The Eoan Ermine family is almost here. Canonical develops one operating system, but is responsible for seven others. In this article we are not going to focus on those seven flavors, but on the news that comes to the main version that gives this blog its name: Ubuntu. Eoan Ermine is not a major release, but rather as a transitional version to another that will include important news, but Ubuntu 19.10 it will introduce something that will make it interesting to update: it is much more fluid than previous versions.
In this article we are going to talk about the news that come with Ubuntu 19.10, but also some absences. Among these absences we want to mention one that has not been well received, but is not new to Eoan Ermine: you cannot drag and drop items from / to the desktop. The first time we suffered it was in Disco Dingo but, although there are open bugs in Launchpad about it, this is the case in new versions of GNOME and also happens in other distributions such as Fedora. So, if you expected this to be fixed in the version that will be released in a few hours, sorry, but what is not broken cannot be fixed.
What's New in Ubuntu 19.10 Eoan Ermine
- Linux 5.3.
- Support until July 2020.
- Initial support for ZFS as root.
- GNOME 3.34, an environment that provides greater speed and fluidity.
- Updated applications and packages.
- LZ4 compression, which will make it start faster.
- Nightlight improvements accessible from a new tab.
- Ability to create folders in the application launcher.
- Responsive settings window.
- New Yaru themes, highlights the dark.
- There is no longer a 32-bit version in any official flavor.
- NVIDIA drivers included in the ISO image.
- Improved keyboard key navigation.
- Touch navigation improvements.
- GS Connect is not included.
As we mentioned, this is not a really big release, but it is. improves work started in Ubuntu 18.10 and continued on Ubuntu 19.04. The version that will complete the transition from Unity to GNOME, and by this I mean performance + functions, will be Ubuntu 20.04 that will be released in six months and whose name we will know in the next few days.
With this explained, if you are wondering if it will be worth installing the new version, I think it is always worth updating, unless we prefer to use LTS versions of the Canonical operating system. Also, Eoan Ermine is more fluid than previous versions, so it is worth not waiting a moment when the launch is official.
Ubuntu 19.10 can be downloaded tomorrow from here.