Ubuntu 22.10 (Kinetic Kudu) Is Now Available for Download, This Is What's New

After six long months of development, Ubuntu 22.10 is now available for download as the latest version of the popular Linux/Debian-based operating system for personal computers, servers, and cloud computing.

Dubbed the “Kinetic Kudu,” Ubuntu 22.10 is here with the latest and greatest GNOME 43 desktop environment by default (yes, with support for GTK4 apps), which comes with numerous new features and enhancements for fans of the GNOME/Ubuntu desktop, yet the look and feel remain unchanged from previous releases.

After a few releases that were not synced with the latest GNOME desktop release, Ubuntu’s engineers finally managed to ship an Ubuntu system that features the most recent GNOME Stack, and GNOME 43 introduces a new GNOME Text Editor app that replaces Gedit in Ubuntu 22.10 as the default text editor.

In addition, the GNOME Books and GNOME To Do apps are no longer available in Ubuntu’s default app selection. Moreover, the Ubuntu Desktop now offers out-of-the-box support for WebP images.

Under the hood, Ubuntu 22.10 is powered by the Linux 5.19 kernel series, which (unfortunately) will reach end of life in the coming weeks. But, considering the fact that Kinetic Kudu is an interim release supported with security updates for only nine months, it won’t matter much, and you can always install Linux kernel 6.0.

The default audio server is PipeWire instead of PulseAudio with WirePlumber as the default session/policy manager. Kinetic Kudu also ships with an up-to-date toolchain and subsystem consisting of GCC 12, GNU C Library 2.36, GNU Binutils 2.39, systemd 251.4, Mesa 22.2, Netplan 0.105, LLVM 15, Poppler 22.08, CUPS 2.4, BlueZ 5.65, Unicode 15, NetworkManager 1.40, as well as debuginfod support and an updated AppArmor component that now lets sysadmins restrict access to unprivileged user namespaces.

On the server side of things, the Kinetic Kudu release ships with a new Subiquity installer that features autoinstall, cloud-init integration, and keyboard handling, systemd-socket-activated SSHd to reduce memory footprint on smaller devices, support for LDAP Channel Binding and Signing for Windows Integration, OpenVPN 2.6.0 snapshot, Containerd 1.6.4, Runc 1.1.2, Docker 20.10.16, QEMU 7.0.0, libvirt 8.6.0, Open vSwitch 3.0.0, and OpenStack Zed.

For Raspberry Pi users, Ubuntu 22.10 brings support for several “embedded” displays (including the official Raspberry Pi display and Hyperpixel) under both server and desktop configurations, an updated raspi-config command-line utility that now works partially on Ubuntu, support for a selection of the Wi-Fi regulatory domains in the netplan utility, and MicroPython support for various microcontrollers, including the Raspberry Pi Pico W.

Ubuntu 22.10 is available for download right now using the official direct download links below as Desktop and Server live images. The Kinetic Kudu release is supported for nine months, until July 2023. If you’re looking for the official Ubuntu flavors, you can download them here. Meanwhile, check out the video below to see Ubuntu 22.10 in action until your download finishes.