 Hey everybody, welcome back to the channel. Today we're going to be talking a little bit, just a little bit about what's coming up in Ubuntu in 2021. Now, if you're unfamiliar with Ubuntu's release schedule, they release two releases every year, one in April, one in October. And their version numbers are always the year, so this will be year 21, and then a period, and then the month that they release to 04 for April 10 for October. So the two releases this year will be 2104 and 210. This will be a year of no long-term support releases, because we had the last year. So we're looking at two short-term releases that will probably feature some fairly big changes. So let's first take a look at what we know for sure is going to be coming up in version 21.404. And we'll start off by saying that these are still tentative. It's still being worked on. I don't think that the feature freeze happens until late February, early March. I might be wrong about that. So they're still coming up with features. But there are a few things that we definitely do know. So this is coming from debugpoint.com. I believe OMG Ubuntu has the exact same stuff. So they're aiming right now for a release of April 22. So that's pretty normal for an April release. It's always towards the end of April. The feature freeze is at the end of February. So I wasn't too far off on that. The beta will be in the first part of April. So obviously we'll get to see the next kernel. Right now I'm pretty sure that the most recent Ubuntu uses 5.8, 5.9. I can't remember. 5.10 is the most recent one as of recording. They're saying we may see 5.11 before the next Ubuntu comes out. If not, I'll use the 5.10 release. And 5.10 is actually the LTS kernel. So that's the one that I'm actually using now. So like all the Ubuntu releases, we'll see a new kernel or the probably the most recent kernel as of the feature freeze. The big feature for 21.04 is going to be GNOME 40. So if we look at some of the features for GNOME 40, we're actually looking at a fairly big redesign of the way GNOME works. So they're moving the panel from the side to the bottom. Now we don't know how Ubuntu is going to do this because remember Ubuntu doesn't use straight up GNOME. They use their own little fork of it. So whether or not they keep their panel along the side like they always have, which I'm assuming they probably will. So that change probably won't follow through to Ubuntu like you see here in this animation. But I would assume the things that we will see is the new multitasking view, which is the workspaces along the side, you know, long ways. Instead of alongside like they used to be the new app drawer and so on and so forth like like that. It'll be interesting to see how they do incorporate the GNOME 40 stuff into it while still keeping the, you know, their Ubuntu Flare. I guess one way to say it. They always update the native apps and there's apparently rumors that they might allow users to encrypt their .ext4 partitions without being forced to use LVM. That's going to be the new thing because right now you can encrypt using LVM. I'm not exactly sure how this would work. It'll be interesting to see. I've never actually used LVM before because I don't encrypt my home drive mainly because I switch around distros too often. And it seems like it's kind of a pain in the butt. Oh, this last one here is a big one. From the beginning of Ubuntu until now, your home directory was actually not separated from other users on your machine. So they could actually, if you say you had two users, they could see each other's home directories completely, whatever. They had read permissions on both. In 2104 that's going to change. So the only the owner of the home directory can see it, which is why that wasn't a default. To begin with, I don't know. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but that's just the way it's always been. And they're finally fixing it. So that's 21.44. The biggest change is going to be, you know, 40. I assume we'll probably see some performance increases, you know, benefits because we usually do. I'm a little worried that, you know, 40 will actually take a step back in terms of performance because it looks like there's a lot of animations. And GNOME has been known to not do animation all that great in the past. So I guess we'll just have to see. Ubuntu sometimes kind of mitigates that by being better at, you know, knowing mutter and all that kind of stuff than what GNOME seems to be, you know, straight up GNOME seems to do. So what about the rest of the year? So what about the second release? We don't know a lot about it. We'll probably see. I'm not, there'll probably be a new version of GNOME out there, but because of all the big changes in GNOME 40 will probably, it'll probably just be a maintenance update. Things to make it run faster, run smoother and things like that. There'll be the normal application updates. They're working on continuing to improve the support for ZFS in the ubiquity installer, which is going to be good. It'll be interesting to see if by the time we get to 21.10 if the ZFS thing is more prominent because right now it's kind of buried and it also has this big word on it. This is experimental. So I'm wondering if they'll take that off because 21.04 will be the last mid tier release or whatever before we get to the next LTS, which will be 22.04. So it'll be interesting to see how they start more incorporating ZFS or if they do because ZFS was in the last LTS, but like I said, it had the experimental tags still attached to it. So it'll be interesting to see, like I said, if they bring that one to the forefront front. It'll also be interesting. I would love to see them bring more different types of file systems. So like ButterFS or something like that towards, you know, into an experimental feature towards the end of this year. I don't think that that's going to happen. I think that they've put their efforts behind ZFS instead of ButterFS. But it'll be interesting to see. So that really is a voodoo for 20.2021. I think that the biggest thing we'll be looking forward to this year is Genome 40 and how they incorporate the changes from upstream Genome into their own little spin of it. Because if they go through and do their own little kind of redesign, that'd be very interesting. If they move more towards the way Genome looks than what a voodoo has traditionally looked, that'd be, I mean, that'd be kind of cool. Because a voodoo is kind of, we have to admit, a voodoo is kind of looking kind of still because it looks, it has looked the same since Unity was around. Since Unity was introduced. So it'd be interesting to see. I keep saying that, you know, something a little bit fresher. And I don't, but that's more of a prediction and a hope than, you know, then something that we actually know is going to happen. So that is it for this episode. I'm really, I really like Ubuntu. I will say this story. I've just distro hopped because I was trying to solve a problem that I couldn't fix. I didn't end up solving the problem, but I kept having some problems installing distros and I couldn't go back to Arco, which is what I am, because I couldn't get it to boot up. So I ended up going to Ubuntu for about four hours. I was on Ubuntu for four hours. I installed DWM on it and everything. I missed there you are. All right, so that is it for us this time. 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