LTS stands for long term support. Canonical Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) is now generally available. An Ubuntu LTS has a commitment from Canonical for ten years support and maintenance, with the initial five years available for free following Ubuntu’s mission. In April, every two years, Canonical release a new LTS where all of the developments from the previous two years accumulate into one up-to-date, feature-rich release. These releases focus on performance enhancement and stability. LTS is what you should be running in large scale enterprises, as general users or businesses unless you particularly need the more quickly but less long lived developer releases.
Contents
- Whats new in Ubuntu Desktop 22.04 LTS
- Ubuntu Desktop 22.04 LTS Docker images
- NVIDIA vGPU
- Timely, performant and customisable
- Upgrading Ubuntu Desktop
- Backup
- Run Software Updater to install all updates
- Run Software Updater again to 'Upgrade'
- Screenshots of a typical upgrade
- Whats new
- Tweaks and software
- Screenshots and screencasts
- Appearance — colour
- Appearance — configure dock behaviour
- Settings — Multitasking
- Screen sharing
- Zsh
- Additional software from the Snap Store
Whats new in Ubuntu Desktop 22.04 LTS
Installer, Firmware manager, Newer Kernel, Improvements for Raspberry Pi, Newer versions of Apps, Newer verson of Gnome (43) Rust, OpenSSL v3, Screensharing!
Ubuntu Desktop 22.04 LTS Docker images
The Ubuntu 22.04 LTS base image is available on Docker Hub along with a Canonical-maintained portfolio of secure and stable LTS application container images.
Existing LTS Docker images on Ubuntu will receive new long-term supported 22.04-based tracks, including MySQL, PostgreSQL and NGINX. The open-source applications portfolio is expanding further, focusing on Observability and Big Data, with new Grafana Loki, Apache Kafka and Apache Cassandra container images.
NVIDIA vGPU
With Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, NVIDIA virtual GPU (vGPU) software drivers are generally available. Data scientists can natively install NVIDIA vGPU Software 14.0 and benefit from highly performant GPU resources across multiple virtual machines at the same time. This allows data scientists to parallelise and isolate advanced AI/ML workloads, while ensuring that the underlying hardware resources are used efficiently.
To meet the demands of AI/ML, HPC and data science workloads, developers and enterprises rely on NVIDIA-accelerated computing, with Ubuntu supported on NVIDIA DGX systems as well as NVIDIA-Certified Systems running the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software suite.
Timely, performant and customisable
Ubuntu 22.04 LTS adds Rust for memory-safe systems-level programming. It also moves to OpenSSL v3, with new cryptographic algorithms for elevated security.
Ubuntu Desktop 22.04 LTS gains significant usability, battery and performance improvements with GNOME 42 featuring GNOME power profiles and streamlined workspace transitions alongside significant optimisations which can double the desktop frame rate on Intel and Raspberry Pi graphics drivers.
Ubuntu 22.04 LTS is available now on Ubuntu Downloads and major public clouds.
Upgrading Ubuntu Desktop
Upgrading is simple, because Ubuntu contains a Software Update manager.
Backup
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Backups will one day save you. The best time to take a backup is *just* before you need one.
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Taking a backup just before upgrading Ubuntu Linux is one of those times.
Run Software Updater to install all updates
- Press the System Key and type Software to find and run Software Updater.
- Install any current version updates and restart your machine if needed.
Run Software Updater again to 'Upgrade'
- Press the System Key and run Software Updater.
- Software Updater should tell you that the software on this computer is up-to-date. However, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS is now available .
- Click Upgrade. Respond to the prompts and restart when directed.
Screenshots of a typical upgrade
Whats new
| Item #1 | |
|---|---|
| Toolchain Upgrades, GCC 11.2.0, binutils 2.38, glibc 2.35. Python 3.10.4, Perl 5.34.0. LLVM 14. golang 1.18.x. rustc 1.58. OpenJDK 11, OpenJDK 18 is also provided, Ruby 3.0. |  |
| In Ubuntu Server some highlights are that PHP defaults to 8.1.2, BIND to 9.18.1, Apache to 2.4.52, PostgreSQL to 14.2, Django to 3.2.12, MySQL 8.0.28, and NFS has been updated. Samba updated to 4.15.5 potentially quite a few breaking changes here! | |
| systemd v249.11 with OOMD - try oomctl on your desktop shell | |
| OpenSSL 3.0 which disables many legacy algorithms, a breaking change to packages that depend on libssl1.1 | |
| Security improvements - nftables is now the default backend for the firewall, ssh-rsa is now disabled by default in OpenSSH. scp offers a -s command line option to use sftp mode rather than scp mode when handling remote filenames. | |
| Ubuntu Desktop has ten colour choices in light and dark, Firefox is a snap, maintained by Mozilla and sandboxed, Desktop Icon and Dock adjustments can be made in the Appearance panel of the Settings app. | |
| GNOME has all features and fixes from GNOME 41 and GNOME 42 | |
| The default sesstion is now Wayland | |
| RDP is now available for sharing your desktop for better privacy, security and performance than legacy VNC. RDP appears to be on by default but it is not on and needs to be turned off and then turned on to enable. | |
| Firefox 99, LibreOffice 7.3 and Thunderbird 91 are provided. | |
Tweaks and software
One thing I had to do after installation was sudo dpkg-reconfigure libdvd-pkg in order to fix an error with apt because of this DVD driver.
Screenshots and screencasts
This is new for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.
This new tool can save movies now too as well as supporting all the common screenshot actions you are likely to need. Use the System Key and type screenshot or just hit the PrtSc key to bring it up. It can target a region, a window or the whole screen. This is an actual photograph of the panel that comes up when you hit PrtSc, because it is quite difficult to take a screenshot of the screenshot tool itself!
Appearance — colour
I bet your were getting tired of Toshiba Gas Plasma Display Orange. Now you can change your appearance colour.
Appearance — configure dock behaviour
You can choose to show or hide the trash as wel as to show volumes and devices at all and if you do whether to include unmounted and/or network volumes.
Settings — Multitasking
There are a couple of welcome timesavers here. Set the Hot Corner to enable mouring over it to open the Activities overview. Set Active screen edges to allow you to trag windows to the screen edge to force a 
Screen sharing
If you need this then you probably find it inexplicable how it wasn't working without hacks for years. But now it is working and that's got to be good. Here's my Ubuntu Desktop shared via macOS Screen Sharing app (which uses VNC).
Zsh
My macOS world uses zsh now, and I want to use the same configuration here on Ubuntu Desktop.
After installing and switching you need to logout completely from the window system not just the terminal, then login again and open a new terminal to use the new shell.
You'll need to complete first time setup, and unless you know what you are doing the defaults are good.
$ sudo apt install zsh
... Lots of console output ...
$ zsh --version
zsh 5.8.1 (x86_64-ubuntu-linux-gnu)
$ chsh -s /usr/bin/zsh
Additional software from the Snap Store
Snaps are app packages for desktop, cloud and IoT that are easy to install, secure, cross‐platform and dependency‐free. Snaps are discoverable and installable from the Snap Store, the app store for Linux with an audience of millions.
In Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Firefox is now a Snap maintained bu Mozilla.
Almost all the installed apps I had on my previous version of Ubuntu are showing up in the Ubuntu Software app, which uses the Snap Store.
- Slack
- VSCodium
- Sublime Text
- GParted
- DDrescue-GUI and ddrescue
- GitKraken
- Chromium
