The development cycle for the next Ubuntu Linux release, Ubuntu 23.04, has officially begun, and the Ubuntu team has revealed the official release date and the full release schedule, which includes all the details you need to know. Ubuntu 23.04, dubbed the “Moon Lobster” by Canonical, is expected to be released on April 20, 2023.
This will be Canonical’s 38th Ubuntu release, an extremely short-lived so-called interim release that only supports software and security updates for nine months until January 2024.
The 6-month development cycle officially kicked off with the upload of the toolchain at the end of October 2022, and the first Ubuntu test week will start as soon as December 29 next month. Until then, we’re waiting for the daily build ISOs to appear on the official servers in order to give our upcoming release a test run.
According to the release schedule, the beta version of Ubuntu 23.04 will be available for public testing on March 30, 2023, shortly after the second “Ubuntu Beta Week” event kicks off in the first week of March.
Other important development phases for Ubuntu 23.04 “Lunar Lobster” include a Feature Freeze and a Debian Import Freeze, both scheduled for February 23, a Kernel Freeze scheduled for April 6, and the final image release scheduled for April 13, 2023.
While it’s too early to talk about what’s new in Ubuntu 23.04, it’s believed that it will be powered by the upcoming GNOME 44 desktop environment, which is scheduled for release on March 22, 2023 and is likely powered by the upcoming Linux 6.2 kernel series. driver, the kernel should be released in early or mid-February 2023.
Other new GNU/Linux technologies in the Lunar Lobster release include GCC 13 as an optional system compiler, LLVM 16, Python 3.11 by default, GNU Binutils 2.40, GNU C Library 2.37, OpenLDAP 2.6, Go 1.20, and PolicyKit 122.
In addition, Ubuntu 23.04 also seems to be able to introduce the long-awaited new installer written in Flutter.
