Canonical announced the release of Ubuntu 21.04 on Thursday as the latest version of the popular Linux system.
Ubuntu 21.04, codenamed “Hirsute Hippo“, comes with Linux Kernel 5.11. It’s short Ubuntu release with 9-month support until January 2022.
The new Ubuntu edition features native Microsoft Active Directory integration, Wayland by default, and Flutter SDK. With GNOME 3.38, it includes new Dark theme by default.
Other changes include:
- DING extension to handle drag and drop between Desktop & File Manager.
- Toolchain updates: GCC 10.3.0, binutils 2.36.1, LLVM 12, Perl 5.32.1, Python 3.9.4, Ruby 2.7.2, OpenJDK 16, openssl 1.1.1.
- nftables as the default backend for the firewall.
- Added support for smartcard authentication
- Performance optimization and joint support for Microsoft SQL Server
- Some Gnome 40 applications, updated apps and subsystems.
- Sever updates, e.g., Openstack Wallaby, Rails 6, QEMU 5.2, libvirt 7.0, Kubernetes, and more.
Download / Upgrade to Ubuntu 21.04:
ISO images for Desktop, Server, Cloud, and other devices can be download from:
Upgrade from Ubuntu 20.10:
Support for Ubuntu 20.10 will end in July 2021. You may update to Ubuntu 21.04 via following steps:
- Firstly backup all your important data.
- Open Software & Updates and disable all third-party repositories under Other Software tab.
- Then press Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal, and run command to install all system updates:
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
- Reboot your machine to apply updates.
- Open terminal and run command to start update manager:
update-manager -d
- A dialog should pop-up prompts that Ubuntu 21.04 is available, with button to upgrade. Click the ‘Upgrade’ button and follow the wizard.
To upgrade in Ubuntu 20.10 server, do:
- Install all system updates via command:
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
- Reboot your system.
- Install the update tool if you don’t have it:
sudo apt install update-manager-core
- Finally start upgrading your system:
sudo do-release-upgrade