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Good news! As of today, the upcoming Ubuntu 21.04 (Hirsute Hippo) operating system release is now powered by the latest and greatest Linux 5.11 kernel series.
Development on Ubuntu 21.04 kicked off last year in late October, quickly after the release of Ubuntu 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla), on which the upcoming release was based at the point in time, thus shipping with Linux kernel 5.8.
About a month ago, I told you that Ubuntu 21.04 is powered by Linux kernel 5.10 LTS, and the fact that it would be a good move from Canonical to ship the Hirsute Hippo release with a long-term supported kernel. But, since Ubuntu 21.04 is not an LTS release, why not use a more recent kernel.
Therefore, the final Ubuntu 21.04 (Hirsute Hippo) release will be powered by Linux kernel 5.11, which brings lots of hardware improvements and new features. As you can imagine, at this point in its development cycle, Linux 5.11 will be the final kernel to be used in the Ubuntu 21.04 release.
That’s really great news, especially for Linux gamers, but also for those of you who recently bought a new computer, as Linux kernel 5.11 will sure support your hardware or even provide better support for it.
If you have a computer with an NVIDIA GPU, rest assured that Linux kernel 5.11 is now supported with the NVIDIA 460.67 graphics driver and later, but keep in mind that Ubuntu 21.04 is a test-bed for Canonical as they want to use Wayland as the default session for future Ubuntu releases.
Most probably, Ubuntu 21.04 is providing a fallback mechanism to X.Org Server (X11), which is now an optional session that you can select from the login screen, for those using an NVIDIA graphics card.
The final Hirsute Hippo release will see the light of day in a month from writing this article, on April 22nd, 2021, but, until then, you’ll be able to test drive the beta release, due out on April Fools’ Day. Alternatively, if you want to test Linux kernel 5.11 on your hardware, you can download the daily ISO images from here.
Last updated 3 years ago
