After 6 months of development, Ubuntu 21.10 codenamed “Impish Indri” is now available for download. Ubuntu 21.10, a short-term support release, improves on its predecessor Ubuntu 21.04 by including an updated desktop environment, applications, and several bug fixes.
Ubuntu 21.10 “Impish Indri” Released – What’s New in Ubuntu 21.10?
Six months after the release of Ubuntu 21.04, Ubuntu has released another short-term version, Ubuntu 21.10. This is a short-time release that will only be supported for 9 months, until July 2022, and is recommended for desktop users who want to stay ahead of the competition. The majority of the packages in this version have been updated to their most recent versions, including Gnome, the default desktop environment.
- Gnome 40
- Newer kernel supports newer hardware
- New touchpad gestures
- Nautilus supports password-protected zip extraction
- Wayland available for Nvidia Propritary drivers
- Updated apps including Firefox snap by default, thunderbird 91, pulseaudio 15, Libreoffice 7.2.1, NetworkManager 1.32.12
- nftable now default backend for firewall
GNOME 40
This upgrade was expected in Ubuntu 21.10, and it is now available. The new version includes Gnome 40, which was released in October of last year with several significant changes and improvements. GNOME 40 includes new touchpad gestures, keyboard shortcuts, and mouse shortcuts.
Gnome overview GNOME activities
GNOME 40 has also been redesigned, with workspaces arranged horizontally and the overview and grid arranged vertically.
Linux Kernel 5.13
Ubuntu 21.10 makes use of the Linux Kernel 5.13, which includes support for new hardware. Users will be able to install Ubuntu 21.10 on Microsoft Surface laptops and tablets with Linux Kernel 5.13, which supports future Intel and AMD chips out of the box and famously Rudimentary Apple M1 support.
Wayland support for proprietary NVIDIA drivers
Users no longer have to edit grub file to enable Wayland support for NVIDIA drivers. In 21.10, it will work out of the box.
If you don’t want to upgrade from Ubuntu 21.04, you can use this thread to enable Wayland support for NVIDIA drivers in 21.04 or earlier versions.
nftable default backend for firewall
The firewall’s default backend is nftable. When compared to iptables and its family, nftable has several advantages. It can manage all firewall rules from a single interface, has built-in sets, updates rules faster, and supports combined IPv4/IPv6 processing. There are numerous additional benefits to using nftable, which you can read about here.
Updated applications
One of the primary advantages of upgrading to a short-term release is that users can use updated applications. Ubuntu 21.10 includes the most recent packages, including a major switch of Firefox 93 from the default package .deb to the newer package management snap. Firefox 93 is installed as a snap application by default in Ubuntu 21.10.
Besides firefox, all major applications have been updated as well –
- LibreOffice 7.2.1
- Thunderbird 91.1.2
- Enjoy the new account setup wizard in Thunderbird 91.
- PulseAudio 15.0
- PulseAudio 15.0 supports LDAC and AptX codescs for A2DP. Experience higher quality audio with the newer version.
- BlueZ 5.60
- NetworkManager 1.32.12
