Ubuntu 21.10 Impish Indri It is scheduled to be released this October 14, 2021, and despite not being an extended support version (LTS), it is one that arrives loaded with interesting news, more than enough to justify the update if you want to take advantage of them.
One of those bigger news is that Ubuntu finally updates its desktop to GNOME 40, which is probably one of the biggest updates to the desktop environment since the days of GNOME 3, and one that we could not see in the previous version of Ubuntu despite being available for more than 7 months.
The 25th Edition of Ubuntu
Impish Indri is the 25th edition of Ubuntu, it is one that will have support for nine months, until July 2022, when it will be recommended to upgrade to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, the next extended support release.
What’s new with GNOME 40 includes from redesigned activity view and new app launcher. In addition, the new version of GNOME also improves multi-monitor support.
Have new gestures for the touchpad and new actions for the mouse. Now the workspaces are arranged horizontally and the list of applications is accessed vertically. Unlike the vanilla GNOME 40, in Ubuntu it has been modified so that the applications dock continues to appear on the left and the workspaces remain at the top instead of the bottom.
The Yaru Light theme, based on community designs, has become the new default theme with Ubuntu 21.10, it has light and dark versions. Added to this are various details with updated icons, and improvements to make it more consistent with GNOME’s Adwaita.
Zstd, the lossless data compression algorithm, which was being tested for years, has finally been used by default in core files, which would, in theory, make Ubuntu 21.10 installs faster than previous versions.
Other new features include support for Wayland on computers using NVIDIA’s proprietary drivers, new versions of LibreOffice, Thunderbird, and Firefox. The latter is now offered by default in its snap version. yY, finally upgrading to Linux kernel 5.13.
You can download daily versions of Ubuntu 21.10, or the beta version right away. Or you can wait for the next few hours when the final version is offered on the official Ubuntu website.