Ubuntu 23.04, dubbed ‘Lunar Lobster’, comes with the latest Linux 6.2 kernel series and the recently released GNOME 44 desktop environment series. These two changes, which bring a host of new features, will encourage many Ubuntu users to upgrade their existing installations.

Another major change to the Ubuntu 23.04 release is the installation of a completely new version of Ubuntu Desktop, which has been in development for several years and is written entirely using the Google Flutter UI SDK. While retaining the functionality of the old installer, the new installer lacks support for the new ZFS installation.

Those who want to deploy Ubuntu using the ZFS file system can still do so using the old ISO image. Under the hood, the new desktop installer takes advantage of the functionality of the Ubuntu server installer, Subiquity.

Ubuntu 23.04 “Lunar Lobster” also brings three new official Ubuntu versions, Ubuntu Unity, Ubuntu Cinnamon and Edubuntu, as well as native Azure Active Directory ( Microsoft Azure AD) support, allowing Microsoft 365 Enterprise users to authenticate on Ubuntu using Microsoft 365 or Azure credentials for the desktop.

Ubuntu 23.04 also improves cross-platform development workflows, adds new hardware support for a wide range of ARMhf, AArch64, RISC-V and s390x devices, adds support for private PPA in debuginfod and introduces a new minimal ISO image for interested users to fully customise their Ubuntu installation.

Snap support has been improved in the Lunar Lobster release to include new refresh-aware functionality for Snap on the Ubuntu desktop, the ability to pause specific Snap auto-updates, a stable version of Steam Snap for Linux gamers, and hardware-accelerated rendering of Firefox for Raspberry Pi computers. Snap.

Under the hood, Ubuntu 23.04 comes with the latest toolchain, such as the GCC 13 system compiler, the Mesa 23 graphics stack, NetworkManager 1.42 network connection manager, PipeWire 0.3.65 multimedia framework, BlueZ 5.66 2 Bluetooth stack and system 252.5 initialisation system.

Official Ubuntu releases come with updated graphical environments, such as KDE Plasma 5.27 LTS for Kubuntu and Ubuntu Studio, Xfce 4.18 for Xubuntu, LXQt 1.2 for Lubuntu, Budgie 10.7 for Ubuntu Budgie, Unity 7.7 for Ubuntu Unity, Cinnamon 5.6 for Ubuntu Cinnamon and MATE 1.28 for Ubuntu MATE.

For the Ubuntu 23.04 system download, click here.

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Canonical is also planning to make the HWE kernel update available in the Ubuntu 22.04 LTS distribution in July.

The main thing to note is that Livepatch is an entitlement to the Ubuntu Pro subscription service, which allows you to upgrade the Linux kernel without rebooting.

Ubuntu Pro was officially released on January 27, 2023, and is available as a free subscription on up to 5 devices for personal and small business use.

Livepatch patches the Linux kernel while the system is running, eliminating the need for unplanned maintenance windows for high-severity and critical kernel vulnerabilities and reducing downtime and unplanned work.

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The Canonical team confirmed today that the Ubuntu 23.04 development board will be based on Linux 6.2. Ubuntu 23.04 is scheduled to be released on April 20, with a kernel freeze on April 6.

Linux 6.2 is the latest and most stable kernel version available, and Linux 6.3 is expected to be released in late April or early May. Linux 6.1 is an LTS long-term support release.

Dimitri John Ledkov, a long-time Ubuntu developer at Canonical, posted comments on the mailing list today, which IT House translated as follows.

"For the time being, no 6.1 kernel will be available for any Ubuntu flavors in the Lunar distribution, all flavors will be based on Linux 6.2."

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This is the first major kernel release update for Linux 2023. The Linux 6.3 merge window has officially opened today, and Linus says it has “over 30 pull requests already in the queue”.

After more than two months of work, Linux kernel 6.2 finally introduces Protected Load Balancing (PLB) for the IPv6 stack, support for Intel’s “asynchronous exit notification” mechanism, a new x86 FineIBT control flows integrity mechanism, and further improvements to the new Rust infrastructure.

On the hardware side, Linux 6.2 improves the stability of Intel’s Razzle graphics cards (DG2 / Alchemist) to be truly bootable. Intel’s On Demand drivers are now available for 4th generation Xeon Scalable “Sapphire Rapids” CPUs, and initial support for NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 series “Ampere ” graphics cards, graphics acceleration using the Nouveau open source code, and upstream support for the Apple M1 series.

Developer Asahi Linux noted that the Linux-based operating system now has support for a wide range of Apple chips, including the M1 Pro, M1 Max and M1 Ultra chips.

The new release also incorporates deep call tracking to help improve performance on older Intel Skylake-era PCs and brings various file system driver enhancements, security improvements, and other optimizations.

Linux 6.2 also comes with a new tool called RV (runtime verification) that controls the operation of the runtime verification subsystem, a new framework for handling compute-accelerated devices, support for user-defined BPF objects, and a new sysctl knob to control how the split-lock detector works when in “warning” mode on x86. “mode on x86.

In addition, the LongArch architecture supports ftrace, hibernation, hang and stack protection, zram devices now offer better compression, the fscrypt mechanism now supports the SM4 encryption algorithm, and memory naming has been extended to allow naming of shared anonymous memory regions.

Other changes include new mount options for the NTFS3 file system, the ability to build kernels that do not support NFSv2, support for the F2FS file system to write data to files and truncate it to a single atomic operation, the ability to enable trace triggers at boot time, and a new user space API to control the I/O memory management unit.

Notably, the new release also adds a new TDX guest driver that exposes the IOCTL interface to service Intel TDX guest requests, improved support for NVMe devices, DCN support on ARM, a new GC 11.x firmware release, GFX preemption support for GFX9, Ampere acceleration support, NVA3 backlight support, and Qualcomm SM6115 support.

Linux 6.2 also adds support for keys such as the command key on Apple’s keyboard, basic support for the Sony DualShock4 USB controller, and open source support for the MediaTek MT6370 I2C Sub power management chip in the OrangePi 4G-IoT.

Linux 6.2 is expected to be the default kernel for Ubuntu 23.04 and is expected to appear in Fedora 38 before the launch of the successor v6.3 kernel in late April. The new kernel can be downloaded from kernel.org.

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Denis Efremov submitted a floppy driver pull request to Linux block subsystem maintainer Jens Axboe for a driver update for Linux 6.2. Floppy driver updates are rare, but the authors still seem to care about it for the latest kernel code.

The purpose of this floppy driver update is that the new floppy driver will address memory leaks in its initialization path in Linux 6.2 when calls to floppy_alloc_disk() fail.

This memory leak in the floppy driver has been present in the mainline kernel since Linux 5.11 in 2020. In recent years, it has been mostly a fix for the floppy driver. Earlier this year it was the disabled FDRAWCMD post-release re-reference vulnerability, the problem manifested itself in the system getting stuck if a corrupt floppy disk was ejected. In addition to this, there have been other fixes for the floppy driver in recent years.

The floppy driver memory leak fix is now part of the block driver changes prepared for Linux 6.2 and is also marked back to the current Linux kernel stable series.

Visit for more details.

https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/[email protected]/

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This feature is disabled by default but can be toggled via the new “wake-up” property under the USB4 interface with sysfs support, a small improvement to optimize the experience.

In addition, Linux 6.2 will support Intel Razzle Solo, Sony PS4 grip, as well as initial support for Apple M1 Pro / Max / Ultra Mac devices.

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Previously, Linux support for Intel Razzle’s DG2 / Alchemist GPU was “experimental” and users needed to manually enable support for Razzle with the Intel i915 kernel driver using the i915.force_probe= module option.

In Linux 6.2, Intel Razzle’s DG2 / Alchemist GPU will be upgraded to full support, which is enabled by default. The updated patch states that

DG2 has now been in use for some time and all [user-space API] changes related to basic platform usage have been completed. The recent [continuous integration] results are also healthy, so we are ready to drop the force_probe requirement and enable the platform by default.

The Linux 6.2 merge window will start in December, and Linux 6.2 is expected to be released in February next year, so we can expect to see official support for Intel Razzle Solo in all major Linux distributions next spring.

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At the end of 2020, Sony released the official Linux driver “hid-playstation” for the PS5 DualSense handle. Since then, many users have been looking forward to the official expansion to support more handles, and now this update has finally arrived. This support has been merged into HID’s for-next branch and will be introduced later with the Linux 6.2 kernel.

The new driver brings USB, Bluetooth connection, touchpad, battery, vibration, accelerometer, gyroscope, LED brightness, light bar, adapter, etc. support to the Sony PS4 handle, which is relatively complete.

Other Linux developers have previously launched hid-sony drivers for Sony PS4 controllers, and this solution can still be used at present, but when official support is launched, everyone can compare which is better and make a decision. own choice.

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