Up until now, all installs of Raspberry Pi OS have had a default user called “pi”. This isn’t that much of a weakness – just knowing a valid user name doesn’t really help much if someone wants to hack into your system; they would also need to know your password, and you’d need to have enabled some form of remote access in the first place. But nonetheless, it could potentially make a brute-force attack slightly easier, and in response to this, some countries are now introducing legislation to forbid any Internet-connected device from having default login credentials. So with this latest release, the default “pi” user is being removed, and instead you will create a user the first time you boot a newly-flashed Raspberry Pi OS image. This is in line with the way most operating systems work nowadays, and, while it may cause a few issues where software (and documentation) assumes the existence of the “pi” user, it feels like a sensible change to make at this point.
As always, the new major release has some new features. FSP (File Service Protocol) server is now included out of the box (gFTP can be used as its GUI client). Many system-wide changes have been done to improve font rendering. The 4MLinux installation script has been patched to provide better handling of JBD partitions. New applications available as downloadable extensions: Bluefish (advanced text editor), Ventoy (utility used for writing image files), TripleA (strategy game written in Java). And finally, youtube-dl has been replaced with yt-dlp for better handling of YouTube videos.
The new version of the world's oldest surviving Linux distribution comes with many new features and updates, such as PAM, ConsoleKit2 and PipeWire. Slackware continues to support the x86 architecture.
Joseph Dickson has announced the availability of a brand-new Peppermint OS release, the first one in over two years. It is now based on Debian 11 and uses the Xfce desktop.
e are proud to announce the release of Neptune 7 'Faye' named after the member of the Bebop crew in the Cowboy Bebop anime. This version comes with a new Debian base (11 'Bullseye') that offers newer and better hardware support as well as newer software and applications. KDE Plasma 5.20.5 ships with a new Neptune-specific theme that embraces the Breeze widget style for maximum compatibility and it also introduces a new subtle but modern flat look and feel to Neptune. We also updated the icon theme to our own variation of the Tela icon theme to fit with the new look of the system. The default panel has been modernized to allow pinning more apps and tasks to it as well as offering a new bigger and easier look to the eyes. Besides that, Linux kernel 5.10 offers modern hardware support as well as bug fixes.
Venom Linux 3.0 iso is released - 3.0-RC1 user can migrate it by manually changing version in /etc/scratchpkg.repo , /etc/os-release , and /etc/venom-release .
Ubuntu 21.10, codenamed Impish Indri, was released on 14 October 2021. Ubuntu 21.10 uses the 5.13 Linux kernel, which introduces rudimentary support for Apple M1 chips, FreeSync HDMI support for AMD GPUs, a new ‘Landlock‘ security module and support for several new hardware among other changes and improvements.[363][364] This release transitions from GNOME 3.38 to GNOME 40, introducing a horizontal workspace switcher and an improved Activities Overview design. The Ubuntu Dock remains vertically placed on the left of the screen and now features separators between pinned and running applications as well as a persistent trash can icon and USB drive shortcuts. A change was made in the default GNOME 40 behavior so that after logging in, the user will be shown the desktop instead of the Activites Overview.[365] Despite Ubuntu 21.10 shipping with GNOME 40, a few GNOME 41 apps are available. A Firefox Snap is now installed by default on Ubuntu 21.10 instead of the deb package, which remains available for the time being. Furthermore, the Nvidia proprietary drivers now support Wayland sessions. The default Yaru theme was also updated with new icons and Zstd compression was enabled in the main archive, making installations faster. Joey Sneddon wrote in OMG! Ubuntu!, "for me what makes this release most appealing isn’t a specific one-thing, it’s the aggregate total; the combination of new apps, new kernel, new GNOME Shell, new look, and new installer (though not default for now) make the Impish Indri a particularly inspiring iteration of this iconic distro." Dave McKay of How-To-Geek wrote in his review, "If you’re an existing user and any of the hardware support or security features of the kernel are going to have a positive impact on your particular use case, then go ahead and update. If you don’t have an issue that is going to be resolved by upgrading, it’s hard to justify the effort—and risk—of an upgrade. Certainly, there’s nothing here to compel an avid LTS user to leave that safe haven and move to 21.10."
Named for Woody's wooden toyhorse that appeared in Toy Story 2.
Ubuntu 21.04, codenamed Hirsute Hippo, was released on 22 April 2021. Ubuntu 21.04 uses the 5.11 Linux kernel, which introduces smartcard authentication and support for Intel's Software Guard Extensions and improves support for AMD CPUs and GPUs. Wayland is now used as the default on hardware, other than those that have Nvidia graphics processors. Support for drag and drop from the file manager to the desktop was also added. This release was to have used the new GNOME 40 release, but a developer decision was made to retain GNOME 3.38 instead, the same version used in Ubuntu 20.10. This decision was made to give time to address questions about the stability of the GTK4 toolkit, a major GNOME interface redesign and the unknown impact on GNOME extensions and Ubuntu's default Yaru GTK theme. In a review, Joey Sneddon of OMG Ubuntu, wrote, "Ubuntu 21.04 isn’t a game-changing release. Despite the hirsute moniker there’s little nothing hair-raising included, perhaps save for the switch to Wayland — but even that isn’t as prickly as it used to be! But it’s not a release totally devoid of value. 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. There are also new installer features, a new desktop icons experience, and (of course) a new wallpaper." Dave McKay wrote in How To Geek, "the Hirsute Hippo behaved well in testing and feels like a solid, stable build. What it lacks in surface glitter it makes up for with many significant changes beneath the hood—even without GNOME 40. The 5.11 kernel, refreshed applications, and system-wide bug fixes and security enhancements are all advantageous. The change of permissions on the home directories is a welcome change, too. It’s nothing that you couldn’t do by hand in other releases, but how many actually bothered?" A review in Full Circle magazine note, "So far in this development cycle we have seen very few substantive changes. Perhaps the most important is the use of Wayland by default. Even though that is a developer accomplishment, it is pretty much 'user-transparent'. So far the next LTS release, 22.04, is shaping up to be very similar to the last LTS release, 20.04, and that is actually a good thing. In a mature distribution that already works well, like Ubuntu, wholesale changes are not needed and would cause a lot of user unhappiness. Ubuntu users today largely like how Ubuntu looks and works and don’t think much in the way of changes are needed. People who don’t like Ubuntu are probably already using something else."
Ubuntu 20.10, codenamed Groovy Gorilla, was released on 22 October 2020. This release is based on the Linux kernel 5.8 which introduces support for several modern hardware devices and protocols. Notable features include support for USB4, AMD Zen 3 CPUs and Intel Ice Lake and Tiger Lake graphics as well as initial support for booting Power10 processors. GNOME 3.38 brings enhancements to the core GNOME apps and tweaked the app grid, among other user experience improvements. Ubuntu 20.10 is the first release to feature desktop images for the Raspberry Pi 4 (4GB and 8GB models) and the Compute Module 4. Older Pi models with less memory may still be able to boot but they are not officially supported. 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. In addition to these, nftables is now the default firewall backend, replacing iptables. In an October 2020 review in HowToGeek, Dave McKay concluded, "we recommend that most people stick with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS for stability. Ubuntu 20.10 doesn’t offer any huge improvements. Rather, it just shows that Ubuntu is still a solid platform, making good progress toward its next LTS release in 2022 ... Canonical estimates that 95% of Ubuntu installations are LTS versions. If that’s true, then plainly interim builds won’t appeal to many people who use Ubuntu. Even if Canonical’s figures are slightly off, it’s obvious the vast majority prefer stability and guaranteed long-term support over the incremental benefits of interim builds." Tim Anderson of The Register concluded, "...this is not the biggest of Ubuntu releases but keeps the momentum going for Canonical's distribution, hugely popular for server use on public cloud and becoming more polished for desktop users too." Bogdan Popa, writing for Softpedia, noted of this release, "Ubuntu was, is, and will probably remain the leading Linux distribution out there, at least as far as the number of users is considered." A review in Full Circle magazine concluded: While Ubuntu 20.10 is a really solid release, it has surprisingly few new features for a release that initiates a new Ubuntu development cycle. In many ways this is probably a good sign, though. After 33 releases over 16 years, Ubuntu [is] a very mature Linux distribution and it gets almost everything right. There is not really a lot that needs changing, beyond updating the hardware support for the next generation of computers and also updating the default applications, both of which this release does. These days most Ubuntu users run the current LTS release and only upgrade when a new LTS version comes out. This standard release offers very little to entice most Ubuntu users to switch, especially since it has only nine months of support.