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The upcoming Ubuntu 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla) operating system release has reached an important milestone in its six-month-long development cycle, the Feature Freeze stage.
Steve Langasek announced that the Ubuntu 20.10 release has entered Feature Freeze this week, more specifically as of August 27th, 2020. This is actually the most important milestone so far in the development cycle of Ubuntu 20.10 and it means that no new features will be implemented until the final release.
Dubbed “Groovy Gorilla,” Ubuntu 20.10 has been in development since April 2020, shortly after the release of the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) operating system. The Feature Freeze stage will be followed by an optional Ubuntu Testing Week that kicks off next week on September 3rd for those who want to help with the testing.
As usual, I kept an eye on the development of Ubuntu 20.10, and I can tell you that the final release will ship with the upcoming GNOME 3.38 desktop environment, due for release on September 16th, an updated toolchain based on the latest GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) 10 series, and many of the latest application releases (Firefox, LibreOffice, etc.).
As far as the Linux kernel goes, Groovy Gorilla should ship with the latest Linux 5.8 kernel series, but, for now, the daily builds are still using the Linux 5.4 LTS kernel that’s being used in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and more recently in Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS (Bionic Beaver).
The final release of Ubuntu 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla) is expected to hit the streets on October 22nd, 2020. However, it will be supported for only 9 months, until July 2021, so it’s recommended to use Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) if you’re looking for long-term support.
Until then, the beta version is expected to land on October 1st, giving most people an early taste of the new features, improvements, apps and technologies used in Ubuntu 20.10. After the beta release, other important milestones are the Kernel Freeze on October 8th and Final Freeze on October 15th.
Will you be installing Ubuntu 20.10 or stick with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS?
Image: Sylvia Ritter/Modified by Marius Nestor
Last updated 4 years ago
