Ubuntu 20.04 moved into beta today

[Jason]

There's an article from OMGUbuntu of some of the new features and a new look. At least I think it went to beta, it was supposed to but I can't find a download that specifically says 'beta' in it and the link in the article leads to the daily build. I guess that's the beta?

I know one person that will be trying it out, or at least the final release.

Update: Okay, found it on the wiki here.
Was 3 hours to download, now 2. 

[fox]

You're right, Jason. I tried several times yesterday to download the beta, but it was nowhere to be found other than as a daily build. However I noticed that there is a new daily build issued 07:30 today. Perhaps they were just delayed a day and it will be issued as a beta today. Interestingly, the link you have on the wiki gives a date of April 1, but it is also marked as a daily build. It could either be that it's the same as the image of April 3 or that they are basing the as of yet unreleased beta on the April 1 image.

Update: It was just posted. The link for it is in this OMG Ubuntu article. I am downloading as I write this. This image is labelled as the beta, and it is downloading with the usual speed. Interesting that there is still no mention of it on either DistroWatch or LXer. I wonder how OMG Ubuntu got it first?

[Jason]

I believe the link I posted to was the beta. It doesn't show that on the page I linked in my first post but on the page two links before, it specifically calls it a beta. And said there, as it does now, released. It was a convoluted process to find it which was I was so proud to find it and share the link.

But I notice the article you just mentioned says it was late, based on an email. So I'm confused because it was there, I swear!

But they did mention that the release candidate wasn't ready so maybe there was a problem with the beta file I downloaded. I never got a chance to try it. Also, the links I've used are from the developer and testing area of Ubuntu builds and the email talks about a release candidate of the beta. So they probably don't expect ordinary peons to find this beta release before it's publicly linked and announced. I know I couldn't find it in a search engine by typing the terms directly.

But yeah, people should probably download the link you mentioned to be safe.

I'm guessing that OMGUbuntu probably just reads their media releases faster than anybody else or they have friends in the developer community.  Or they just watch the developed website I posted. For clarity's sake you mean they got the news first, right? Not the ISO since they just link to it. Not trying to be pedantic (almost wrote pandemic), just don't want newbs, if there are any here, that OMGUbuntu is the official newsletter from Canonical and provides builds.

P.S. I wonder if "being pandemic" will catch on. I'm going to see if I can be tested so I might have to use the phrase if I test positive. I'm not worried if I am and you guys don't need to be worried as I haven't seen any of you the past 2 weeks. I think it's almost been a month. The world has changed a lot since then, eh?

[fox]

OK, I FINALLY found the image on Ubuntu's site, here. But there is still no mention anywhere other than OMG Ubuntu, including by Ubuntu itself, of the release of the beta. The image itself is dated April 3, so what you downloaded, Jason, may not be the actual beta release.

Yes, I meant that OMG Ubuntu got the news first. Their link is to the iso on the site I posted above.

[Jason]

OK, I FINALLY found the image on Ubuntu's site, here. But there is still no mention anywhere other than OMG Ubuntu, including by Ubuntu itself, of the release of the beta.

Isn't that normal for Ubuntu, though? They don't mention the beta or link to it on the main pages but you can find it when you look into alternative versions and then find the actual beta iso. It's not what they've always done but I believe they did it for 19.10 and 19.04. Canonical doesn't want the general user base playing with betas because when there are broken things and there will be a few, it makes them look bad. That's how I thought it went, anyway but you probably know better than me on that count.

The image itself is dated April 3, so what you downloaded, Jason, may not be the actual beta release.

Which image? The one I linked to is from April 2 and is specifically linked from the page that says in no uncertain terms that it is the beta. Scroll down on this page, which is named Focal Beta, btw, and look at the date corresponding to the amd64 edition. It says 20200402. This site is used by developers for tracking bugs and testing of ubuntu working towards the final release. I'm pretty sure it's authoritative. You can also see in the attachment screenshots that they're exactly the same size. That seems like an unlikely coincidence. So I'm not backing down on this one.

[fox]

I can't say whether the image you originally pointed to is the same or not, but your original link was to an April 1 image, not April 2.

Also, DistroWatch just posted their announcement of Ubuntu 20.04 beta, including all of the flavours. And OMG Ubuntu just announced the betas of the Ubuntu flavours.

[fox]

Live distro works great on my 2011 iMac. On my 2015 iMac, it took longer to boot and hung up when I tried to make changes to display settings. I installed it in a partition and it was better, but I would say that it doesn't like the Radeon video card in this computer as much as it likes the older one in my 2011. It seemed slower when window dragging, and I get occasional "glitter" effects when running youtube. Also, with the newer iMac, it continues to have problems with the built-in audio. More things work with it than with the previous LTS, but it's odd. In rhythmbox, some radio stations work, but most don't. Youtube seems to work sometimes and other times not. Playing a music track never works. However, everything works with the external speaker, as long as it is plugged into an audio dongle I bought a few years ago to solve this problem (shows as Unitek Y-247A in Sound preferences).

Now I'm debating whether to try updating a Ubuntu 18.04 volume on the 2015.

[fox]

Now here is a strange one. I updated an 18.04 partition on the 2015 iMac with the 2020 beta. The upgrade went smoothly. But booting and shutting down are very slow; full boot-up takes at least 3 minutes and this on an SSD. After the upgrade I rebooted and found that it still had the Linux 4.15 kernel from Ubuntu 18.04, so I tried starting up on that. Difference was like night and day; 4.15 boots up in about 25 seconds. Why should that be? Thinking to try some in-between kernal (5.0 or 5.3), I looked in the repositories and found none of those; only 4.15 and 5.04. I'm guessing that these are the only ones being supported by Ubuntu 20.04, as the previous ones were associated with versions (19.04, 19.10) that have either expired or will expire soon. I looked on Ubuntu's site for kernel support, and in fact 4.15 is being supported until April 2023. Hopefully they'll have something figured out by then that applies to the processor and video card on this iMac. The older iMac doesn't seem to have the same problem.

So far I have been able to get all of my software running on the 20.04 beta. The only difficult one was Mendeley reference manager, where the .deb version requires python support and the version installed is python 3. I tried unpackaging and repackaging the deb (changing requirement to python 3), but I got errors when I tried to repackage it. However, I was able to run the generic Linux version of Mendeley. I'm sure they will eventually fix the dependency issue when 20.04 is officially released.

[buster]

Does the new Ubuntu seem an improvement on the previous?

[fox]

Definitely over 18.04; less so over 19.10 but even there, it has a few niceties that the older version didn't. The default theme is more attractive and there is a dark mode if you like that. The apps are more updated. Applications feel faster and in some cases (e.g., LibreOffice, Virtualbox), you are running newer versions of the software. The Files application is faster and looks nicer. There is more support for hidpi monitors. The only issue I have with it is that the default 5.4 kernel clearly has problems with my 2015 iMac and I have no idea why. But it really runs like a champ on the ol' 4.15 kernel.

Worth trying - you can try it from a live usb. It runs well from that.

[Jason]

Different kernel versions have different drivers. It may be that there may be a driver in the new version that is being loaded and on that particular hardware is causing a hang. Does hitting <esc> during boot-up show you where the problem is? Usually you'll see the line it's stuck at, even a count down before a timeout. There could be more than one line. It could also just be a bug in that kernel release since it is a beta and they'll fix it. The kernel freeze takes place about a week before final release, I believe.

Since it's an upgrade, there could be something else in the new version that conflicts with the old. It'd be interesting for you to report this bug (or just find that it's already been reported) but I suspect they would ask you to test the most recently daily to see if it happens there, too. There may be very few people using Ubuntu on a Mac so it could be very useful information to them.

And yes, that kernel version is supported until 2023 which is why I believe 18.04 LTS is supported until then. The last thing you want to in a production environment is to worry about hardware support being dropped every 6-9 months.

Oh and kudos on even trying to repackage a deb file. I don't think I've ever done that.

Btw, I can't wait for Ubuntu 20.20 to be released. ;-)

[buster]

" in some cases (e.g., LibreOffice, Virtualbox), you are running newer versions of the software"

Don't most of these newer versions come with the regular updates in Ubuntu anyways?

[fox]

Eventually, but slowly. If you're on 19.10 you would be on LibreOffice 6.3. Here you're on 6.4. Virtualbox would be 5.1, here it's 6.1.

[Jason]

" in some cases (e.g., LibreOffice, Virtualbox), you are running newer versions of the software"

Don't most of these newer versions come with the regular updates in Ubuntu anyways?

This is going to be a long-winded response but I hope a good one that some might useful because the question seems to come up and up again.

There are three kinds of Linux updates to packages:

   
• Security fixes - these are super important
• Bug fixes - less important but can be a problem because things might "break" otherwise
• Feature updates - new versions of software that add more features

As Fox is saying, updates will come into the release but not as soon as they're released. If they were constantly updated every time there was a new package, Ubuntu would be a rolling release distro and there would be no reason to ever upgrade.

Now if you upgrade from one LTS to the next (as Fox tested here), a lot has changed because LTS releases are only every two years. So here we're going from 18.04 to 20.4. Features are "locked in" in an LTS release from one to the next. Since 20.04 is an LTS release, you don't have to upgrade until 25.04.

Regardless, the updates between LTS releases will be the first two kinds of updates, not feature updates. So the version number of packages gets further and further behind. This is desired in LTS releases because these releases are needed for servers and mission-critical production environments. Changing packages too much risks breaking things so you only fix what you have to, the first two kinds of updates. That's why the PLUG server is still on 18.04. But we're good until 2023 before I'm forced to upgrade.

When 20.10 rolls around, you can upgrade to it if you want, but you don't have to. If you need the highest stability and/or don't want to have upgrade every 9 months to get updates you won't. You'll wait for the next release in two years or even until you're forced to upgrade to 24.04 LTS five years from now.

This need for stability is also why these LTS releases are boring as compared to the most recent (non-LTS version) 6 months before. They're building a new stable release that will be used with small changes for the next 2-5 years. They don't want to make big changes that they can't adequately test. So 20.04 is barely different from 19.10 except for some software that they figure isn't mission-critical. But 20.10 will likely have a lot more changes and make it a more interesting release.

That's not to say that with LTS releases you can't get some newer packages, you just have to do that yourself, like downloading deb files. They won't be in the main repositories. So at any point within the 18.04 release, you may have been able to download the latest LibreOffice version by going to their website. Another example is on our PLUG server. The forum software we use is called SMF. When a new release comes out, usually just a point release with small changes, I update it. The server doesn't have this package in its repository, I have to go to the SMF site and get the newest version.

[fox]

To make Jason's explanation more concrete, take a look at the Ubuntu package chart on DistroWatch. It lists the versions of packages associated with each of the releases. You can follow LibreOffice for example. LibreOffice was version 6.0.3 in 18.04, up to 6.3.2 in 19.10 and 6.4.2 in 20.04. Quite a difference, but less of one if you were using Debian Stable. Debian 10 was the most recent release and its LibreOffice version was 6.1.5.