv3. Details on new features and highlights in the release are given, a ink to the full changelog, plus links (for tarballs) and commands to download.

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/lxd-5-20-has-been-released/40865

Ubuntu Desktop 24.04 LTS roadmap highlights

Tim Holmes-Mitra presents the Ubuntu Desktop team’s ‘roadmap for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS’. This detailed post includes some screenshots and covers provisioning (introduced in an earlier post), Web services, Enablement and housekeeping, Flutter apps, Security Centre, Desktop Environment, and more. We’re reminded these plans may change, with thoughts and suggestions welcome.

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-desktop-24-04-lts-roadmap-highlights/41032

Ubuntu Matrix Project

Mauro Gaspari reminds us how important communication is, and has thus opened this documentation index for Matrix Concepts & Ubuntu Matrix. A link to the background information provides the understanding why this index is provided.

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-matrix-project/41051

The Planet

Performance engineering on Ubuntu leaps forward with frame pointers by default in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

Oliver Smith and Jon Seager tells us, that “in collaboration with Polar Signals” (a cloud company), Ubuntu 24.04 will have frame pointers enabled by default for all 64-bit platforms, which applies to almost all packages. We’re told what this means, optimising for performance improvements and observability. There is a small 1-2% performance hit, with the few exceptions (like python interpreter) omitted, where penalty is higher (until this gets resolved).

https://ubuntu.com//blog/ubuntu-performance-engineering-with-frame-pointers-by-default

Ubuntu Studio: Noble Numbat Updates for December

The Ubuntu Studio team provides us with an update of progress, in relation to Ubuntu Studio 24.04 LTS. Covered is the move to the new flutter-based frontend of Subiquity, which has the current unintended consequence of daily images not booting. An update tells us the booting problem has been fixed, but an installer issue (common with Ubuntu Desktop) still exists; the update provides the command required to manually start the installer [in text mode].

https://ubuntustudio.org/2023/12/noble-numbat-updates-for-december/

Ubuntu Cloud News

Canonical News

In the Blogosphere

Lubuntu 24.04 LTS Aiming For Optional Wayland Session, Default in 24.10

Michael Larabel writes about what the Lubuntu team revealed recently [See: UWN issue 817] in posting about their plans for Lubuntu 24.04 LTS. Michael writes this includes ‘the aim’ of having an optional Wayland session, which should be default (along with Qt6) for 24.10. Next covered is the improvements to the Calamares ‘first boot’ screen, a bluetooth GUI configuration tool, Redshift support, and more. A link to the original Lubuntu post is provided.

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Lubuntu-24.04-LTS-Plans

Calamares 3.3 Released as the Next Generation Graphical Installer for Linux

Marius Nestor blogs about the release of Calamares 3.3 installer. We’re given some details of the new features, shown a screenshot (from a Lubuntu 24.04 daily) and told we’ll see it with Lubuntu 24.04 LTS and other distributions.

https://9to5linux.com/calamares-3-3-released-as-the-next-generation-graphical-installer-for-linux

Lubuntu 24.04 LTS Plans for Snap-Free Minimal Option

This post by arindam writes about what the Lubuntu team unveiled in their recent blog post [See: UWN issue 817]. Along with many screenshots, we’re told of the calamares changes, including a minimal install option. The minimal install option was tried here by the author, with some observations given. Other changes the Lubuntu team revealed are also covered, along with the view that Lubuntu 24.04 LTS “promises to be a significant release”, inviting us to give it a try with a daily.

https://debugpointnews.com/lubuntu-24-04-snap/

LibreOffice 24.2 Beta Released For Testing This Free Software Office Suite

Michael Larabel tells us of the release of LibreOffice 24.2 Beta 1. We’re told LibreOffice 24.2 will be “the successor to LibreOffice 7.6” with the release scheduled in February 2024, and given a link so we can download and test this Beta.

https://www.phoronix.com/news/LibreOffice-24.2-Beta

X.Org Server & XWayland Updated Due To Two Decade-Old Security Vulnerabilities

Michael Larabel reports the release of X.Org Server 21.1.10 and XWayland 23.2.3 which address CVE-2023-6377 and CVE-2023-6478. We are given details and links for these CVEs that were discovered by Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative. Michael then moves on to Alan Coopersmith of Oracle’s work on changing compiler warnings into error messages.

https://www.phoronix.com/news/XOrg-Security-Two-CVEs-End-2023

Ubuntu Update Adds Support for 118 New Emoji

Joey Sneddon shows and tells us of some of the new 118 emoji’s added to Unicode 15.1, that will roll out to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and Ubuntu 23.10 users (update to Noto Color Emoji package). We’re also told the GNOME Characters app for Ubuntu 23.10 will receive an update supporting the zero-width joiner (ZWJ) sequences early in new year.

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/12/ubuntu-noto-emoji-font-update-unicode-15-1

KDE Plasma Mobile 6 Porting Underway

Michael Larabel updates us on the continuing work on Plasma Mobile and its port to Qt6, KDE Frameworks 6, and compatibility with KDE Plasma 6 components. A picture is provided, as well as a link to Devin’s blog.

https://www.phoronix.com/news/KDE-Plasma-Mobile-6-Porting

In Other News

It’s time to propose project ideas for Google Summer of Code 2024!

Felipe Borges writes that January 2024 is the time for organizations to apply for GSoC. This post serves as a reminder that if you have plans to mentor (inc. co-mentor) in GSoC 2024, now is the time to work on that. Links to GNOME’s internship and GNOME’s GSoC information are provided.

https://feborg.es/start-planning-for-gsoc24/

Featured Audio and Video

Linux Matters: Eposode 18 - Snap, Crackle and Desktop

"In this episode, we discuss:

  • Alan stumbles upon Ubuntu Core Desktop Preview and gives it a shake on a SteamDeck.
  • Mark further continues his adventures in the Fediverse, by developing AWS Lambdas on his desktop.
  • Martin creates an Open-Source Apple AirDrop-alike for sending files around the aether."

https://linuxmatters.sh/18/

Akademy 2023 - Over a million reasons why Snaps are important.

“Speaker: Ms Scarlett Moore
I will start out with the fact that snaps have had over a million downloads and with those kind of numbers, they cannot be ignored. I will continue on to describe here my journey in creating a vast amount of snaps, the automation of said snap building using invent.kde.org and Ubuntu launchpad builders. I will explain the hurdles I have overcome and what needs to be done to keep the snaps updated and how developers can help ensure the users are getting updates in a timely manner. The hard part is done, I have made it easy, just a few more minutes of your time at release.”

https://tube.kockatoo.org/w/87ihEWfMY48d4PhfCsqT5J

Ubuntu Security Podcast: Episode 216

“For the final episode of 2023 we discuss creating PoCs for vulns in tar and the looming EOL for Ubuntu 23.04, plus we look into security updates for curl, BlueZ, Netatalk, GNOME Settings and a heap more.”

https://ubuntusecuritypodcast.org/episode-216/

Ubuntu Portugal Podcast: Episode 277 - Em Casa de Ferreiro, Espeto de Murphy

“O AndrĂ© Paula assaltou-nos a casa com uma agradĂĄvel conversa sobre Home Assistant, polĂ©micas sobre experiĂȘncias de utilização de Ubuntu Touch, distribuiçÔes favoritas, Debian 12 e X11, interfaces grĂĄficos para todos os gostos e dicas sobre como evitar bandidagem em geral e amantes de domĂłtica em particular. ConversĂĄmos ainda sobre Raspberry Pi, “dongles” a badalar, encontros no MILL, mais aparelhos convertidos a Ubuntu Touch e como 2024 vai ser o Ano do Linux no Desktop (como todos os anos).”

https://podcastubuntuportugal.org/e277/

Meeting Reports

Upcoming Meetings and Events

  • Main Inclusion Requests (MIR) Status - Tue, December 19, 3:30pm – 4:00pm
  • Technical Board: Tue, December 19, 8pm – 9pm
  • Ubuntu Membership Board: Wed, December 20, 12pm – 1pm
  • High-Performance Computing Team: Wed, December 20, 16:30 - https://meet.jit.si/Ubuntu-HPC
  • Ubuntu Foundations: Thu, December 21, 4pm – 5pm

Times shown are UTC. For more details and farther dates please visit: https://fridge.ubuntu.com/calendars/

Updates and Security for 20.04, 22.04, 23.04 and 23.10

Security Updates

Ubuntu 20.04 Updates

End of Standard Support: April 2025

Ubuntu 22.04 Updates

End of Standard Support: April 2027

Ubuntu 23.04 Updates

End of Life: January 25, 2024

Ubuntu 23.10 Updates

End of Life: July 2024

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Further News

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Conclusion

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Glossary of Terms

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