Hello, and welcome to Linux This month. We have a lot of news to talk about this month,
including some big releases from Ubuntu, Windows 11 versus
Windows performance benchmarking, some great news for gaming and Linux,
and a cool Linux-based Raspberry Pi project. But first let's jump into the top stories.
Ubuntu 21.10 Impish Indry has been released. The latest version of
Ubuntu brings exciting new software, such as GNOME version 40 and the 5.13 based kernel.
It also features the latest Firefox version 93 as a snap. There are a few small visual differences
in GNOME 40 such as the dock being moved to the bottom of the screen, as well as rounded corners
on windows. There's also an activities overview that shows your workspaces organized horizontally.
Now multiple workspaces have been around for decades, but Canonical is putting a
new twist on it. Because they're horizontal and you can bring them up with a hot key,
this enables you to switch between workspaces easily. This is helpful for software developers,
for instance, who keep debug screens up while the IDE is on the other screen. It can also be
helpful for media production, when you need to organize your workspaces to match your process.
Wayland is the default display server in Ubuntu, and it has some changes too.
It now has advanced support for NVIDIA users, which means more performance and benefits
for folks gaming on Linux. For those who are putting Ubuntu on a Raspberry Pi,
there's some additional community support and Ubuntu Impish Indry will now support
the Sense Hat, which is a popular device used for development of IoT.
It supports a number of sensors and has an LED matrix. Now Windows 11 is out and considered
stable. Phoronix ran some tests to see how it stacks up against a few Linux distributions.
As it turns out five Linux distributions outperformed Windows 11 by a good margin.
They ran tests and found that Ubuntu 21.10, that we just mentioned, along with Ubuntu 20.04, Arch
Linux, Fedora and Clear Linux, all outperformed Windows 11 on their tests. Clear Linux, which is
a distribution built by Intel with performance in mind, made the biggest gains against Windows 11.
These gains are focused around the CPU, GPU and memory. This kind of performance matters
when you're gaming in Linux, but it's even more important when you're doing work on your machine.
Things like compiling, rendering video, or working with AI and ML projects.
This extra performance means you can save some valuable time. Now, when Phoronix ran these same
tests with Windows 10, the gap was not as wide meaning you could use Windows or Linux without
much difference. But against Windows 11, it shows that using Linux will be a notable change.
With this increased performance we could see more people migrating to Linux for tasks that
require better CPU and memory speed. Now it's worth noting that Windows 11 is brand new,
so we can expect they'll work on improving performance and narrowing the gap.
If they don't, we may continue to see more migration to the Linux desktop.
Redcore Linux is a distribution you've probably haven't heard of. The group released version 2102
Polaris, and it's mostly a bug fix release, but it shows great potential. Why? Because Redcore Linux
is based on Gentoo, which focuses on performance and low resource usage. However, Gentoo usually
has to be compiled by hand and requires a lot of configuration. Redcore does much of that for
you. It's a rolling release system like Gentoo. What this means is you get the latest version
of software packages continuously. You don't wait six months to a year for a version release of the
operating system. Now this is a trade-off. If you want to use the newest versions of software
packages, it can sacrifice stability. KDE, one of the most popular desktop environments for Linux,
has recently released a fingerprint authentication feature. This means users can use fingerprint
authentication on their machines and enroll as well as de-enroll role fingerprints for access.
This is great news for folks wanting to secure their Linux machines even further.
We talked about Ubuntu 21.02 Impish Indry release, which is Canonical's stable release of Ubuntu,
but you can now download the next version, which is in beta. Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish is now
available for download. If you would like to test out the bleeding edge version of Ubuntu,
set to be released next year, check it out. It will feature GNOME 42, which takes some hints from
Elementary OS. There's a system-wide dark style preference and day and night scheduling options.
There are new power profiles available to help you save battery on laptops.
And it has a new multitasking panel with hot corners to help you navigate your desktop in
a fast and productive manner. The NVIDIA 495.44 stable driver is out for Linux.
This is great news for gamers and folks using the GPU for things like video rendering, AI and ML.
You can squeeze out better performance and additional features from your hardware.
It has a better Wayland experience, which will be smoother,
and they fixed some ex-server bugs as well. The driver now works with a GBM API,
which allows developers to take advantage of the hardware for smoother experiences.
The Raspberry Pi is a low cost way to make your office a smart office and Monterail did
just that. They built a network with Raspberry Pis to control lighting, meeting room occupancy,
security for the office doors and more. They even have color-changing led lamps in the kitchen,
all controlled by Raspberry Pis running Linux. Exciting. And that's it for this month's Linux
This Month. If you liked the show, be sure to give this episode a big thumbs up. Have
a question? Add it into the comments. May your source code remain open and your code compile.
See you next time. Subscribe to stay up to date and keep being awesome Cloud Gurus.