Ubuntu 21.10 Finally Released! Kernel 5.13, GNOME 40 & 9 Months Support

The developer team finally announced the release of Ubuntu 21.10 on Oct 14, codename “Impish Indri”.

Ubuntu 21.10 is a short term release with 9-month support until July 2022. It comes with Linux Kernel 5.13 for recent hardware support, such as Intel Alderlake S or AMD Adebaran, Microsoft Surface Laptops and tablets, and initial Apple M1 support.

For Ubuntu Desktop, it ships GNOME 40 with redesigned activities overview. The work-spaces are now arranged horizontally, and the overview and app grid are accessed vertically. As well, laptop user or PC with touchpad may now use three-finger gestures to toggle overview, and switch work-spaces.

And the Server edition integrates OpenStack Xena, QEMU 6.0, PHP8, libvirt 7.6, Kubernetes, and more. Also, toolchains has updated including gcc 11.2.0, glibc 2.34, LLVM 13, golang 1.17.x, rustc 1.51 and binutils 2.37.

Other changes include:

  • Wayland session while using Nvidia proprietary driver.
  • PulseAudio 15 with Bluetooth LDAC and AptX codecs support.
  • HFP Bluetooth profiles for better audio quality.
  • Improved recovery key at installation.
  • Sense HAT support for Raspberry Pi.

Download Ubuntu 21.10:

For Desktop, Server, Cloud and other flavors, download Ubuntu at:

For more about the release note, as well as how to upgrade from Ubuntu 21.04, see this thread for details.

Hi, I'm Merilyn Ne, a computer geek working on Ubuntu Linux for many years and would like to write useful tips for beginners. Forgive me for language mistakes. I'm not a native speaker of English.